British actor investigated for insulting God
British actor Stephen Fry is known as many things: a witty television presenter, a roguish Twitter personality and an outspoken atheist. Over the weekend, Irish authorities considered whether to add another label to the list: alleged blasphemer.
Irish police opened an investigation into whether remarks Fry made in a 2015 television interview — saying that God, if he existed at all, was a selfish maniac who deserved neither respect nor praise — had run afoul of a controversial blasphemy law enacted in 2009. The inquiry didn’t last long. Authorities said on Monday night that no charges would be filed against Fry. But the news that they had even pursued the complaint to begin with set off an outpouring of bemusement and anger in Ireland, which has been grappling with its conservative Catholic history.
“We are deluded if we think that the 2009 law is not actively influencing, limiting, even dictating the content that we are offered by our national media,” Emer O’Toole, a professor of Irish Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, wrote on Monday in an op-ed in the Independent, a British paper. “And we are even more deluded if we think that we are living in a secular society.”
Police declined to comment on the episode or to explain why they waited until now to respond to a complaint that, according to local media reports, was filed in rural County Clare shortly after Fry’s remarks were broadcast. The complainant, who has not been publicly identified, told the Irish Independent newspaper that he was not offended by Fry’s statements but nevertheless thought the actor broke the law. The interview at the heart of the matter began with a simple question from the television host Gay Byrne: What would Fry say to God if the actor and the Almighty ever met face to face? Fry’s response, Byrne said afterward, was “the longest answer to that question that I ever got in this entire series.”
If God does exist, Fry said, he is “quite clearly a maniac” and “totally selfish.” He said he would ask God, “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault?”
“It’s utterly, utterly evil,” Fry continued. “Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?”
Fry, who rose to fame in part through his portrayal of the outspoken 19th-century Irish writer Oscar Wilde, who had legal troubles of his own, declined to comment on the investigation, according to his representative, Christian Hodell.