What the blasphemy referendum is all about
IN ADDITION to being asked to vote for our next President this coming Friday, the people of Ireland will also be asked to vote in a referendum to remove or retain the offence of blasphemy from our constitution.
While The Referendum Commission of Ireland has been promoting an awareness campaign surrounding the issue in the lead up to Friday’s vote, many people still do not seem to be fully aware of our blasphemy law and why we are being asked to vote on it.
Under Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution, the State guarantees liberty for the exercise of certain rights “subject to public order and morality”, one of these being “the right of citizens to express freely their rights and opinions.”
However, there are certain restrictions to this, one of them being that the “publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious or indecent matter is an offence punishable in accordance with law.”
While the constitution does not specifically define blasphemy, its legal definition is contained within the Defamation Act (2009).
It says that a person publishes something blasphemous if they “publish or say something that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion and intend to cause that outrage.”
Under the Act, where a person is accused of the criminal offence of publishing something blasphemous, it is a defence if they can prove that a reasonable person would find “genuine literary, artistic, political, scientific or academic value in what they published or said”.
However, if convicted of the offence, a person can be fined up to €25,000.
What we are being asked to do on Friday is decide if the word blasphemy should be removed from the Constitution, giving the Oireachtas the green light to amend law so it will no longer remain a criminal offence.
Should there be a no vote, the Constitution will remain unchanged.
The issue gained huge prominence last year after it emerged Gardaí were investigating a complaint following comments make by British actor Stephen Fry while being interviewed by Gay Byrne for the RTÉ ‘Meaning of Life’ television programme.
He described God as an “utter maniac” and asked why he should “respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain.”
Gardaí subsequently dropped the matter saying they were “unable to find a substantial number of outraged people”.
No one has ever been prosecuted under the 2009 Act, with the last known criminal prosecution for blasphemy in Ireland thought to have occurred in 1855.
This begs the question: why are we having the referendum in the first place?
In 2013 the Constitutional Convention recommended that the offence of blasphemy be replaced with a more general provision regarding incitement to religious hatred under the 2016 Confidence and Supply agreement. The government committed to holding a referendum on removing blasphemy from the Constitution.
Launching the referendum earlier this year, Justice Minister Charlie Flanagan said passing the 37th Amendment to the Constitution would be “an important step” for Ireland’s international reputation.
“By removing this provision, we can send a strong message to the world that laws against blasphemy do not reflect Irish values and that we do not believe such laws should exist,” he said.