LINK Scotland Will Finally Remove Unintentional Blasphemy Law In New Hate Crimes Bill | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos
Earlier this year, Scotland was on the verge of banning the “crime” of blasphemy. The nation had proposed a new Hate Crimes Bill, designed to modernize the law, that included a clause abolishing “blasphemy” as a crime. That was great news!
But the draft bill included a section that criminalized “stirring up hatred” against various groups… including the religious.
Somehow, blasphemy would be eliminated… but hurting religious sensibilities could be prosecuted. It made no sense and it failed to resolve the problem it was attempting to fix.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.It is only about 300 years since Thomas Aitkenhead was executed for blasphemy in Edinburgh.
Since then we have had the Scottish and European enlightenment but the blasphemy law remains.
Apparently most of the "crimes" covered in the new bill are already adequately covered by existing legislation so why not just abolish the blasphemy law and leave it at that.
Moravian
Level 8
Nov 27, 2020
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Too often laws are messed up. In the mid 80's Rhode Island passed a law, aimed at protecting those who reported child abuse. Unfortunately, if one was the abuser and reported one's self prior to arrest, one couldn't be arrested for said crime. My oldest was 5 at the time and very smart. I used to say, "Need we go to Rhode Island?" He would giggle at me. "Like, yeah Dad, you never even spank us."
Beowulfsfriend
Level 9
Nov 26, 2020
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