Growing up culturally Jewish and marrying an Irish Catholic gives an interesting stew of religious backgrounds to bring up children with. Seeing two religions so opposed on basic literal interpretations of rewritten and poorly translated secondary source documents helps clear the belief in any gods fairly thoroughly. We spend a good deal of time in Ireland and I generally feel welcome even in religiously influenced secular events like Weddings and whatnot (haven't had a wave of confirmations hit the kids' friends yet).
My personal beliefs or lack thereof have been pleasantly my own until the local atheists group pointed out that there was a seemingly archaic revival of the enforcement blasphemy laws (which have lingered in the constitution here) being proposed. Coming from a relatively religiously-free US background (besides "under god" littered on money and the school pledge--at least since the 50's) it didn't register that these might actually come to pass.
Today, they did.
As The Guardian put it:
To put my hat into the ring, I'll gladly admit my beliefs--I find morality in building a world my kids would like to live in. It's a great compass and deity free.So Irish law has now enshrined the notion that the taking of offence is more important than free expression. If something might cause a motivated group to be "outraged", rather than, say, cause them to live in fear, then it is illegal, with a fine of up to €25,000 payable.
Note the ease with which a prosecution could be brought, and the punitive nature of the fine: this is not legislation that simply serves to tie up a few loose ends.
