Dropsafe

by Alec Muffett

Germany calls for law against hurting peoples’ feelings.

Well, kinda:

German archbishop calls for blasphemy law

Published: Aug. 2, 2012 at 3:09 PM

BAMBERG, Germany, Aug. 2 (UPI) — A Catholic bishop in Germany called for a law against blasphemy to protect all religions from attack after a German satire magazine attacked Pope Benedict.

Bamberg Archbishop Ludwig Schick said Wednesday a law should be created to protect religions from blasphemy, the Local.de reported.

“Those who injure the souls of believers with scorn and derision must be put in their place and in some cases also punished,” Schick said.

The demand for a blasphemy law came a month after satire magazine Titanic published an image of Pope Benedict with a yellow stain on his robe referring to the recent Vatican leaks scandal. The pope took legal action against the magazine and the image was banned from being printed.

German parliamentary leader Volker Beck said the government is not allowed to ban irony or satire and many laws existed to protect against slander and defamation.

via German archbishop calls for blasphemy law – UPI.com.

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Comments

2 responses to “Germany calls for law against hurting peoples’ feelings.”

  1. Dave Walker

    Mmm – so how does this sit, in the context that many religions (the three most widespread apparently-monotheistic ones, for starters) consider themselves to be the one “true” religion and all other religions to be false, or at the very least, misinformed? Would it lead to those religions being banned, on the grounds that they “injure the souls” of followers of different religions?

    Reply
  2. Dave Walker

    The more fun (and subversive) flipside to this, of course, is that if churches are to be exempted from prosecution for saying things which “injure the souls” of others, “if you have something to say which would have you prosecuted for saying it, start a church to say it for you; also, think of the tax breaks”.

    I love reductio ad absurdum, even for proposals which make targets as easy as the Archbishop’s :-).

    Reply

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