The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were abolished in England and Wales by the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
[citation needed] In 1656, the Quaker James Naylor was sentenced by the Second Protectorate Parliament to flogging, to be pilloried, branded on the forehead and the piercing of his tongue by a red-hot poker, and thereafter kept in prison on hard labour indefinitely.
[citation needed] When formulating his new Church of England's doctrines in the 1530s, Henry VIII made it an offence to say or print any opinion that contradicted the Six Articles (1539).
[12] The report by Ventris contains the following passage: And Hale said, that such kind of wicked blasphemous words were not only an offence to God and religion, but a crime against the laws, State and Government, and therefore punishable in this Court.
They desired it might be taken notice of, that they laid their stress upon the word general, and did not intend to include disputes between learned men on particular controverted points.
"[15] In 1841, Edward Moxon was found guilty of the publication of a blasphemous libel (Percy Bysshe Shelley's Queen Mab), the prosecution having been instituted by Henry Hetherington, who had previously been condemned to four months imprisonment for a similar offence, and wished to test the law under which he was punished.
[18][19] In 1977, however, the case Whitehouse v Lemon (involving the periodical Gay News publishing James Kirkup's poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name) demonstrated that the offence of blasphemous libel, long thought to be dormant, was still in force.
It is not blasphemous to speak or publish opinions hostile to the Christian religion, or to deny the existence of God, if the publication is couched in decent and temperate language.
The fundamentalist group Christian Voice sought a private blasphemy prosecution against the BBC, but the charges were rejected by City of Westminster magistrates' court.
Many Muslims considered the book to blaspheme against Islam, and Iranian clerical leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa in 1989 calling for Rushdie's death, "along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents".
No charges were laid because, as a House of Lords select committee stated, the law only protects the Christian beliefs as held by the Church of England.
[41] The Rushdie case stimulated debate on this topic, with some arguing the same protection should be extended to all religions, while others claimed the UK's ancient blasphemy laws were an anachronism and should be abolished.
Michael Newman, a secondary school science teacher and an atheist, was arrested under England's blasphemy law for selling Wingrove's blasphemous video Visions of Ecstasy in February 1992 in Birmingham.
A trial would have involved all those who read and published the poem, including several of Britain's leading[peacock prose] writers, academics and MPs.
[48] In January 2008, a spokesman for prime minister Gordon Brown announced that the government would consider supporting the abolition of the blasphemy laws during the passage of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill.
The move followed a letter written to The Daily Telegraph at the instigation of MP Evan Harris and the National Secular Society and was signed by leading figures including Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury, who urged that the laws be abandoned.
[49] Evan Harris and Lord Avebury shared the National Secular Society's 2009 Person of the Year award for their work to abolish the offence of blasphemous libel.
[50][51] On 5 March 2008, an amendment was passed to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008 which abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in England and Wales.
[57] The interregnum Parliament in 1650, "holding it to be [its] duty, by all good ways and means to propagate the Gospel in this Commonwealth, to advance Religion in all Sincerity, Godliness, and Honesty" passed "An Act against several Atheistical, Blasphemous and Execrable Opinions, derogatory to the honor of God, and destructive to humane Society", known as the Blasphemy Act of 1650 and intended to punish those "who should abuse and turn into Licentiousness, the liberty given in matters of Conscience".
The Blasphemy Act 1697 enacted that if any person, educated in or having made profession of the Christian religion, should by writing, preaching, teaching or advised speaking, deny that the members of the Holy Trinity were God, or should assert that there is more than one god, or deny the Christian religion to be true, or the Holy Scriptures to be of divine authority, he should, upon the first offence, be rendered incapable of holding any office or place of trust, and for the second incapable of bringing any action, of being guardian or executor, or of taking a legacy or deed of gift, and should suffer three years imprisonment without bail.
The rest of the world might with impunity blaspheme God, and prophane the ordinances and institutions of religion, if the common law punishment is put an end to.
But the Legislature, in passing this Act, had not the punishment of blasphemy so much in view as the protecting the Government of the country, by preventing infidels from getting into places of trust.
[16] The last prosecution for blasphemy in Scotland was in 1843 when bookseller Thomas Paterson was sentenced at Edinburgh High Court to fifteen months in prison for selling profane placards,[61] BOW-STREET POLICE-OFFICE.SATURDAY, DEC. 24, 1842.
8, Holywell street, was to appear at this office and answer to four summonses preferred against him for exhibiting certain profane placards in his window, to the annoyance of the neighbourhood and the public—the court was crowded with persons anxious to hear the charges.
The name of Mr. Paterson having been called within and without the court three times, and no answer having been given.According to the 18th–19th century legal writer David Hume (nephew of the philosopher), Scots law distinguished between blasphemy, which was uttered in passion generally in the heat of the moment, and other offences which involved the propagation of ideas contrary to religion.
It is blasphemy, Hume wrote when it is done in a scoffing and railing manner; out of a reproachful disposition in the speaker, and, as it were, with passion against the Almighty, rather than with any purpose of propagating the irreverent opinion.
The like sentiments uttered dispassionately or conveyed in any calm or advised form, are rather a heresy or an apostasy than a proper blasphemy.The Human Rights Act 1998 applies in Scotland as well as England and Wales, and therefore poses similar challenges to the existing Scottish blasphemy laws as those described above.
Additionally, some legal commentators believe that, owing to the long time since successful prosecution, blasphemy in Scotland is no longer a crime, although blasphemous conduct might still be tried as a breach of the peace.
[62][63] In 2005, the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service considered a complaint under the blasphemy law regarding the BBC transmission of Jerry Springer: The Opera, but did not proceed with charges.
[64] On 24 April 2020, the Scottish Government published a new bill that seeks to reform hate crime legislation to provide better protection against race, sex, age and religious discrimination, and would also decriminalise blasphemy.