I’ve just noticed that the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill which got royal asset yesterday (btw, enthusiasts of necrophiliac porn, better hide it under the mattress[1]), contains provisions to make it an offence to incite hatred on grounds of sexual orientation. I am in general in favour of this, in the same qualified way in which I was in favour of the parallel provisions of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006[2]. The reason being that the specific laws in question aren’t really particularly material restrictions on free speech (as with the 2006 Act, the current law on homophobia has an explicit clause explaining that merely critical or mocking speech is not incitement to hatred), and that the UK really doesn’t need any of the antisocial behaviour that is an inevitable consequence of incitements to hatred.
It does strike me, however, that two years ago, there was an awful lot of public protest against the RRHA06. Not the least of this came from comedians like Stephen Fry and Rowan Atkinson, who were making the point that mockery and criticism of religion were an important part of comedy and that they felt their right to free expression was under threat[3].
One doesn’t have to be an aficionado of Mr Humphries or Larry Grayson to be aware that British comedians have at least as much of a professional interest in the mockery of gays as they do in the mockery of religions, but if there was a big comedians’ protest against this one I missed it. In fact, I don’t recall the free speech lobby really raising much of a stir at all; Index on Censorship didn’t so much as mention it (Update: thanks Padraig Reidy in comments, they did mention it, once, last year), though they did take an interest in the religious hatred bill, and they are aware of the current Criminal Justice Bill.
This sort of thing is unfortunate; I’m sure nobody involved intended it this way[5], but to an outsider it would certainly look as if the 2006 kerfuffle had very little to do with freedom of speech, except in as much as it could be picked up as a handy stick to beat the Muslims with. And given that, I bet it looks that way to British Muslims too. Every time we try to have a sensible discussion of the subject of hate speech, it gets much more heated than it has any reason to be, and a lot of the reason for this, in my opinion, is that the free speech issue has got tangled up with a whole load of other questions about security and immigration, to nobody’s benefit.
[1] Also bestiality porn, and as far as I can see Plaid Cymru didn’t so much as raise an objection.
[2] In comments to that thread, my view of calls from the gay lobby for parallel protection was something along the lines of “tough luck”, because I didn’t think that violent homophobia was enough of a social problem to warrant a restriction on free speech. I now think this was a mistake, partly because when you put the point as bluntly as that it’s obviously callous, and partly because the overwhelming evidence of the experience of the 2006 Act is that the restriction on free speech is trivial.
[3] Ben Elton, the noted author, former comedian and disappointment[4], apparently still believes that jokes about Islam are too near the knuckle for the politically correct world of modern British comedy. He has perhaps not noticed that they more or less form Shazia Mirza or Omid Djalili‘s entire act. I suspect that what he means is that you’re not seeing white comedians making fun of Islamic minorities, in which case I rather think he owes an apology to Jim Davidson and the late Bernard Manning for more or less everything he said in the 80s.
[4] For example, as Alexei Sayle noted when Elton collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on a musical: “It’s really quite tough, you know, when you see someone whose work you’ve been familiar with for years, you don’t agree with them on politics but you recognise that they’ve got a genuine talent – and then they go and write a musical with Ben Elton”.
[5] Not true, obviously; one of the Freedom of Speech marches that year very nearly had to be called off because of the amount of involvement from the BNP and similar groups. I’m referring to Rowan Atkinson and Stephen Fry here – I am sure their concern over free speech was sincere at the time.
{ 60 comments }
Dave 05.09.08 at 2:52 pm
Hmm, but there you go. You have to be pretty deranged to think that homosexuality is a plot to oppress us all [though some people, of course, are that deranged], whereas the publicly-avowed intention of the nutters who make bombs in bedsits is to impose sharia on us all, whether we like it or not, ‘cos That’s What God Said.
Are you arguing that people should have objected to the current proposals merely in order to maintain a facade of consistency? Or in order not to attract what you seem to be suggesting they might attract, which is a charge of anti-Muslim prejudice [I think]? Might you not also argue that organised religion is an entity far more deserving of robust criticism than gayness? Even if, even if, the BNP don’t like some versions of it for their own twisted little reasons?
Daniel 05.09.08 at 2:56 pm
Are you arguing that people should have objected to the current proposals merely in order to maintain a facade of consistency?
No, I think they should have been sensible about the ones in 2006; I thought that was clear. I’m interested in the reasons why they weren’t sensible in 2006 – I think that outright racism was clearly a factor, but it’s more complicated than that.
Might you not also argue that organised religion is an entity far more deserving of robust criticism than gayness?
I might argue that, but Anne Widdecombe might argue the opposite; she is wrong, but the law of the land is that she’s allowed to speak her mind. In any case, my whole point here is that we’re talking about incitement to hatred here, not “robust criticism”, and nobody should be subject to that, gay or religious.
Padraig Reidy 05.09.08 at 3:03 pm
Daniel
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/?p=42
more to follow
regards
P
Padraig Reidy 05.09.08 at 3:08 pm
Oy, wrong flipping link
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/?p=9
Anyhoo, point is, it’s wrong to say we didn’t so much as mention it.
Dave Weeden 05.09.08 at 3:18 pm
Daniel, I’d like to quote the words of your fellow Timberite blogger, Harry Brighouse on Mr Humphreys “What was portrayed on the screen was a genuinely decent and kind man with a (somewhat) naughty sense of humour, around whom idiocy prevailed.” Comedy has an interest in gays sending themselves up; that’s different from mockery. It’s particularly different from mockery of religion, because clerics take themselves seriously and think they run the world (or speak for someone who does). Gay men are unlikely to make the same mistake. Unless they’re archbishops of course.
stuart 05.09.08 at 3:19 pm
If this is, as you say, a parallel piece of legislation to the RRHA06, and since the introduction of that it hasn’t caused any significant problems so far (that I have heard of), why should we expect a fuss to be made against a similar piece of legislation, especially seeing as this one is going to be applying less widely – less people are gay than religious or of ethnic minorities, less humour and criticism is generally made with homosexuality as a target than religion, etc.
Daniel 05.09.08 at 3:23 pm
If this is, as you say, a parallel piece of legislation to the RRHA06, and since the introduction of that it hasn’t caused any significant problems so far (that I have heard of), why should we expect a fuss to be made against a similar piece of legislation
Because the opposition to RRHA06 was very much on grounds of principle (and justified on principled grounds in early rather high-falutin’ terms), not anything to do with the consequences.
LizardBreath 05.09.08 at 3:25 pm
What about violent necrophiliac gay bestiality?
Aren’t you just beating a dead horse?
Dave 05.09.08 at 3:29 pm
Yeah, of course the other way of looking at it is that, if the 2008 measures are carefuly worded to prevent oppressive outcomes, it’s only because the concern about the 2006 Act brought about amendments in that direction [as I, imperfectly perhaps, recall?]. In other words, fight won, lesson learned.
It’s still all bollocks of course, a kneejerk piece of legislation that won’t solve any underlying problems, and I look forward to seeing the imaginative uses to which authorities can put it to annoy harmless people and make themselves feel big. But there you go, eh?
What do you think about the new ‘harass a hoodie’ plans? If only we had a copper for every thug [or, actually, three coppers, shiftwork, innit] we might get somewhere. Maybe we could pay the thugs to follow each other around. Make it easy, chain them together. Or, hey, since they like video-games so much, half of them can be fitted with cameras, and the other half can sit at home and push a button when it looks like they’re going to do something naughty. Zap! Cultivate the latent sadism and nihilism that leads them to their lives of criminal despair by encouraging them to electrocute each other in the most spectacular ways, caught on TV for audience appreciation in prime time. Stanley Milgram, eat your heart out!
Righto, POETS….
Maurice Meilleur 05.09.08 at 3:33 pm
Lizardbreath! For the win. Please come over and help me wipe coffee off my monitor.
Picador 05.09.08 at 3:38 pm
“Religion” per se can encompass literally any set of beliefs and practices. It goes without saying, I hope, that many beliefs and practices are illegal, immoral, and legitimate targets for not only hatred but also state intervention even to the point of violence. The boundless definition of “religion” is what makes the earlier bill problematic.
“Homosexuality” per se encompasses only a very specific set of practices, namely the direction of sexual attention to one sex rather than another. Most liberal societies have decided that this, in itself, is not a legitimate target for hatred or for state regulation. However, since it has historically been the target of quite vicious violence, the state has a substantial interest in discouraging incitement of same.
One cannot meaningfully distinguish in a court of law between “I beat him up because he’s a Christian” and “I beat him up because he contributes money and other forms of support to an apocalyptic death cult actively working to bring about the end of the world, and is thereby putting my life and my interests in danger”. The two statements are coextensive.
The Nazis had a specific set of spiritual beliefs. I do not want to live in a society where incitement of hatred of Nazis is criminal, nor one where beating up a Nazi is a more serious crime than beating up a non-Nazi.
If anyone in this thread can provide a working definition of “religion” that addresses these problems, I’m all ears. I’ve never heard one.
Picador 05.09.08 at 3:42 pm
It goes without saying, I hope, that many beliefs and practices are illegal, immoral, and legitimate targets for not only hatred but also state intervention even to the point of violence.
Sorry; I should qualify that by saying that only “beliefs” actively promulgated through communication can be legitimate targets of state violence, and even then, obviously, I’m a fan of strictly limiting this rule. (That’s my entire point.) But beliefs per se are certainly legitimate targets for hatred.
Daniel 05.09.08 at 3:47 pm
But beliefs per se are certainly legitimate targets for hatred.
thanks for sharing. Actually both acts refer to incitement to hatred of persons on grounds of religion/sexual orientation. It really isn’t much trouble to find out a little bit about these things. Sorry to be sarcastic and all that, but I am having a little bit of a push on the general subject of “please know what you’re talking about before commenting on CT”, thanks.
Slocum 05.09.08 at 3:49 pm
It’s still all bollocks of course, a kneejerk piece of legislation that won’t solve any underlying problems, and I look forward to seeing the imaginative uses to which authorities can put it to annoy harmless people and make themselves feel big. But there you go, eh?
Right — so you’ll be able to mount a defense on the grounds that you were engaged in mockery rather than incitement to hatred, but the difference is obviously subjective, and the problem is that being dragged before authorities and having to justify yourself is a punishment. The danger acts as a powerful disincentive toward speech that might possibly, in the eyes of the most officious bureaucrat, be construed as ‘hate speech’. And that chilling effect is intentional. See the recent Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Commission cases.
Daniel 05.09.08 at 3:58 pm
See the recent Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Commission cases.
no, don’t, because that’s a completely different legal system. See the UK’s own incitement to racial hatred law which has been around since the 1970s, and try and find an example from the UK.
Rich B. 05.09.08 at 4:01 pm
Isn’t the biggest concern with these sorts of laws that the “Religious Hatred” that the “Orientation Hatred” that the drafters have in mind are rarely the sorts that will most often get prosecuted?
If the drafters of the 14th Amendment knew it would be ignored for a century of Jim Crow, and then finally given teeth to help white people and invalidate affirmative action programs, would they have thought we’d be better off without it?
If drafters of campus speech codes realized that they’d be used by religious Christians who felt offended by the atheistic rants of their professors, would they are pushed so hard for their passage?
These laws are a bad idea because they give the majority a good chance to hoist minorities on their own petard.
Brett 05.09.08 at 4:20 pm
The very idea that hatred is something which can be incited should be anathema to a free society. Such a notion is directly opposed to the idea that the human being is a rational creature; capable of reflecting on reasons and governing herself appropriately. The implication of such a law is that the average person is unable to govern her own responses and will be swept along in a tide of rhetoric.
Unless thinking people are free to consider what ought to be hated and can promulgate those views, we will be forced to turn our hatred to unworthy targets or, worse still, will lose the power to move ourselves out of righteous indignation. J.S. Mill teaches us that the best way to disarm the bigot is to counter his rhetoric and reasons. Free societies should celebrate the marches and rallies of hate groups because it gives good people the opportunity to see them for what they really are, count their meager numbers and challenge their conclusions. Speech laws, like drug laws do not stop the practice. They drive it underground where it flourishes amongst the cave dwellers. Plato knew that thinking people have an obligation to wade into that chasm and shine the light of truth on what they do, even though the good are usually repaid in heckling and insults. Passing laws like this effectively rolls the boulder in front of the entrance and prevents the good from exercising the power of their discourse for want of a target.
In addition, given the rather creative interpretation of due process which is afforded to British defendants in their justice system, the law will almost certainly have a broadly chilling effect on speech.
One only needs to look across the channel to see the pernicious effects such laws have had people who would otherwise be considered national treasures. The following is taken from wikipedia’s entry on Brigitte Bardot:
“In 2008, she was charged with inciting racial/religious hatred in relation to a letter she wrote, a copy of which she sent to Nicolas Sarkozy when he was Interior Minister of France. The letter stated her objections to Muslims in France ritually and cruelly slaughtering sheep by slitting their throats without stunning them first. She also objected to France’s rapidly growing Muslim community trying to take over France and impose their culture, values, lifestyles etc. on France and its native people. She is currently on trial;[22] it is due to conclude on 3 June 2008.”
alan b 05.09.08 at 4:25 pm
You (as in one, not as in DD) choose to be religious, at least in a free society; you don’t choose to be either a particular ethnicity or sexuality. Should this make a difference? Damned if I know, but thought I would throw it in.
Picador 05.09.08 at 4:26 pm
daniel:
I felt quite sheepish after reading your response and slunk off to do my homework. I was then surprised to find that my initial uneducated take on the content of the two bills appears to have been correct: the 2006 bill outlawed incitement of hatred toward people on the basis of their religious belief, while the 2008 bill outlawed incitement on the basis of sexual orientation. Please correct me if I’m actually so dense as to have gotten this wrong.
Given that, I don’t see why my post wasn’t a coherent response to this:
One doesn’t have to be an aficionado of Mr Humphries or Larry Grayson to be aware that British comedians have at least as much of a professional interest in the mockery of gays as they do in the mockery of religions, but if there was a big comedians’ protest against this one I missed it.
There are, of course, many reasons for this fact, most of which stem from concrete social realities of the UK in 2008 and the political tendencies of British comedians. I was trying to make a case for why, as a matter of principle, it should still be unsurprising, and why the fact that the protests in 2006 weren’t mirrored this year doesn’t reflect a hypocritical double standard, as implied by your following statement:
This sort of thing is unfortunate; I’m sure nobody involved intended it this way, but to an outsider it would certainly look as if the 2006 kerfuffle had very little to do with freedom of speech, except in as much as it could be picked up as a handy stick to beat the Muslims with.
There’s a perfectly obvious (to me) reason for the distinction between hatred of a religion and hatred of homosexuality, and why the first can often be legitimate in a way that second cannot.
I hear what you’re saying: that the comedians framed their opposition in terms irrelevant to my argument, and that seems to indicate hypocrisy on their part. But I don’t think it’s a stretch to suppose that many of these comedians harbored an intuition that inciting hatred toward gays and inciting hatred toward “religious people” broadly defined are worlds apart in terms of their capacity for abuse in the hands of an authoritarian state. Perhaps I’m giving them too much credit; perhaps they’re all just racist hypocrites. All I’m saying is that a principled case can be made for distinguishing the impact of the two bills; I don’t really have a position on whether this distinction actually motivated the protesters.
For what it’s worth, I can sympathize with your support of both bills, even though I think I would come down against both. But my background is American, and my political and cultural calculations would perhaps be different if they were reacting to a UK context. You guys don’t have a government saturated with Biblical literalists with persecution complexes.
Picador 05.09.08 at 4:33 pm
But I don’t think it’s a stretch to suppose that many of these comedians harbored an intuition that inciting hatred toward gays and inciting hatred toward “religious people†broadly defined are worlds apart in terms of their capacity for abuse in the hands of an authoritarian state.
I should also note that, once the earlier bill was made law, many of those who protested might have seen this new bill as leveling the playing field somewhat. I myself would be quite uncomfortable living in a society where a Christian can call for the extermination of the queers without consequence, but if I respond by calling for extermination of the Bible-thumping fascist I get thrown in prison.
BCist 05.09.08 at 4:34 pm
If the Blackadder’s against it, I’m against it.
Michael Mouse 05.09.08 at 4:35 pm
I didn’t think that violent homophobia was enough of a social problem to warrant a restriction on free speech. I now think this was a mistake
It was, perhaps, easier for those of us on the sharp end of violent homophobia to see it as a problem that needed addressing. But good on you for revising your view in the light of further data.
(Not that I think this legislation will address the problem and make a big difference to the odds of me and my mates getting our heads kicked in, but it might help.)
dsquared 05.09.08 at 4:43 pm
There’s a perfectly obvious (to me) reason for the distinction between hatred of a religion and hatred of homosexuality
Picador; the point I was making, perhaps somewhat too sarcastically, is that there is all the difference in the world between “hatred of a religion/sexual orientation” and “hatred of a person or group of persons on grounds of their religion/sexual orientation”, and only the second of these is illegal.
Dan Bye 05.09.08 at 4:55 pm
one of the Freedom of Speech marches that year very nearly had to be called off because of the amount of involvement from the BNP and similar groups.
When I was at Leeds University there was a Free Speech Society that became something of a bastion of the BNP. Mark Collett, now the BNP’s head of publicity and Dick Griffin’s co-defendant in the “free speech” trial a couple of years ago, was standing for president. A bunch of us good ol’ left-liberals went along to stand someone against him. Unfortunately the SWP started a protest outside – against the BNP or against free speech was never entirely clear – and once it turned into a riot we ended up trapped in a room with several very ugly looking motherfuckers, several more of whom now occupy positions of influence in the BNP. A victory for the forces of reason and progress, not least as the meeting was inquorate.
Collett is also notable for the confluence in his person of two distinct fashion statements: thug and homosexual. Am I allowed to say that?
richard 05.09.08 at 5:04 pm
It seems like this bill has a lot more implications than the free speech angle you highlight (no link to Unspeak?), and I wonder if that’s a contributing factor – nobody is willing to stand up in defence of pornography, “extreme” or otherwise?
Or, to put it another way, a certain limited conception of what must be accepted in society is couched inside a framework of what must not, and it’s dangerous to get caught up in debates about the former for fear of being tarred with the latter.
It strikes me (and this is an unresearched claim) that the lines drawn mirror a shift in the media over the past 20 years or so, in which homosexuality has been declared fine and natural, and the latent hatred that used to attach to it has been displaced onto other groups, who have gone from being seen as mere criminals to a status somewhere below that of demons. The paradigmatic case for this demonised group is pedophiles, but the virulence of hatred involved is such that it always threatens to spill over onto others groups. If one objects to the persecution of these groups, one risks having one’s social reputation destroyed. I contend that this is a special case in the current political climate: no other issue has the same toxicity, and that this might be why (a) the bill, which is manifestly stupid in parts, is passing so handily, and (b) people who rely on public goodwill for their careers are disinclined to kick it around.
Picador 05.09.08 at 5:17 pm
Picador; the point I was making, perhaps somewhat too sarcastically, is that there is all the difference in the world between “hatred of a religion/sexual orientation†and “hatred of a person or group of persons on grounds of their religion/sexual orientationâ€, and only the second of these is illegal.
Er, perhaps from some sort of theological perspective this is a meaningful distinction. But while I understand that it would make the Buddha and the baby Jesus weep, in the world where I live, anyone with a KKK membership is fair game for hatred as a person.
If you’re actually engaged in the project of extracting religion from the people in whose minds and practices it is housed, please keep me posted on your progress. I believe the Spanish Inquisition shared your “love the sinner, hate the sin” philosophy, but their efforts to separate the two met with limited success.
On what basis do we judge other human beings, if not the content of their beliefs and practices? Yes, of course it would be nice if superstition and bigotry were shadows in the brain that could be dispelled by the light of reason. But if the coexistence of religious fanaticism along with unprecedented public education in the past 100 years has taught us anything, it is that these beliefs and practices are not the children of ignorance, but of privilege: male privilege, white privilege, class privilege, heterosexual privilege.
I acknowledge the agency of religious people enough to take them at their word when they profess their values. I am not a bodhisattva or a saint; I am a human being, and human beings generally feel hatred toward others who openly call for the extermination of everything they hold dear. In fact — and this is the crucial point — they even feel hatred for people who quietly, prudently, soft-spokenly claim to believe the literal truth and the moral authority of a book that calls for the extermination of everything they hold dear.
Perhaps you live in a society where a bill outlawing religious hate speech would be used to protect religious minorities. I am skeptical that this is the case in the UK, but I’m not really in a position to know. I do know that a similar law, if passed and upheld in my country, would result in Fox News filling its January schedule with the trials of war criminals in the War on Christmas.
Nick L 05.09.08 at 5:23 pm
Why is it thought that outlawing ‘hatred’ directed towards certain vulnerable groups will have any effect? Has the law on stirring up racial hatred actually been effective. If it isn’t possible to obtain a successful prosecution against a fascist thug for describing ‘ethnics’ as ‘cockroaches’ then it is difficult to see what use any of these laws can be.
dsquared 05.09.08 at 5:36 pm
Has the law on stirring up racial hatred actually been effective
yup
Stephen 05.09.08 at 5:37 pm
Around the time the Religious Hatred Bill was going through parliament there was the somewhat unedifying spectacle of Christian (sic) Voice attempting to get ‘Jerry Springer: The Opera’ suppressed by various dubious means. So I can quite see why people were anxious about a Bill that would potentially restrict the scope for causing offence to the devout on the grounds that even a malicious prosecution might convince a budding Messrs Lee and Thomas not to bother. Against that backdrop, plus various other incidents a certain amount of anxiety was to be expected. There is an old saw that you do not put a gun into peoples hands if you are not sure in which direction they will point it.
Now, notwithstanding the occasional case of mad bloke with sandwich board being arrested, the Bishop of Chester getting a call from the fuzz after some imprudent comments on the radio and so forth there isn’t really any history of orchestrated attempts by gay rights activists to get their political opponents banged up in HMP or otherwise inconvenienced.
So I can see why people would get more anxious about laws which protect relgious believers than laws which protect gay people. This may well have been unfair or misguided – I’m not aware of any use of the religious hatred legilation to shut down debate or satire, so it probably was. But broadly speaking I can see why the religious hatred act attracted more anxiety than the legislation against hatred based on sexual orientation.
stuart 05.09.08 at 5:44 pm
By the way isn’t the use of ‘hatred’ in this discussion somewhat misleading:
19. The Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill contains the same safeguards as those for religious hatred:
· The offence requires the use of threatening words or behaviour: it does not catch expressions which are insulting or abusive. Those who are critical, insulting or abusive about sexual orientation will not be silenced by the Bill as long as their expressions are not threatening. This is important for religious groups who are concerned that the Bill would prevent them preaching about homosexual practices and behaviour in a manner which may be deemed insulting, abusive or critical.
voyou 05.09.08 at 5:45 pm
nobody is willing to stand up in defence of pornography, “extreme†or otherwise.
Well, not nobody.
richard 05.09.08 at 5:53 pm
not nobody
True. How about “nobody who was already known in the public sphere and had a reputation there to guard”?
Picador 05.09.08 at 5:58 pm
nobody is willing to stand up in defence of pornography, “extreme†or otherwise.
Steven Poole has a great post from last week exploring the implications of the Bill’s definition of “extreme images”. Quite funny, if infuriating. I’m really not a fan of US politics, but the American judiciary does seem to do a consistently better job than their UK counterparts of striking down this sort of absurdity.
Picador 05.09.08 at 6:07 pm
not nobody
True. How about “nobody who was already known in the public sphere and had a reputation there to guard�
The Unspeak post linked above contains this extended quotation from Lord McIntosh on the Bill:
Again, my unschooled North American mind can’t determine whether the wacky hereditary aristocrats sitting in the House of Lords count as people “known in the public sphere” or whether they have reputations worth guarding, but I thought it was a hoot.
ejh 05.09.08 at 6:15 pm
the wacky hereditary aristocrats sitting in the House of Lords
I believe the heerditary peers have actually been removed…
Picador 05.09.08 at 6:36 pm
I believe the heerditary peers have actually been removed…
Like I said, I’m an ignorant yokel.
(I’m actually just bitter because, 230 years after rebelling against the English monarchy, we ended up with one of our own that claims powers unseen in England since 1648.)
harry b 05.09.08 at 7:11 pm
Jenkins, Houghton, and McIntosh are/were all life peers (ie, appointed for their contributions to public life).
Richard 05.09.08 at 8:35 pm
To echo Picador, I would’ve thought the obvious differences are that (1) there seems a greater risk of oppressive silencing and censorship from religious lobbies, and (2) it’s more important to be able to criticize religions than it is to be able to criticize gays.
richard 05.09.08 at 8:38 pm
Indeed. I’m well aware of the piece you quote, and I feel a lot of sympathy for the lords in question. Rather more, in fact, than for anyone in the lower house who supported this bill. I think my assertion stands – they have tenure, and are at last free to speak their minds, and not be dragged around by a highly selective fear of the electorate. Nonetheless, they speak with the greatest care, making sure to identify themselves as well outside the group of people who might want to look at such images, while making cautious noises about the incautious way the bill is written – and in doing so, they risk exposure they would not choose to risk if they were in the commons. What a pity for the UK that the lords are being phased out.
Sam C 05.09.08 at 9:05 pm
Brett says:
That people can be swept along on a tide of rhetoric is less an implication, than the historically well-justified basis, of this and other laws. Hatred and violence are quite easy to incite, and doing so typically doesn’t involve much that’s recognizable as a reason on which anyone can reflect. Us humans are at best partially rational (as Plato knew, if we’re swapping philosophical allusions), and the defense of rationality requires institutions which exclude some forms of speech. Your appeal to Mill against this line of thought is a bit odd, since it’s Mill’s own argument in On Liberty.
Jon H 05.10.08 at 4:26 am
I guess Girls and Corpses Magazine is going to have to stop shipping to the UK.
Yes, it exists. Bikini girls mugging for the camera with movie-prop cadavers.
No, I don’t read it.
Martin Wisse 05.10.08 at 10:55 am
You just look at the pictures?
Martin Wisse 05.10.08 at 10:59 am
Incidently Daniel. the reason that the incitement to religious hatred bill got all the attention while this bill does it, might just be found in the fact that the UK still has an established state religion and a living tradition of representants of said religion sticking their oar in, rather than just Muslim bashing. Blasphemy is still on the books as a crime, isn’t it?
Meanwhile, rightwing paranoia about a gay maffia notwithstanding, homosexuals have never had the priviledged position religion has had in the UK.
Brett 05.10.08 at 1:13 pm
Sam C says:
“That people can be swept along on a tide of rhetoric is less an implication, than the historically well-justified basis, of this and other laws. Hatred and violence are quite easy to incite, and doing so typically doesn’t involve much that’s recognizable as a reason on which anyone can reflect. Us humans are at best partially rational (as Plato knew, if we’re swapping philosophical allusions), and the defense of rationality req beuires institutions which exclude some forms of speech. Your appeal to Mill against this line of thought is a bit odd, since it’s Mill’s own argument in On Liberty.”
Actually I think it is you, Sam, who misreads Mill. Mill consistently invokes the harm principle as the limiting condition of the freedoms he advocates. And while Mill’s Corn dealer example does place limits on speech, it is telling that it does so only when harm to the corn dealer is imminent. Mill explicitly says that it would be a violation of the liberty of thought to disallow those same opinions to be printed in a newspaper although delivering them to an angry crowd gathered at the corn dealers door would be prohibited.
And it is here that the it becomes clear that the law goes farther than Mill would have since the law on which the proposed legislation is modeled states “A person who publishes or distributes written material which is threatening is guilty of an offence if he intends thereby to stir up religious hatred.” To the extent that this law criminalize all publication it extends beyond the scope of laws which merely criminalize inciting a riot or other imminent act of violence and those which merely “stir up” hatred. In any case I would ask you to read the last paragraph of Chapter 2 in On Liberty and tell me if you still believe this is a law that Mill’s arguments would sanction. On my reading it is not.
While any individual may be only partially rational we all have the capacity for rationality and are capable of acting for reasons. To suggest that the person is not rational enough to govern her responses to vivid and hateful material, but is rational enough to recognize and comply with the law strikes me as odd. If we are only partially rational why set standards for the totality of my behavior at all, at best one should only be held to account for those things which can be accounted for. Namely; all of those things one does for a reason.
While I take your point about Plato I think that it is his description of the Guardian class to which we should aspire. Once we reject the view that it is the metal content of one’s soul which determines the capacity for rationality, it seems obvious to me that if we are to credit the human being with such a capacity it had best be grounded in her ability to think and speak.
Sam C 05.10.08 at 1:54 pm
Brett – I wasn’t claiming anything about what Mill would say about laws against incitement of hatred. I was objecting to your appeal to Mill in support of a way of thinking about social life and the use of communal power which he utterly rejected. The ground for all of Mill’s arguments in OL and elsewhere is utility. The book is an account of the social institutions – including fearless Socratic debate, universal education, and popular involvement in government – which best promote human flourishing. Mill does not advocate a principle of abstract right that people should be allowed to say whatever they please: those progressive institutions require limitations on speech as well as action, because some speech acts (1) are destructive of the institutions themselves, and/or (2) do harm to individuals. In general, Mill’s central interest is in the effect of social institutions on how well humans live, not in decreeing exceptionless moral and political rules. So, regardless of what he might have thought about this particular law, he would have rejected your way of challenging it for methodological reasons.
Naadir Jeewa 05.10.08 at 2:12 pm
Brett:
But we don’t live in Mills time. We live in the age of the Internet, which could be equivalent to an angry crowd gathered at the corn dealers door?
A lot of the 2006 protest was used as a way of saying “all religions are stupid, so they deserve mockery.” Given the mainstream acceptance of Amis/Dawkins/Hitchens et al. “muscular liberal” case against Islam, this was something to be cheered. I as a British Asian on the receiving end of all this don’t distinguish much between them and the BNP, but anyway, I came to terms with one of my loved comedians Stewart Lee stepping out of satire and into all-out religion-bashing on TV.
The homosexuality case is at least a bit more black-and-white. Anyone considering deriding homosexuality is rightfully dismissed as an idiot by all liberals. The religious and Muslims in particular don’t get equal treatment.
On slightly less firm territory, it might be interesting to see how the links between homophobia and certain religious views have made the anti-religion and the LGBT movement one and the same.
– A member of the carrying-Guardian-under-arm class.
Thlayli 05.10.08 at 2:20 pm
Also bestiality porn, and as far as I can see Plaid Cymru didn’t so much as raise an objection.
Now, that’s just rude.
Jon H 05.11.08 at 6:24 am
Martin Wisse wrote: “You just look at the pictures?”
A hit! A palpable hit!
Nah, I’ve only heard of it via comics-blog mockery of the items in the monthly ‘Previews’ catalog of upcoming releases.
magistra 05.12.08 at 9:36 am
If any group really wants to counter the porn ban, they need to link up with historians of Roman art. When respectable classicists start enquiring whether if they look at an image of the God Pan copulating with a goat (which has been known to feature in ‘Art History’ journal), they are criminals, then it might get politicians thinking a bit more.
stuart 05.12.08 at 11:56 am
I remember one particular censorship decision that some arm of the Canadian government made – you could import a US made comic where two humans are having sex, or two aliens, or an alien and a human, two dragons transformed into humans, and all sorts of other possibilities, but not two humans that have been transformed into centaurs, or in a seperate decision on a later volume, a human that transforms himself a jaguar when having sex. It seems like an overly literal interpretation of any laws, and that I guess is one problem that can arise in this area.
Picador 05.12.08 at 2:25 pm
It seems like an overly literal interpretation of any laws, and that I guess is one problem that can arise in this area.
Actually, the problem with prior restraint on speech is that if there is any ambiguity at all in how to read a law, its effect will be to chill any speech that could conceivably fall within its bounds. A “literal interpretation” is perhaps the best case anyone could hope for; but of course, when the class of speech that results in a prison term isn’t capable of precise, literal definition (most forms of speech aren’t), we must be very careful to avoid saying anything that we fear a judge might possibly interpret as falling within the bounds of the statute.
john b 05.12.08 at 3:59 pm
Worth noting that the UK extreme pornography legislation only applies to photographs or pseudophotographs, as with the existing UK child pornography legislation.
So statues of Pan-on-goat or cartoons of girl-on-zombie action remain OK. Non-photorealistic CGI should also be OK, although it wouldn’t surprise me if the definitional problems cited by Picador put off many artists.
(AIUI Canada is even madder than the UK in this respect, criminalising the posession of extreme pornography in written story form…)
john b 05.12.08 at 4:06 pm
[it has just occurred to me that, pace previous threads, I have absolutely no idea to what extent the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill or the Sexual Offences Act 2003 apply in Scotland or Northern Ireland. So best substitute “England and Wales” for UK above…]
Ken 05.12.08 at 5:23 pm
Er John B at 52 – you may be wrong. direct from the bill itself:
“References to a photograph also include—
a tracing or other image, whether made by electronic or other means (of whatever nature)—
which is not itself a photograph or pseudo-photograph, but which is derived from the whole or part of a photograph or pseudo-photograph (or a combination of either or both); and
data stored on a computer disc or by other electronic means which is capable of conversion into an image within paragraph and subsection (8) applies in relation to such an image as it applies in relation to a pseudo-photograph.”
That sounds to me as though sculpture is OK but oil or watercolour paintings would be illegal if the prosecution could find photo references.
john b 05.12.08 at 10:10 pm
In child pornography law, which AIUI uses the same terminology, it’s taken to mean references in the sense of being photoshopped or physically traced, not in the sense of being inspired by / copied from.
Pete 05.13.08 at 2:00 pm
Could someone clarify for me whether the large sections of the Old Testament devoted to holy war and incitement against other religions would be covered by this?
chris y 05.13.08 at 2:04 pm
Worth noting that the UK extreme pornography legislation only applies to photographs or pseudophotographs, as with the existing UK child pornography legislation.
Which is indeed worth noting if you’re looking at the inconsistencies here, since the most disturbing images on the web which are easily avalable tend to be manga.
Ken 05.13.08 at 3:33 pm
Fair enough John B – I’m not reading this with a lawyer’s eyes. It depends on what one means by “other means of whatever nature” and “derived”.
dsquared 05.13.08 at 4:31 pm
Could someone clarify for me whether the large sections of the Old Testament devoted to holy war and incitement against other religions would be covered by this?
depends on context. Not in and of themselves lying in a bookshop, but if you were to get a gang together with flaming torches to stand outside “G-A-Y” and started reading the nastiest bits of Leviticus through a megaphone, you’d get your collar felt.
mario 05.14.08 at 10:07 pm
Us humans are at best partially rational (as Plato knew, if we’re swapping philosophical allusions), and the defense of rationality requires institutions which exclude some forms of speech. Your appeal to Mill against this line of thought is a bit odd,
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