What’s really funny is that this very interview has ended up triggering a constitutional referendum in Ireland. After Stephen Fry comment on God someone took a challenge to the courts that he should be prosecuted for blasphemy as that was a constitutional requirement. We’re now voting to remove that from the constitution next month.
Good. Yeah, that shouldn't be in the constitution. Freedom of speech and all that. One man's blasphemy is another man's truth.
It’s a throw back to a different time. The person that took the case was very quick off the mark to publicly highlight the sillyness of it by saying the police needed to arrest Fry.
Yup. All kinds of weird laws on the books.
It's tough to amend a constitution, though, I bet. Does it require a simple majority vote, or something more?
More financially a drain on public expenses than tough from a legal perspective. That’s why it was there was these years I guess.
But yes, once the amendment details are decided by the Supreme Court it’s a majority vote on a ballot. In this case I think they are simply removing the paragraph and not replacing it with anything which is good because putting something into the constitution that’s open to interpretation can have all sorts of unintended consequences.
It was actually a countryman of yours that wrote our constitution after the English finally packed up and left.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Éamon_de_Valera
Interesting. You guys vote on it after the Supreme Court rules. Here, it's the Supreme Court that decides, and that's it.
I read in the link that "De Valera was throughout his life portrayed as a deeply religious man, who in death asked to be buried in a religious habit." I'm guessing that's how the language about blasphemy got in there. That's different than the US version, which emphasizes separation of church and state.
I believe we still have some language in our constitution about no "obscenity." That's another of those words that's hard to define. One man's obscenity is another man's hobby...