{"id":1182,"date":"2012-11-29T14:08:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-29T14:08:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/?p=1182"},"modified":"2012-11-29T14:08:59","modified_gmt":"2012-11-29T14:08:59","slug":"dutch-approve-move-to-scrap-blasphemy-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/2012\/11\/29\/dutch-approve-move-to-scrap-blasphemy-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Dutch approve move to scrap blasphemy law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Whilst some countries are moving back to the dark ages with INTRODUCING blasphemy laws (an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politics.co.uk\/comment-analysis\/2012\/09\/19\/comment-calls-for-international-blasphemy-law-must-be-r\">international one<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/www.themoscowtimes.com\/news\/article\/legislation-criminalizing-blasphemy-frozen-until-spring\/472111.html\">one in Russia<\/a>, for frick&#8217;s sake, for example), the Dutch do it right, as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/world-europe-20530428\">BBC<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">\n<blockquote>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Dutch authorities have decided to approve a motion abandoning a law under which it is a crime to insult God.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">A majority of parties in parliament said the blasphemy law was no longer relevant in the 21st Century.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The legislation, introduced in the 1930s, has not been invoked in the last half century.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">However, it still remains illegal under Dutch law to be disrespectful to police officers or to insult Queen Beatrix, the country&#8217;s monarch.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">Freedom of speech is a much-cherished right in the liberal and traditionally tolerant Netherlands.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The BBC&#8217;s Anna Holligan, in The Hague, says that there was much debate about the issue after a Dutch court ruled that the far-right anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders should be allowed to criticise Islam, even if his outspoken opinions offended many Muslims.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">In 2008, a coalition government decided against repealing the blasphemy law in order to maintain support from a conservative Christian political party.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Woo hoo! What a silly law.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Whilst some countries are moving back to the dark ages with INTRODUCING blasphemy laws (an international one or one in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[282,283,284,281,285],"class_list":["post-1182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-blasphemy","tag-blasphemy-law","tag-holland","tag-law","tag-the-netherlands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/tippling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}