Lord Coleridge CJ directed a jury on a trial for blasphemous libel: ‘the mere denial of the truth of the Christian religion or of the Scriptures is not enough per se to constitute a writing a blasphemous libel . . But indecent and offensive attacks on Christianity or the Scriptures, or sacred persons or objects, calculated to outrage the feelings of the general body of the community, do constitute the offence of blasphemy.’ However, even the fundamentals of religion could be attacked ‘if the decencies of controversy are observed’.
. . And: ‘The law visits not the honest errors, but the malice of mankind. wilful intention to pervert, insult, and mislead others, by means of licentious and contumelious abuse applied to sacred subjects, or by wilful misrepresentations or artful sophistry, calculated to mislead the ignorant and unwary, is the criterion and test of guilt. A malicious and mischievous intention, or what is equivalent to such an intention, in law, as well as moral, – a state of apathy and indifference to the interests of society, – is the broad boundary between right and wrong.’
Judges:
Lord Coleridge CJ
Citations:
(1883) 15 Cox CC 231
Jurisdiction:
England and Wales
Cited by:
Cited – Whitehouse v Lemon; Whitehouse v Gay News Ltd CA 1979
The defendants, editors and publisher respectively of ‘Gay News’ had been accused of blasphemous libel. The magazine had a poem entitled ‘The love that dare not Speak its Name’. it is not a necessary part of the offence that there should be an . .
Cited – Green, Regina (on the Application of) v The City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Thoday, Thompson Admn 5-Dec-2007
The claimant appealed from the refusal by the magistrate to issue summonses for the prosecution for blashemous libel of the Director General of the BBC and the producers of a show entitled ‘Jerry Springer – The Opera.’
Held: The gist of the . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Crime, Ecclesiastical
Updated: 14 May 2022; Ref: scu.261810