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‘It’s Not Whether We’ll Have Blasphemy Laws but Which Ones’

‘It’s Not Whether We’ll Have Blasphemy Laws but Which Ones’

Message from Kurt: “Intellectual Takeout depends on donors like you to continue bring my work to the public. If you value the preservation of Western values like faith, freedom, family, and life, please make a donation today.”


Pride Month is here—time for Western nations to once again roll out the rainbow flags and treat any associated criticism as blasphemy.

For anyone who thinks I’m being witty and metaphorical with the term blasphemy, I invite them to read the latest headlines.

This just in from NBC News:

“LGBTQ flag burned at California elementary school before Pride event”

The incident occurred the weekend that preceded May 22 at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood, the school district said.

An LGBTQ flag was burned at an elementary school in Southern California this month ahead of a Pride event, and police are investigating the incident as a hate crime, authorities said.

Or this from the New York Post:

“Dallas city council’s warning to workers: Use preferred pronouns or risk being fired”

Employees of the city of Dallas, Texas are on notice that they must use preferred pronouns or risk being fired, according to newly publicized documents. …

“Refusing to respect an employee’s gender identity by intentionally referring to an employee by a name or by pronouns that do not correspond to the employee’s gender identity” is a form of discrimination and harassment the documents warned, adding that employees who fail to comply “may be disciplined up to and including termination.”

Or this from the Daily Mail:

“Why you could soon be jailed for three years for making an offensive Facebook post – here’s what you need to know”

A sweeping law could see Australians jailed for three years for posting what’s deemed ‘offensive’ on Facebook in an attempt to protect minority groups.

Queensland’s Labor government has introduced a bill that would dramatically increase the maximum prison sentence for racist, anti-gay, anti-trans or seriously bigoted statements.

Or this from The Babylon Bee:

Okay, the last one was satire, but you get the point.

A widely accepted definition of blasphemy laws is any law that prohibits insulting, expressing contempt, or showing a lack of reverence toward a deity, a sacred object, or something considered sacred or inviolable.

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that blasphemy laws are back in fashion in the Anglosphere and are, in increasing degrees, being used to persecute dissidents of LGBT ideology and our culture’s new secular religion.

As cultural commentator Josh Daws recently quipped, “It’s not whether we’ll have blasphemy laws but which ones.”

Blasphemy laws were effectively phased out in the United States thanks to the First Amendment. Most of the English-speaking world underwent a similar transformation in the post-Reformation era with blasphemy laws eventually being viewed as medieval and subsequently shelved.

But as legal experts are wont to point out, blasphemy has more recently been secularized. What once operated purely in the sacred realm is now regularly applied to the social.

A Pew Research analysis found that 40 percent of the world’s countries and territories had laws or policies banning blasphemy in 2019.

But there was a blind spot in Pew’s research. Western nations were essentially ignored even though Westerners are losing their jobs and even facing jail time for failing to capitulate to LGBT ideology.

How was this overlooked in the study? When we look at one of the sources Pew used, the problem becomes clear. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) shares the same blind spot. Though its 2020 Blasphemy Legislation Factsheet did list several Western European nations among the 84 countries it identified as having blasphemy provisions, USCIRF failed to apply their definition of blasphemy to state-sanctioned LGBT radicalism.

The factsheet rightly pointed out that blasphemy laws “violate freedom of religion or belief” and “freedom of expression” and that these laws “promote intolerance and discrimination against minorities,” adding, “USCIRF accordingly urges all countries to repeal their blasphemy laws and free those detained or convicted for blasphemy.”

But the secular lens through which the USCIRF views blasphemy seems to mean only identifying it as dissent against organized religion.

Alas, the times have changed. Barbarians have stormed the gates, climbed the city tower, and now fly their flags over an occupied civilization, punishing all who scorn their sacred beliefs.

Any of us who refuse to bend the knee to our new overlords are potential heretics and blasphemers. The freedom to believe what we wish—and criticize those whom we disagree with—is rapidly disappearing. But it is only by bending the knee that we let these secular blasphemy laws tear through the fabric of our culture and civilization.

And our colonizers would do well to remember that Pride comes before a fall.

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons-Ronn, CC BY-SA 4.0

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Kurt Mahlburg
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