"The Netherlands is about to abolish its blasphemy law. The Dutch Government has announced that in its place it intends to include religion in its anti-discrimination laws, putting it on a par with other groups.But these replacement proposals could be even worse than the blasphemy law itself. The Mediawatchwatch blog reports:
The intention is to introduce the concept of 'indirect insult' and expand an existing law which protects people on the basis of race, age, disability, and sexual orientation to include protection on the basis of religion or 'conviction'. This means that remarks directed at Islam, Christianity, Buddhism or — depending on your interpretation of 'conviction' — even homeopathy and astrology, could be interpreted as indirect insults to people, and prosecuted as such.
According to a commenter on the original story, this law carries a maximum sentence of 12 months, whereas the original defunct blasphemy law carried a maximum 3 month sentence.
...Jan de Wit, who is a member of the opposition Socialist Party in the Netherlands, said: “The blasphemy law was already a dead letter, but it is was wrong in principle that believers should have more protection than non-believers. Thank goodness this has now come to an end. And anyway, who decides if God feels offended or not?”
Let us hope that Mr de Wit and other defenders of free speech will manage to nip this dreadful new proposal in the bud."
-- Secularism.org
If God is everywhere, then religious/spiritual believers don't need protection from mere words - they're supposedly directed to show compassion to those outside of the fold(s) - just because they don't like that they can't convince everyone is no call for laws, but a sign their "faith" is wilting to:
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