Five States in the United States Still Have Blasphemy Laws on Books

[MineralMan]

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/penny-starr/state-dept-official-5-states-us-still-have-blasphemy-laws-books

While nobody any longer prosecutes people in our nation for blasphemy, that's a 20th century innovation. Anti-blasphemy laws were once common here, and are still in place in much of the world. So, when people are executed for blasphemy in some other country, we should be too quick to gloat about our own more enlightened approach here.

Here's an old law from pre-revolutionary Massachusetts:



Many will be surprised to learn just how common such criminal laws against blasphemy are and have been. There's a pretty good Wikipedia article that provides some information on the subject at:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law

Are we now too enlightened here? What would the dominionist Christians do if they had control over our government? Do you think we're really safe?

Think about it.

[OnDoutside]

1. All I said to my wife was

This was a meal fit for Jehovah.....

[Iggo]

2. Jehovah! Jehovah! Jehovah!

:middlefinger: :middlefinger:

[struggle4progress]

3. A 300-year-old law comes from a time difficult for any of us to understand; and since it predates

our Constitution by about a century, it is irrelevant to modern US legal practice

The last US imprisonment on blasphemy charges was almost two hundred years ago, before the fourteenth amendment; the last US prosecution, nearly a hundred years ago, was ultimately dropped

Today, there must exist multiple potential defenses to a threatened use of an of the few remaining statutes, perhaps depending on jurisdiction: this might include desuetude, selective prosecution, and violation of a fundamental right, such as freedom of speech or freedom of religion

[Mariana]

4. The thinking behind such laws as the one you posted still exists.

There is a belief among many Christians that God will punish everybody in the community/colony/country/whatever if one person in it makes him angry, and according to the Bible, not much makes him angrier than having his existence denied. Acts like the one you posted were probably thought of as defense against incurring god's wrath against the whole group. Nowadays, of course, it seems God is less bothered about atheism and blasphemy, but gets particularly enraged about same sex marriage and women's rights.