Blasphemy case dismissed: Theatres Act prevents prosecution
December 5th, 2007 • theatre
The BBC reports that the blasphemy case against Jerry Springer: The Opera has been dismissed:
[T]he two senior judges at the High Court said the 1968 Theatres Act prevented any prosecution for blasphemy in relation to public performances of plays - and the 1990 Broadcasting Act prevented any prosecution in relation to broadcasts.
They said it was reasonable to conclude Jerry Springer - The Opera “in context” could not be considered as blasphemous, as it was not aimed at Christianity, but was a parody of the chat show genre.
Those are two separate arguments: first, that the Theatres Act effectively prevents any prosecution for blasphemy for public performances, and secondly, that this particular instance was not in any case blasphemic.
The claim that JS:TO is primarily intended as a parody of the chat show genre is interesting - the judge for previous prosecution in 1977 argued that blasphemy only required words which were scurrilous, abusive or offensive, which vilified Christianity and might lead to a breach of the peace. Whether words were intended to have that effect or not does not appear to have been considered relevant - whereas today’s ruling asserts a greater emphasis on context for meaning.
There’s also the potential question of whether the law now applies differently to the published written word and to broadcast or published performances. While this ruling does appear to confirm the protected status of performance (and the broadcasting of performance) it does seem to confirm that there are still circumstances in which someone could be successfully prosecuted for blasphemy. The ruling also seems to have been made without considering the implications of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights - the right to free expression - which could have led to the complete dismissal of blasphemy as an offence.
However, given that the Crown Prosecution Service seems to be entirely uninterested in prosecuting the offence, we’ll most likely have to wait for another attempted private prosecution for that convention to be tested. Given that context, today’s ruling and the expense of private prosecutions, it’s unlikely that many groups are going to try - making it more likely again that the offence of blasphemy will pass out of use without ever being formerly revoked.
