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MineralMan

(146,288 posts)
5. All of those blasphemy laws are
Thu Sep 27, 2012, 03:54 PM
Sep 2012

officially unconstitutional. Whether or not a state repeals them, they have no effect any longer.

Because of the First Amendment's protection of free speech and religious exercise from federal interference, and the Fourteenth Amendment's extension of those protections against state regulation, the United States and its constituent state governments may not prosecute blasphemous speech or religious insults and may not allow civil actions on those grounds. In Joseph Burstyn, Inc. v. Wilson, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that New York could not enforce a censorship law against filmmakers whose films contained "sacrilegious" content. The opinion of the Court, by Justice Clark, stated that:

"from the standpoint of freedom of speech and the press, it is enough to point out that the state has no legitimate interest in protecting any or all religions from views distasteful to them which is sufficient to justify prior restraints upon the expression of those views. It is not the business of government in our nation to suppress real or imagined attacks upon a particular religious doctrine, whether they appear in publications, speeches, or motion pictures."[75]


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