The upper House of the Dutch parliament has voted to
abolish the country's blasphemy law (Article 147), which has been on the
statute books since 1932.
However, it still remains illegal under Dutch
law to be disrespectful to police officers or to insult Queen Beatrix.
There
had been some doubt about whether the abolition would go through after
the Coalition Government tried to placate smaller religious parties –
the votes of which it needs in order to get its economic policy through.
As
a compromise, another parliamentary decision was approved that will
permit an amendment to another statute in order to outlaw "serious
insult to religion".
Terry Sanderson, president of
the National Secular Society, said: "The blasphemy law in the
Netherlands was more or less a dead duck anyway and hasn't been used for
decades. Courts regarded it as unusable. Introducing something else in
its place could be very much worse. Protecting religion from 'insult'
gives the green light to every extremist in the country to start using
the law to try to restrict free speech."