TheirStory series 1/3 - Blasphemy

As mentioned on my twitter (@Blog_wolf) I went to a talk which was amazing (aside from the end ) but i did not mention much of that talk. The talk was done by the brilliant David Nash on the subject of Blasphemy , and this has inspired me to start a historical series (What i am calling TheirStory) ! i will be posting 3 articles about 3 sections/ acts of history that showed control or oppression towards women , LGBTQ+ community and maybe mental health.

To start of the series this is Blasphemy and this dates back to the 17th C .

In the talk by David Nash , he talked about how blasphemy came into law as in order of fear of a fearful omnipotent God within the 14th C. Within the 17th C and 18th C it became a way to control people due to the enlightenment era and the start of science vs religion. People then began to rebel and a group called 'the radicals' were formed , they would curse and dance naked in a form of protest, many were women as men was normally used to control men while witchcraft was used to control women, although 3 women were put on trail for blasphemy , these 3 being famous first 'radical females'.

The first is Samantha Wright .

Samantha believed that religion should be a free discussion among the people , rather than for definite, and Christianity only led to war. Much like Mary Daly's belief that religion was for genocide, rape and war against women. Samantha also called the priests 'adulterous sinners' and for this she was put on trail for blasphemy.

Then there was Marrian and Jane Carile

Marrian was actually stopped in court as the judge thought she was arguing 'illigetimate means 'due to being a women, which was proven as much of what she said , a man had said it before as defence. Due to this she was called the 'suppressed defence'. Much like Marrian, Jane was also dismissed in court.

The reason i wanted to share this was because this shows that feminism wasn't an idea that was invented within the 20th c and in fact had been around since the 17th c, probably further back as well, and that there have been 'radical women' or feminists within history that we have not learnt about.

Within the late 19th C and 20th C , the law of Blasphemy was completely forgotten about , until 1977 , the law of blasphemy was back in action as the liberal movement of homosexuality was rising up and many saw this 'gay news' ( as David Nash called it ) as a form of blasphemy! It then became protection of minorities v.s protection of the church.

Sadly the church was seen as more important as the blasphemy law was in place until 2003 in Britain . Until then , the blasphemy law was used to terrorise others on protection of the church. In fact , the only reason it had fallen was because the angelical church argued that the blasphemy law did not protect the church , and that was why it was dropped. Not because it was old fashioned and a law mostly everyone broke and was used to harm minorities.

However, that was just Britain , Ireland did not drop this law until recently and many enforced the law , for example , Stephen Fry was charged on being blasphemous in a documentary called 'Gay burn ' ( i believed it was called ) as he had mentioned ideas such as God and the problem of evil , as an all loving good and all powerful god would surely stop evil and sin. Due to this , a complaint was made , luckily Stephen Fry was not charged as police could not prove it was offensive. ( fun fact!)

Blasphemy became a law to target an imaginary threat and to make it a hate crime , as the monarchy was more important than the people . Blasphemy was not only a way to wield power over people but also to target minorities. Even though this is probably seen as a 'silly law' ( I definitely laughed when i first heard it was a law) it was a way to control people and to oppress.