Happy Fucking Blasphemy Day
To be precise, it is International Blasphemy Rights Day (BRD). How did I not know of this earlier?
Launched by the nonprofit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI) 15 years ago, its purpose is to highlight the ongoing practice of suppressing religious dissent. My guess is that many in the US can easily think of countries where that’s a problem, but they don’t think to include the US among them.
To be fair, the US is hardly in the same league as nations like Pakistan and Iran, where arrests are increasing in frequency and executions for blasphemy were carried out last year, according to an article by CFI’s former president and CEO, Ronald Lindsay. However, the increase in Christian nationalism here is cause for concern. I can’t put it better than Lindsay did, so I’ll quote from his piece:
We should reject the notion that speech about religious claims must be circumscribed in ways in which other forms of expression, such as speech about political claims, are not. Think about this: politicians make claims about economic and social facts to persuade us that certain states of affairs exist (e.g., we have “a robust economy” or “the worst economy since the Depression”). We can and do openly criticize these claims if we think them false. ….
Those who adhere to religious beliefs also make claims about reality and many do so to persuade us of the truth of these claims. Significantly, those who advance these claims do not always confine the implications of these claims to the realm of the supernatural. To the contrary, they use their religious claims as a vehicle to impose their political, legal, and moral views on the rest of us. This is obviously true in many Muslim majority countries, but with the rise of Christian nationalism, it’s also true to some extent here in the United States. So why the hell should we refrain from criticizing religious beliefs when these beliefs are the basis for efforts to shape our societies in ways we find unacceptable?
I researched BRD this morning thinking I’d find it akin to “Talk Like a Pirate Day” and expecting to have a bit of fun. Instead I found a cause I fully support, and an interesting magazine in Free Inquiry, which is even better and much more enduring.