“These are views that they do not believe she should have. These are views that they think is hate speech because she holds them,” said Tóibín, who voiced concern about “cancel culture” or “censorship culture.”
Another lawmaker critical of the bill, Deputy Paul Murphy of the People Before Profit–Solidarity party coalition, warned its provisions could “create a chilling effect on legitimate criticisms of the Catholic Church.”
“This could even potentially discourage people from criticizing the Church’s promotion of exactly the kind of sexism, homophobia, and transphobia that the bill seeks to address,” he said in debate in November. “It could also potentially be used to level bogus charges of antisemitism and antisemitic hate speech against pro-Palestinian activists.”
On April 26, Murphy proposed an amendment to remove protections for religious discourse.
“A certain portion of hate speech, particularly homophobic, transphobic, or sexist hate speech in society is sometimes put forward under the guise of being a contribution to religious discourse. Fundamentally, that should not be a defense,” Murphy said.
Deputy James Browne, minister of state at the Justice Department, responded that religious freedom and practice are protected under the Irish Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights.
“Accordingly, religion is considered to merit a similar level of protection as literary, artistic, political, scientific, or academic discourse,” Browne said. “Only the most severe types of speech that constitute incitement to violence or hatred would be criminalized under the bill. Discussion of protected characteristics, including criticism of matters relating to protected characteristics, is not a crime unless it crosses the line into incitement to violence or hatred. This remains a high bar and is not something into which people would just fall.”
Murphy’s amendment failed to pass.
Kevin J. Jones is a senior staff writer with Catholic News Agency. He was a recipient of a 2014 Catholic Relief Services' Egan Journalism Fellowship.