Hundreds of intellectuals and artists are concerned about its implications for freedom of expression, while police, lawyers, and prosecutors consider it too imprecise.
First off, harm isn’t just physical, it can be verbal or non-physical. The only question is what level of non-physical abuse constitutes harm in a legal setting.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there isn’t really anything comparable in value for a non-religious person to how a religious person feels about their religious symbols. The closest example might be national symbols and war memorials, however those are protected by law - people have faced prison for peeing on war memorials, let alone destroying them. This is kind of taken for granted as the way things are, of course a nation is going to protect its own symbols. But just because we don’t agree with a religious person’s values towards a symbol doesn’t somehow make it ok to use those values to abuse them.
Like I say, I don’t think the symbols themselves should be protected, but it isn’t right to antagonise others, and developing a law to establish that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
That’s debateable.
First off, harm isn’t just physical, it can be verbal or non-physical. The only question is what level of non-physical abuse constitutes harm in a legal setting.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, there isn’t really anything comparable in value for a non-religious person to how a religious person feels about their religious symbols. The closest example might be national symbols and war memorials, however those are protected by law - people have faced prison for peeing on war memorials, let alone destroying them. This is kind of taken for granted as the way things are, of course a nation is going to protect its own symbols. But just because we don’t agree with a religious person’s values towards a symbol doesn’t somehow make it ok to use those values to abuse them.
Like I say, I don’t think the symbols themselves should be protected, but it isn’t right to antagonise others, and developing a law to establish that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
This law sounds bad though.