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Comment by bitcharmer | Hacker News Reader

The same applies to blasphemy laws IMHO.

That need a bit of nuance IMO. Blasphemy in general doesn't need protecting.

But blasphemy targeting a specific person or institution is effectively hate speech, and there are good reasons to ban it.

Doesn't blasphemy by definition target a non-existent person?

You can craft the implication with clever rhetoric. You can imply that holding the lambasted beliefs would only be done by someone mentally-ill or mislead, maybe even the ideas are so ridiculous that it is likely those purporting to hold such beliefs are disingenuous and have more sinister motives.

Yes, but that decomposes into blasphemy (against a deity) and defamation (against a person). For example, Jehovah probably doesn't exist. That's blasphemy, but it says nothing about those who believe in Jehovah. It's optional to include defamatory swipes at believers.

For comparison, recall that Santa Claus also probably doesn't exist, and examine your emotions to see how you feel about the contrast between Santa Claus and Jehovah.

“Only a hateful racist Nazi-adjacent person could think that the gap between American black and white socioeconomic status is caused by degenerate, pathologically retarded black culture rather than ‘oppression’.“

Am I doing it right?

Blasphemy - the action or offence of speaking sacrilegiously about God or sacred things; profane talk.

It applies strictly to religion, not people.

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