Joel Harrison, Truth, Civility, and Religious Battlegrounds: The Contest Between Religious Vilification Laws and Freedom of Expression, 12 Auckland U. L. Rev. 71 (2006)
This is a strong, impassioned critique of the entire idea of religious vilification laws. Using two prosecutions as examples (Victoria's Catch the Fire Ministries and Ontario's R. v. Harding), Harrison argues that vilification laws inevitably require courts to decide contested questions of religious truth in a manner that is clearly outside of their competency and in a fashion that runs aground of the freedom of religion and expression values that are so central to modern democracies. Further, Harrison argues that the natural result of such vilification laws are that "high" speech (civil, balanced, decorous, academic-style debate) is allowed as "reasonable" or "made in good faith", while "low" speech (raucous, vulgar, polemical) is deemed out of bounds, thus drawing distinctions in allowable speech for what may be nothing more than the class, education, or zealousness of the speaker. Finally, it suggests that prosecutions for religious vilification almost invariably result in the impugned speaker becoming a "martyr" or otherwise far more popular than before.
An excellent article, full of persuasive arguments against vilification laws.
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