Public vilification of religions should remain a crime, according to a group of experts tasked by the Church to look into the implications of a government proposal to decriminalise such offences.
In a position paper published yesterday, the experts shot down the legal reforms announced last month that would make pornography legal and pave the way for the opening of sex shops.
The experts’ report was endorsed by the Church in Malta.
The views listed in the position paper were outlined by Archbishop Charles J. Scicluna and Gozo Bishop Mario Grech in a meeting with the Prime Minister yesterday.
Chaired by Prof. Fr Emmanuel Agius, the group of experts included former European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello and the dean of the Faculty of Law, Kevin Aquilina.
Justice Minister Owen Bonnici last month announced plans to remove articles 163 and 164 of the Criminal Code that render the vilification of the Roman Catholic and other religions a crime.
Other changes to the Criminal Code seek to allow the display of pornographic material and legalise sex shops. The distribution of pornographic material in public places and exposing children to pornography will remain illegal.
Promoting such a very lucrative ‘exploitative’ industry was not a wise move
In the position paper, the Church argued that vilification of any religion was incompatible with any decent society. Vilifying any other person or group for belonging to a particular religion or the religion itself should not be allowed, the position paper said.
From a purely legalistic perspective, the experts pointed out that article 2 of the Constitution made direct reference to the “Religion of Malta” as one of the most hallowed fundamental civic values.
“It is difficult to see, from a constitutional point of view, how the State will now allow, by law, the vilification of one of the six fundamental values proclaimed by its own Constitution,” the experts said.
While expressing themselves against the removal of vilification provisions, the experts said that there should be no difference between the sanctions on those vilifying the Roman Catholic religion and any other religion or non-belief. This was in line with recent pronouncements of other European constitutional courts.
As for the decriminalisation of pornography, the experts noted they could not see how such a move could be considered as a step forward. They said a society that maximised individual freedom of choice in sexual matters risked falling prey to market forces where profit, rather than human dignity, dictated what should or should not be done.
“The sexual leisure economy and the sex industry transform these human values into a commodity, lust in exchange of profit,” the expert group said. The State’s duty should be to prevent such debasement of human dignity, it argued.
The Church said in its position paper that the licensing of sex shops had nothing to do with “freedom of expression” or the “right to impart information”, indicated as the objectives of the proposed changes. It held that promoting such a very lucrative “exploitative” industry was not a wise move as it would convey the message that money and profit were more important than human beings. Questions were also raised both from a constitutional aspect, where there was a reference to “public morality or decency”, and from what the European Convention on Human Rights establishes as “morals”.
The safeguard of public morality, decency or morals was so fundamental in these supreme laws that it even expressly overrode the enjoyment of all fundamental rights, like those to privacy, freedom of conscience and of worship of religion, among others, the position paper said.
“In a conflict between these fundamental rights, on the one hand, and the protection of public morality or decency on the other, the Constitution and the European Convention expressly mandate that it is the protection of public morality or decency that prevails.”
In its reaction, the government said the changes were intended to update freedom of artistic expression laws and to improve the protection in place for vulnerable sectors of society according to European best practices.
It noted that vilifications laws enacted some 80 years ago needed to be overhauled.
Extreme pornography and revenge porn would become a serious crime and the amendments would not detract the powers vested in the Broadcasting Authority, the government pointed out.