Whitehouse v Lemon

Last updated March 16, 2024

Whitehouse v Lemon is a 1977 court case involving the blasphemy law in the United Kingdom. It was the last successful blasphemy trial in the UK.

"The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name"

"The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name" is a poem by James Kirkup. It is written from the viewpoint of a Roman centurion who describes having sex with Jesus after his crucifixion, and also says that Jesus had had sex with other men including disciples, guards, and Pontius Pilate.^[1] The poem itself was considered of low artistic value, both by critics and the author himself.^[2]

In 1976 the poem was published in Gay News , with an accompanying illustration.^[1]^[2]

Prosecution

In early November 1976, Mary Whitehouse obtained a copy of the poem and announced her intention to bring a private prosecution against the magazine. Leave to bring this prosecution was granted on 9 December 1976. The charges named Gay News Ltd and Denis Lemon^[3] as the publishers. A charge against Moore Harness Ltd for distributing was subsequently dropped. The indictment described the offending publication as "a blasphemous libel concerning the Christian religion, namely an obscene poem and illustration vilifying Christ in his life and in his crucifixion".

The Gay News Fighting Fund was set up in December 1976. Judge Alan King-Hamilton QC heard the trial at the Old Bailey on 4 July 1977, with John Mortimer QC and Geoffrey Robertson QC representing the accused and John Smyth representing Mary Whitehouse.

Verdict and sentence

On Monday 11 July, the jury found both defendants guilty. Gay News Ltd was fined £1,000. Denis Lemon was fined £500 and sentenced to nine months' imprisonment suspended. It had been "touch and go", said the judge, whether he would actually send Denis Lemon to jail.

Mary Whitehouse's costs of £7,763 were ordered to be paid four-fifths by Gay News Ltd and one-fifth by Lemon.

Appeals

Gay News Ltd and Denis Lemon appealed against conviction and sentence. On 17 March 1978, the Court of Appeal quashed Denis Lemon's suspended prison sentence but upheld the convictions on the basis that the law of blasphemy had been developed before mens rea , literally, a "guilty mind", became an essential element of a crime.

Gay News readers voted by a majority of 20 to 1 in favour of appealing to the House of Lords. The Law Lords heard the appeal against conviction and delivered their judgment on 21 February 1979.

At issue was whether or not the offence of blasphemous libel required specific intent of committing such a blasphemy. By a majority of 3 to 2, the Lords concluded that intention was not required. Lord Scarman was of the opinion that blasphemy laws should cover all religions and not just Christianity and sought strict liability for those who "cause grave offence to the religious feelings of some of their fellow citizens or are such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to read them".^[4] The appeal was lost.

The European Commission of Human Rights declared the case inadmissible to be heard by the European Court of Human Rights on 7 May 1982. The £26,435 raised by the Gay News Fighting Fund through benefits and donations from the gay community and others, including a £500 donation from Monty Python, was sufficient to cover the costs of the trial and appeals.

Abolition of blasphemous libel as an offence

Blasphemous libel ceased to be a common law offence in England and Wales with the passing of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.

Later appearances of the poem

In 1996, the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement was investigated after publishing a hyperlink to the Queer Resources Directory, an American website, that included a copy of the poem. In April 1997 the police declared that they did not intend to prosecute.^[5] The investigation was commented on by civil liberties groups as raising issues about whether linking constituted legally publication. However, it did not produce a legal precedent on the question as it did not go to court.^[6]

In 2002, a deliberate and well-publicised public repeat reading of the poem took place on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, London, without any incidents. Kirkup criticized the politicizing of his poem.^[7]^[2]

Related Research Articles

Blasphemy is an insult that shows contempt, disrespect or lack of reverence concerning a deity, an object considered sacred or something considered inviolable. Some religions regard blasphemy as a crime, including insulting the Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, speaking the "sacred name" in Judaism, and the "eternal sin" in Christianity. It was also a crime under English common law.

Constance Mary Whitehouse was a British teacher and conservative activist. She campaigned against social liberalism and the mainstream British media, both of which she accused of encouraging a more permissive society. She was the founder and first president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, through which she led a longstanding campaign against the BBC. A hard-line social conservative, she was termed a reactionary by her socially liberal opponents. Her motivation derived from her Christian beliefs, her aversion to the rapid social and political changes in British society of the 1960s, and her work as a teacher of sex education.

Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech or organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition.

Laws prohibiting blasphemy and blasphemous libel in the United Kingdom date back to the medieval times as common law and in some special cases as enacted legislation. The common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel were formally abolished in England and Wales in 2008 and Scotland in 2021. Equivalent laws remain in Northern Ireland.

Operation Spanner was a police investigation into same-sex male sadomasochism across the United Kingdom in the late 1980s. The investigation, led by the Obscene Publications Squad of the Metropolitan Police, began in 1987 and ran for three years, during which approximately 100 gay and bisexual men were questioned by police.

Leslie George Scarman, Baron Scarman, was an English judge and barrister, who served as a Law Lord until his retirement in 1986.

Gay News was a fortnightly newspaper in the United Kingdom founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper's height, circulation was 18,000 to 19,000 copies.

Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. Today, it is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland, but has been abolished in England and Wales, and repealed in Canada and New Zealand. It is a form of criminal libel that consists of the publication of material which exposes the Christian religion to scurrility, vilification, ridicule, and contempt, with material that must have the tendency to shock and outrage the feelings of Christians.

James Harold Kirkup, FRSL was an English poet, translator and travel writer. He wrote over 45 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays. He wrote under many pen-names including James Falconer, Aditya Jha, Jun Honda, Andrew James, Taeko Kawai, Felix Liston, Edward Raeburn, and Ivy B. Summerforest. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.

The right to freedom of religion in the United Kingdom is provided for in all three constituent legal systems, by devolved, national, European, and international law and treaty. Four constituent nations compose the United Kingdom, resulting in an inconsistent religious character, and there is no state church for the whole kingdom.

The traditional understanding of Christian churches and theologians is that Jesus did not marry and remained celibate until his death. That has not prevented speculation about alternative and fringe theories of his sexuality. The Gospels and the New Testament reveal little on the subject.

In Nigeria, Sharia has been instituted as a main body of civil and criminal law in twelve Muslim-majority states since 1999, when then-Zamfara State governor Ahmad Sani Yerima began the push for the institution of Sharia at the state level of government. A "declaration of full Sharia law" was made in the twelve states in that year, and the states created Islamic legal institutions such as a Sharia Commission, and Zakat Commission, and a hisbah, i.e. "a group expected to promote Islamic virtue, whilst discouraging vice". According to some critics, the adoption of Sharia law violates Article 10 of the Nigerian constitution guaranteeing religious freedom.

A blasphemy law is a law prohibiting blasphemy, which is the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence to a deity, or sacred objects, or toward something considered sacred or inviolable. According to Pew Research Center, about a quarter of the world's countries and territories (26%) had anti-blasphemy laws or policies as of 2014.

Blasphemy is not a criminal offence under Australian federal law, but the de jure situation varies at state and territory level; it is currently not enforced in any Australian jurisdiction. The offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel in English common law were carried over to the Australian colonies and "received" into state law following Federation in 1901. The common-law offences have been abolished totally in Queensland and Western Australia, when those jurisdictions adopted criminal codes that superseded the common law. In South Australia, Victoria, and the Northern Territory the situation is ambiguous, as the local criminal codes do not mention blasphemy but also did not specifically abolish the common-law offences. In New South Wales and Tasmania, the criminal codes do include an offence of blasphemy or blasphemous libel, but the relevant sections are not enforced and generally regarded as obsolete.

In Ireland, "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter", defamatory of any religion, was a criminal offence until 17 January 2020. It was a requirement of the 1937 Constitution until removed after a 2018 referendum. The common law offence of blasphemous libel, applicable only to Christianity and last prosecuted in 1855, was believed to fulfil the constitutional requirement until a 1999 ruling that it was incompatible with the constitution's guarantee of religious equality. The Defamation Act 2009 included a provision intended to fill the lacuna while being "virtually impossible" to enforce, and no prosecution was made under it. The 2009 statute increased controversy, with proponents of freedom of speech and freedom of religion arguing for amending the constitution. After the 2018 constitutional amendment, a separate bill to repeal the 2009 provision and residual references to blasphemy was enacted in 2019 by the Oireachtas (parliament) and came into force in 2020. The Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989, which includes religion among the characteristics protected from incitement to hatred, remains in force.

The publishing of any "blasphemous libel" was a crime in New Zealand under Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 which allowed for imprisonment for up to one year. However, Section 123 protected all publications and opinions on any religious subject expressed in good faith and decent language against prosecution and specified that prosecution may proceed only with the leave of the attorney-general.

Myer Alan Barry King-Hamilton QC was a British barrister and judge who was best known for hearing numerous high-profile cases at the Old Bailey during the 1960s and 1970s. These included the trial of Janie Jones in 1974 and the 1977 blasphemous libel trial against Gay News and its editor, Denis Lemon, for publishing "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name", a poem by James Kirkup.

Sir Andrew George Lindsay Nicol is a retired judge of the High Court of England and Wales.

Shafqat Emmanuel and Shagufta Kausar are a Pakistani Christian couple who in 2014 were convicted of blasphemy by a Pakistani court, receiving a sentence of death by hanging. In 2021, the convictions were overturned.

Peter William Burton was an English journalist, publisher, editor and author, considered "the Godfather of gay journalism."

References

Cited as Whitehouse v Lemon [1979] 2 WLR 281; or Whitehouse v Gay News Ltd [1979] AC 617, HL
Gay News Ltd. and Lemon v United Kingdom [Eur Comm HR] 5 EHRR 123 (1982), App. No. 8710/79.

1 2 "The gay poem that broke blasphemy laws". Pink News. Pink News. 10 January 2008. Archived from the original on 3 June 2012. Retrieved 25 February 2015.
1 2 3 "James Kirkup (obituary)". The Telegraph. 12 May 2009.
↑ 1945 – 1994
↑ R v Lemon [1979] AC 617, 664
↑ Vernon, Mark (21 July 1997). "A clear case of poetic injustice". The Independent.
↑ "Link to explicit poem deemed OK". CNet. 21 July 1997.
↑ "Erotic poem challenges blasphemy law" . The Telegraph. 11 July 2002. Retrieved 21 December 2022.