A year and a half after starting an investigation into the legality of a link on the UK-based Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement's Web site to a graphic poem about a gay Roman soldier's post-crucifixion adoration of Christ's lifeless body, British police have called off the hounds.
"That the presence of a hypertext link leads to 'police knocking at the door,' and an 18-month investigation, is astonishing," Mark Vernon, who created the now-dark site, said in a statement.
It was less of a surprise, however, that the link drew the fury of British fundamentalists.
Twenty-one years ago, the same poem, "The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name," by James Kirkus, rubbed at least one reader of London's Gay News the wrong way. Irate at what she perceived as the poem's vilification of Jesus, citizen Mary Whitehouse invoked a British anti-blasphemy law.
In 1979, the courts found the paper's editor guilty of blasphemous libel and gave him a suspended sentence of nine months' imprisonment. The sentence was overturned on appeal, but the poem, which in one of its more tasteful depictions discusses Christ's dalliances with "foxy Judas, a great kisser," remains illegal and unavailable in England. The case represented the only prosecution under the blasphemy law since 1922.
In the wake of the Crown Prosecution Services' announcement that it had dropped the link investigation, at least one British religious leader expressed his approbation. "It was hard to believe that there was ever a case for prosecution," the Right Reverend Professor Peter Selby, the bishop of Worcester said. "The whole event comes across as yet another example of the continuous harassment of lesbian and gay people."
Besides being criticized as a tool for Britain's anti-gay religious conservatives, the law is also biased against other religions groups, notes Yaman Akdeniz of Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties (UK). The fact that the statute "protects only Christian sensibilities makes it highly controversial," he said. He noted the law was criticized eight years ago when an Islamic conservative attempted to have the law extended to cover Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.
Akdeniz said he believes that the police decision might indicate some incremental advance in the government's understanding of the Web. He has been monitoring the legal landscape for any signs of increased awareness since June, when the Nottinghamshire City Council started trying to squelch the online spread of a 1990 report that criticized the county's investigation into the first British reports of satanic ritual abuse.
Linking first became an issue when three British journalists posted the document. The council immediately forced them to take down their site and remove links to mirrors. Legal threats also scared a Canadian resident into taking down his site. Similar threats to sites in the United States, Australia, and Belgium were ignored, however, and Akdeniz said he hopes the police decision on the Kirkum poem will influence Nottingham prosecutors.
