ABSTRACT
The refusal by the British Board of Film Classification to grant a certificate for the applicant’s video work Visions of Ecstasy, seen in conjunction with the statutory provisions making it a criminal offence to distribute a video work without this certificate, amounted to an interference by a public authority with the applicant’s right to impart ideas. The impugned restriction was prescribed by law. The aim of the interference as stated by the Board was to protect against the treatment of a religious subject in such a manner as to be calculated to outrage those who had an understanding of, sympathy towards and support for the Christian story and ethic, because of the contemptuous, reviling, insulting, scurrilous or ludicrous tone, style and spirit in which the subject was presented. The aim was the protection of the rights of others. The fact that the law of blasphemy did not treat on an equal footing the different religions practised in the UK did not detract from the legitimacy of the aim pursued in the present context. Whereas there was little scope under A 10(2) for restrictions on political speech or on debate of questions of public interest, a wider margin of appreciation was generally available to the Contracting States when regulating freedom of expression in relation to matters liable to offend intimate personal convictions within the sphere of morals or, especially, religion. There was no uniform European conception of the requirements of the protection of the rights of others in relation to attacks on their religious convictions. The Court’s task was to determine whether the reasons relied on by the national authorities to justify the measures interfering with the applicant’s freedom of expression were relevant and sufficient for the purposes of A 10(2). As regards the content of the law itself, English law of blasphemy did not prohibit the expression, in any form, of views hostile to the Christian religion. As the English courts had indicated, it was the manner in which views were advocated rather than the views themselves which the law sought to control. Bearing in mind the safeguard of the high threshold of profanation embodied in the definition of the offence of blasphemy under the law as well as the State’s margin of appreciation in that area, the reasons given to justify the measures taken could be considered as both relevant and sufficient for the purposes of A 10(2). It was in the nature of video works that once they became available on the market they could, in practice, be copied, lent, rented, sold and viewed in different homes, thereby easily escaping any form of control by the authorities. The measures taken by the authorities amounted to a complete ban on the film’s distribution. However, that was an understandable consequence of the opinion of the competent authorities that the distribution of the video would infringe the criminal law and of the refusal of the applicant to amend or cut out the objectionable sequences. Having reached the conclusion that they did as to the blasphemous content of the film it could not be said that the authorities overstepped their margin of appreciation. The national authorities were entitled to consider that
the impugned measure was justified as being necessary in a democratic society within the meaning of A 10(2). There had therefore been no violation of A 10.
