JULY 25 — The news about a law designed to make sure it’s illegal to insult anyone’s faith troubles me.

Anti-discrimination laws are fine, but making it illegal to make any sort of slight is taking things too far.

The trouble is “insulting” a religion could be interpreted in so many ways. Even someone saying they preferred one to the other could be taken as a slight. Abuse of such legislation would be easy and honestly, don’t our courts have better things to do?

While I advocate legislation against hate speech, jailing someone for honestly saying they dislike a religion or aspects of it is untenable.

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The law wasn’t meant to protect our feelings.

When we create this bubble where everyone is afraid to speak about “too sensitive” issues we create division where there should be dialogue,

At the very least, when someone insults a faith, there should be space for people to respond, though not in a violent way.

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Out there in the real world, there is no such thing as all-encompassing laws that force people into being polite.

Do we really need to police how people act, to the point where we make insults a crime?

This is not helping anyone and instead takes the notion of a “nanny state” to the extreme.

Insults are normal; insults are fine. We really need to learn how to deal with them and train the populace to grow thicker skins and to respond with grace, instead of using the law to teach people manners.

This over-sensitivity when it comes to religion has consequences — no one deserves to die for insulting your religion. Your religion isn’t threatened. Your religion has no feelings anyone can hurt.

Anyhow, if God’s feelings were hurt, I am sure he’s preparing either a place in hell or a well-timed lightning bolt to incinerate you from existence.

We don’t need new laws to create tolerance; we just need to learn to be better human beings without needing to be threatened with jail. That’s something we can manage without the government or courts getting involved.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.