A Christian activist group has lost its battle in Britain’s High Court to prosecute a BBC executive and a producer under the nation’s blasphemy laws for televising “Jerry Springer–The Opera” nearly three years ago.
The two-judge court on Wednesday upheld a lower court ruling that the musical, based on Jerry Springer’s racy U.S. talk show, could not be considered blasphemous since it did not target Christianity, but rather attacked the talk-show program genre itself.
“The play had been performed regularly in major theaters in London for a period of nearly two years without sign of it undermining society or occasioning civil strife or unrest,” the High Court said in its ruling.
The tragedy is that this lawsuit ever had a snowball’s chance of winning. It should have been laughed out of court inside of five minutes.