July 8, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — The justice minister of Malta, Owen Bonnici, announced today that shops selling pornographic material will become legal following reforms to the Catholic country's Criminal Code.
The reforms will also remove the ban on the vilification of the Roman Catholic Church, and any other, religion.
In the announcement Bonnici said his reforms demonstrate that the government is not the moral guardian of adults and will put “Malta on the forefront of artistic freedom.”
“Adults are to be treated as adults,” Bonnici said Wednesday morning. “These reforms aim to incentivise freedom of artistic expression while protecting the vulnerable.”
Just unveiled new law which puts Malta on the forefront of artistic freedom. This is the progressive society we want to live in.
— Owen Bonnici (@OwenBonnici) July 8, 2015
The Malta Independent reported that the protection of the vulnerable will be in the form of signs outside the sex shops which read: “Warning. Persons passing beyond this notice will find material on display which they may consider indecent. No admittance to persons under 18 years of age.”
The articles in the Criminal Code (163 and 164) that made it a crime to vilify religion “by words, gestures, written matter, whether printed or not, or pictures or by some other visible means,” as well as the sanction against disrupting a religious service, are now gone.
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However, it will still be a crime under the Criminal Code to disrupt public order in the process of disrupting or vilifying a religious service.
“This is the progressive society we want to live in,” Minister Bonnici wrote on Twitter.