London, England - British Christians on Sunday kicked off three days of eleventh-hour protest, hoping to defeat a government attempt to outlaw religious hatred.
A large rally in London's Hyde Park brought together Christians from numerous denominations, all protesting the controversial Racial and Religious Hatred Bill, which critics say poses a threat to freedom of speech.
Organizers have planned protests as well as prayers at churches across the country, culminating in a political demonstration outside parliament on Tuesday, when the House of Lords is due to debate and vote on the legislation.
The bill passed through the lower House of Commons last July. In the upper chamber, opposition to the measure comes primarily from Conservatives and Liberal Democrat parties, but some lawmakers from the ruling Labor Party could join them.
Outside parliament, the law has drawn opposition from a broad range of groups, from evangelical Christians who worry about its impact on their freedom to share their faith or question the claims of other religions, to actors and comedians who fear it will make mocking religious beliefs a crime.
The bill outlaws any written material or public verbal comments "that are threatening, abusive or insulting [and] likely to stir up racial or religious hatred." The offense carries a jail term of up to seven years.
The Labor government has been trying to push through legislation outlawing racial hatred for several years. In 2002, the bid was shot down by the House of Lords.
Earlier this year another attempt ran out of parliamentary time when Prime Minister Tony Blair called an election. Labor pledged in its campaign manifesto to push ahead if it was successful at the polls.
Existing race-hate laws provide protection to minorities on the basis of ethnicity, not religion. But because Jews and Sikhs are considered as ethnic as well as religious groups, they enjoy legal protection, whereas Muslims from, say, Pakistani background are protected only as a racial group, but not as adherent of a particular religion.
Muslim campaigners say this is unfair. They have pushed strongly for the new law since the 9/11 terror attacks, saying some Muslims face hostility.
But critics argue that the move could worsen, rather than improve, relations between religious communities.
They point to a case in the Australian state of Victoria, where two Christian pastors were prosecuted under a similar law and were found by a legal tribunal to have vilified Muslims at a seminar designed to inform Christians about Islam and its beliefs.
The pastors were ordered to apologize publicly and to agree not to publish or utter the offending comments anywhere in Australia, or on the Internet.
They refused to comply, and are appealing the ruling. Meanwhile, several other complaints filed under the law - including one by a witch against a Christian public official, and another by a convicted pedophile against the Salvation Army - have brought it into further notoriety, and fuelled a growing public campaign to have it scrapped.
Even an Australian Muslim commentator who supported the Victoria law when it was introduced said he had changed his mind because of its "unfortunate consequences."
"It is a strange religion indeed that proclaims its truth without decrying the falsehood of other faiths," said Amir Butler, executive director of he Australian Muslim Public Affairs Committee, in a recent article.
"For the true believer, there is nothing outside his faith except misguidance," he said. "The right to offend is therefore as intrinsic to religion as the right to evangelize."
In Britain, a campaign group called Christians Concern for our Nation said in a statement that a law against stirring up religious hatred sounded good because "all Christians would support measures to prevent those who deliberately create hatred of others on religious grounds."
"However, the way the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill has been written means it is very likely it will have dangerous consequences which the government did not intend it to have," it said.
If the House of Lords approves the bill, either as it stands or with amendments, it will become law. If it rejects it, the government could still force it through via a rarely-used mechanism allowing it to override lawmakers, the Parliament Act.
Don Horrocks of the Evangelical Alliance - one of the groups organizing the protests - said many believed that because the government was so committed to getting the bill passed, it would succeed it getting it into law.
"However, opposition to the bill, even at this late stage, is not futile," he said.
"It is quite possible that the Lords may press for amendments that the government will feel obliged to accept and which could make the bill less destructive."
"It is not often that Christians are stirred into such vocal action," another group among the organizers, the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship, said in a statement.
"But the behavior of the government in bringing forward this law without paying any attention to the substantial objections made, means that it is time for Christians to be robust in defending the right to preach the Gospel."