Britain says it will scrap blasphemy laws eventually

LONDON (AP) Britain plans eventually to drop 17th century laws on blasphemy and blasphemous libel, but change isn't imminent, the government said Monday.

The Home Office denied a newspaper report that the government hoped to scrap the laws soon in a package of new laws concerning incitements to religious hatred.

''At some point the blasphemy laws will be changed so that they basically become extinct. But that is not seen as a priority now and will not result in imminent legislation,'' a spokeswoman said.

The laws, which penalize anyone who challenges the truth of Christian doctrine or the Bible, were last used successfully in 1979, when activist Mary Whitehouse won a civil libel case against the Gay News over a professor's poem about a homosexual centurion's love for Christ at the Crucifixion.

The last successful criminal case occurred in 1922, when a court upheld as blasphemous a publication that described Jesus entering Jerusalem ''like a circus clown on the back of two donkeys.''