Inciting Religious Hatred

The Paleojudaica blog has an interesting post about a proposed law in the United Kingdom that would outlaw "inciting religious hatred."  Apparently, “religious hatred” is defined as “hatred against a group of people defined by their religious beliefs or lack of religious belief”.  A government website also reports that:

The proposed and existing offences both carry a high threshold in order to protect freedom of speech. Words, behaviour or material used must be threatening, abusive or insulting and must either be intended to or likely to stir up hatred. The hatred must be aimed at people who are members of that group, not ideologies. Hatred is a strong term; which goes beyond ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt, anger or offence. A further safeguard in the legislation is that a person who does not intend to stir up hatred is not guilty of an offence if they did not know that their words, behaviour, written material, recording or programmes were threatening, abusive or insulting. Furthermore the offences do not apply to anything that takes place in one’s own home.

Like the post's author, I'm enough of a free-speech near-absolutist to be inclined -- almost reflexively -- to oppose laws like the proposed one.  Still, I could be wrong.  What do others think?  What should we think?

Rick