We came, we saw, we conquered. Well, that is what it felt like for those of us who defied the blasphemy law and walked away free men and women.

Peter Tatchell and George Melly on the steps of St Martin

On 11 July, on the steps of St Martin-in-the-Field church, Trafalgar Square, myself and 10 other humanists read and distributed James Kirkup's banned blasphemous poem, 'The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name'. No one was arrested. The police did not even take our names and addresses. The blasphemy law is, it seems, a dead letter. This begs an obvious question. If the authorities are not prepared to enforce the law, isn't it time they abolished it?

Our act of civil disobedience, in defiance of state censorship, was timed to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the conviction of the newspaper Gay News and its editor Denis Lemon. On 11 July 1977, following a private prosecution by Mary Whitehouse, they were found guilty of blasphemous libel for publishing Kirkup's poem, in which a Roman centurion describes having sex with the dead body of Christ.

Why should the Christian religion be given privileged protection against criticism and dissent? No other institution enjoys such sweeping powers to suppress the expression of opinions and ideas. In the name of free speech, the right to protest and artistic freedom, the offence of blasphemy should be abolished.

Advance media coverage of the poem reading resulted in a rowdy counter-protest by Christian fundamentalists, including members of MediaWatch (the successor to Mary Whitehouse's National Viewers & Listeners Association). They tried to drown us out with shouted insults and abuse, denouncing us as "blasphemers" and "sodomites". This was the ugly face of militant Christianity: intolerant, bigoted and hateful. We tolerated their protest, but they were not prepared to let us exercise our right to free speech.

Against this background of raucous heckling and barracking, each of us recited one verse from the 11-verse poem. Holding placards with the slogans "End Religious Privilege" and "Defend Free Speech", we also distributed copies of the poem to passers-by. Most seemed perplexed that a piece of poetry could be illegal. All looked thoroughly alarmed by the menacing, fanatical zealotry of the God-Squad.

Our reading was followed by speeches from the poet Alan Brownjohn and the news editor of Gay News at the time of its conviction in 1977, Andrew Lumsden. I concluded the protest by challenging the authorities: "arrest us or abolish the blasphemy law." The forces of law and order did nothing.

This was a significant victory for free speech and the right to protest. It means the blasphemy law is, effectively, defunct. At least I think it is. Although the police took no action against us on the day, they did film the protest and forwarded their film to the Director of Public Prosecutions.

A State prosecution is unlikely, but this does not prevent a private prosecution. If that happened, it would involve the trial of all those who read and distributed the poem, plus the larger group of people who published it, including Iain Banks, Edward Bond, AC Grayling, Ludovic Kennedy, Alice Mahon MP, John Mortimer QC, Philip Pullman, Claire Rayner and Geoffrey Robertson QC. Also in the dock would be the British Humanist Association, National Secular Society, Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association, New Humanist and the Rationalist Press Association. They all signed themselves as publishers of Kirkup's poem.

In the meantime, Parliament will soon have an opportunity to get rid of the blasphemy law. Lord Avebury's Religious Offences Bill proposes its abolition.

And not before time. The offence of blasphemy originates in ecclesiastical law, and was originally tried by the Ecclesiastical Courts and the Star Chamber. Following their abolition, the Court of King's Bench declared it a common law offence. In 1676, the courts ruled that Christianity was "parcel of the laws of England; and therefore to reproach the Christian religion is to speak in subversion of the law." Judges punished any attack on the religion of the State (the Church of England) as a crime against the State itself. Blasphemy continued to be criminalized as subversion until the nineteenth century.

In 1985, the Law Commission recommended its abolition. Meanwhile, the outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey, wants to retain the offence of blasphemy and to extend it to other religions. The battle lines are drawn. What will Parliament decide? Theocracy or democracy?