>… the Scottish government recently passed a law making it illegal for fans to attack one another using religious, ethnic, regional or violent historical slurs in songs, chants, Internet postings or even stray remarks at a stadium or pub.
That means that fans of Rangers, a team with roots in Protestant Northern Ireland, cannot sing “The Billy Boys” — a song that refers to Irish blood and to William of Orange, a Protestant hero from the 17th century — for fear of being sent to prison. It means that fans of their mortal enemies, Celtic, cannot sing “Up the ’Ra,” which celebrates the Irish Republican Army and is a throwback to their Roman Catholic Northern Ireland origins.
And it means that no one is allowed to take part in once-common chants in which fans goad their opponents by gleefully rehashing past tragedies like players’ untimely deaths, or, in the case of Rangers, the infamous 1971 incident in which 66 fans were crushed and asphyxiated to death at Ibrox as they rushed for the exits.