In yet another example of religious barbarism crushing freedom of speech and thought, a man in Saudi Arabia is facing the death penalty for setting up a website for people to discuss their views on religion. Human Rights Watch has the story and is calling for the man’s release:
Category Archive: Free Speech
Dec 30 2012
Homeopath Demands Arrest, Deportation of Morgan
There’s already more than enough rank stupidity being thrown around about deporting Piers Morgan for making pro-gun control statements on his show, but now Natural News, a bugnutty homeopathy site run by the deranged Mike Adams, is demanding that he be arrested for sedition!
Dec 24 2012
College Admin Loses First Amendment Appeal
You may remember the case of Crystal Dixon, a human resources administrator at the University of Toledo who was fired for writing an anti-gay op-ed column for a local newspaper. She filed a First Amendment lawsuit, lost at the district court level and now the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld that ruling. You …
Dec 14 2012
AFA Invents an Imprisoned Pastor
Buster Wilson of the American Family Association delivered one of his classic spook stories to convince his ignorant and credulous readers that we evil liberals want to lock up all the Christians. In the process, he lied about a case in Canada that I’ve written about before:
Dec 13 2012
Judge Rules ‘Choose Life’ Plates Unconstitutional
A federal judge has ruled that North Carolina can’t offer a license plate that says “Choose Life” without also allowing a pro-choice license plate option for drivers in that state. The state legislature voted for a bill to authorize such plates, but rejected at least six attempts to authorize offering a pro-choice plate.
Dec 12 2012
An Interview With Sanal Edamaruku
Pallavi Polanki has an interview in FirstPost with Sanal Edarmaruku, the head of Rationalist International who has had to flee his home country of India due to blasphemy charges being filed against him by the Catholic Church there. Check out this kind of arrogance:
Dec 07 2012
Netherlands Almost Ready to Remove Blasphemy Laws
The Dutch parliament is considering a bill that would remove that nation’s blasphemy laws, which have not been used in decades, from the books. With one exception — an insult aimed at the queen of that country would still be punishable by law.
Dec 06 2012
Farris Threatens to Sue LGBT Blog at College
If you don’t know who Michael Farris is, you should. He’s one of the most powerful people in the Christian right. He’s also the chancellor of Patrick Henry College, a charm school for wingnuts. And he got so upset about a group of students anonymously starting a pro-gay blog about the school that he threatened …
Nov 27 2012
Russian Court Dismisses Madonna Lawsuit
You may remember that a few months ago an anti-gay group in Russia filed a lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages from Madonna after the singer made comments in favor of gay rights during a concert in that country. A Russian court has now dismissed that lawsuit after an apparently hilarious hearing:
Nov 15 2012
Volokh on Muslims and Civil Liberties
Eugene Volokh is one of the top First Amendment scholars in the country and he was asked to testify at a hearing for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about the civil liberties environment for Muslims and Arabs in America after 9/11. He has been a strong advocate for the equal rights of Muslims, strongly …
Nov 15 2012
Secular Blasphemy in Germany
I’ve been an outspoken critic of laws that criminalize Holocaust denial in many countries around the world, but it appears that those laws are even worse than I thought. In Germany, you apparently can’t even compare something to the Holocaust without being censored by the government. Volokh quotes a German court ruling that was recently …
Nov 14 2012
The Injustice of Secular Blasphemy Laws
Eugene Volokh, one of the top experts on free speech in the country, has been using the term “secular blasphemy” to describe laws that prohibit free speech on the basis of some social or cultural taboo that is not explicitly religious. Here’s a great example.
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