Dispatches From the Culture Wars
Rick Wiles, ever vigilant against the imaginary dragons against whom he so bravely fights, now says that the FBI is only involved in investigating the beheading in Oklahoma so they can prosecute people like him who mention that the murderer was a convert to Islam.
Matt Barber got on a Tea Party Unity conference call last week and claimed that America is on the verge of having hate speech laws that will throw Christians in prison. In fact, Obama used his criticism of Donald Sterling as a trial run in his fiendish plot to throw the Christian into FEMA camps.
The Worldnetdaily has its typically bizarre headline on this article: Blue state has moxy to mock God. But the article is about the sign put up by the FFRF in Springfield, Illinois. So it has nothing to do with a state. And the sign doesn’t “mock God.” To be fair, while the subject and predicate are both wrong, the words “has” and “to” do appear to be used accurately. The rest of the article is mostly nonsense. The sign in question says:
The Canadian parliament may repeal at least a portion of that country’s hate speech laws, which I’ve been a staunch critic of for years. The Huffington Post has a pretty badly slanted article that focuses on the fact that white supremacists support the repeal. Here’s what the legislation would do:
Russia is another country that has laws against “inciting hatred” and those laws are now being used against — ironically — the Andrei Sakharov Museum, named after the famed Soviet dissident. They’re going after an art exhibit that included making fun of Jesus.
One painting depicted Jesus Christ as Mickey Mouse, another as Vladimir Lenin. The 2007 exhibit was part of an effort to fight censorship of the arts, but the Russian Orthodox Church was horrified.
Now, after a 14-month trial, the two prominent Moscow art curators who put on the show are facing the prospect of three years in prison.
The Worldnutdaily has its typically hysterical article wherein they deliberately conflate criticism with persecution and even prosecution. They take an email sent to an anti-gay group criticizing them and turn it into an entirely mythical federal prosecution for hate speech — when there are no federal laws against hate speech whatsoever.
A campaign has been launched in Montgomery County, Md., to classify the speech of advocates for people who choose to leave the homosexual lifestyle as “hate speech,” which then could be banned under a new law signed last year by President Obama.
“Hate speech is unwelcome in Montgomery County Public Schools,” said an e-mail to the offices of Regina Griggs, national director of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays & Gays, known as PFOX. “I would like to ask that you immediately cease distribution of your flyers at our public schools.
“We intend to pursue every method possible to protest your actions if you choose to continue,” the message warned.
Another one of those classic Worldnutdaily headlines:
Obama ripped for plan to bring back ‘inquisitions’
OMG, Obama is bringing back the Inquisition? He’s going to start putting people on the rack and torturing them if they don’t convert to Christianity or accept the authority of the One True Church? I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear that neither the headline nor the article has more than a tenuous connection to the real world.
(more…)
Mark Tapscott has a profoundly silly column in the Washington Examiner throwing a temper tantrum over Vice President Joe Biden using the phrase “Jesus Christ” in an insufficiently reverent manner in an interview. Here’s what Biden actually said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal about Iran getting nuclear weapons:
“I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, ‘Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?’ Moscow, not Washington.”
The timing of this, given my interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali the other day, is almost too perfect. Geert Wilders, the Dutch member of parliament who made a film comparing statements in the Quran to Nazism, will face hate speech charges in his home country. This idiotic statement from the ruling jumps out:
“In a democratic system, hate speech is considered so serious that it is in the general interest to… draw a clear line,” the court in Amsterdam said.
Spain has given us a perfect example of why hate speech laws should be abolished. Who decides what is and is not hate speech? Is it hate speech to condemn homosexuality as a sin? Or is it hate speech to condemn religious leaders for condemning homosexuality? Both? Neither? The organizers of a gay pride event are being charged with hate speech in Spain for attacking the Catholic Church:
A “pro-family” activist group in Spain has filed charges against the organisers of the 2008 Madrid Gay Pride march.
HazteOir accused them of making hateful statements against Catholics, pro-family organisations, and those politicians opposed to the Spanish Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE).
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In