30 September is going to be International Blasphemy Day, and I suspect Donohue will be turning purple while his head twirls around on his neck. It should be entertaining: he’s already sending out press releases to complain.
BLASPHEMY DAY TARGETS CHRISTIANITY
The Center for Inquiry will launch the first International Blasphemy Day on September 30, the anniversary of the 2005 publication of the Danish cartoons that so inflamed Muslims worldwide. Billed as a free speech event designed to oppose such things as a Muslim-sponsored U.N. resolution banning criticism of religion, the day has drawn the support of people like PZ Myers. Myers, a professor at the University of Minnesota known for intentionally desecrating a consecrated Host, says the day was established to “mock and insult religion without fear of murder, violence, and reprisal”; he wants every day to be Blasphemy Day.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue spoke to this event today:
The Center for Inquiry is factually incorrect to say that “Free speech is the foundation on which other liberties rest.” Freedom of conscience is the first liberty, and it is inextricably linked to freedom of religion. Moreover, the whole concept of inalienable rights presupposes a belief in the Creator. In other words, atheists have the right to mock religion because our Christian Founding Fathers afforded them human rights.
They are all such phonies. The stated purpose of Blasphemy Day has nothing to do with any religion but Islam, yet there is not one scheduled event insulting Muslims. We can only guess why. So who have they chosen to mock? You guessed it–Christians.
Artist Dana Ellyn will wander to Washington, D.C. to show her masterpiece, “Jesus Does His Nails,” a portrait of Jesus polishing a nail jammed into his hand. In Los Angeles, there will be a film about a gay molesting priest and another about a boy who is so angry about being sent to bed that he asks God to kill his parents. Oh, yes, American Atheists will conduct “De-Baptisms” in New Jersey.
Nice to know that even the atheists know that Christians can be counted on to react to their antics like good Christians. Which is why there will be no violence.
Ol’ Bill really doesn’t get it. The purpose of the day is to jeer at religion, not to do his dirty work of attacking just one sectarian slice of the whole pie of absurdity. In the US, we’ll tend to poke fun at Christianity more than Islam because it’s Christianity that’s in our faces every day of the year. Islam also lacks a histrionic spokesman like Donohue to make entertaining facial spasms for us.
I’m hoping there will be no violence, but I can’t say the same for those “good Christians.” I get a lot of threats from those people, inflamed by affronted polemicists like Donohue, and I can also count on the Catholic League to pine for opportunities to turn Muslims loose on atheists.
