State of Protest

At the end of nearly every Obama speech, Obama fails the prudence test regarding the rule among politicians to avoid saying anything about anybody’s religious faith. Obama isn’t the first, nor will he be the last politician to abuse the idea of church and state separation. However, I can relate to the President — I’ve uttered those words myself on occasion. But if this were just an occasion like that, Obama would have by now offered an apology for his repeated and blatant invocation of the Christian god: “God bless you, and may God bless the United States of America.”¹

So, I must ask this question: Did Obama intend to offend millions of his countrymen who choose not to worship God (or, specifically Obama’s version of god), or did he just not care if they were offended?

Either way, if Obama had invoked the name of Allah, you can be sure that Christians would be lining up to throw their “I’m offended” stones.

Hate speech is hate speech, whether it is aimed at atheists, Christians, straight people, white people, non-white people, men, or women. Whether we should tolerate this speech as a form of free speech, or whether we should prosecute it as hate speech is a different issue. In this case, we must note that “hate speech is speech meant to demean, ridicule, and discredit all who are associated with its target.”²

So, where is the outrage against Obama’s hate speech against atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Wiccans, Pagans, and Hindus (among many others)? We haven’t heard from many of these groups, and we especially haven’t heard from Obama’s spokesman. Obama’s uncorrected cursing is indicative of the persistent asphyxiation by the tireless forces of religio-political convergence. One of atheism’s greatest gifts to America was to keep God out of the Constitution, and every time we let hate speech slip by without consequence, we come closer and closer to settling the new foundation of theocracy.

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In other news, Washington Examiner commentator Mark Tapscott argues that Vice President Biden’s use of “Jesus Christ” as an “expletive” should be considered “hate speech,” and Biden should, at minimum, apologize. State of Protest attempted to reach Jesus Christ for comment, but all we received was a cryptic message: “Yes, No, Wait.” We think that Christ’s prayer-induced voicemail was on an endless loop.

Tapscott asserts that Biden, who used the phrase in an on-the-record interview with the Wall Street Journal, should have, by now, offered an apology for what Tapscott considers hate speech “meant to demean, ridicule and discredit all who are associated with its target.” Tapscott considers the victims to be American Christians, who, he is surprised to note, have not protested or made any demands of Biden.

Of course, one must ask whether Biden actually did “mean” to demean, ridicule, and discredit American Christians. I know when I say “Jesus Christ,” I’m not even thinking of Christians, let alone intending to demean, ridicule, and discredit them. Heck, if I knew merely saying something was the equivalent of all that, I would have just made one single post on this blog stating only “Jesus Christ, Muhammad, God,” and have been done with it.

Tapscott is wrong, and he shouldn’t be trying to induce an artificially created sense of a right not to be offended on behalf of anyone, let alone the most privileged of America’s religious sect.

[Poe disclaimer: I've found I need to add these disclaimers every once in a while to cure Poe Blindness on all sides. Please read the original article by Mark Tapscott and compare it to what I have written above. I hope you're able to see the parallel and how incredibly stupid it is for Tapscott and any others to accuse Biden of hate speech while simultaneously ignoring Biden and other politicians' invocations to the god of the Christians.]

1. See http://obamaspeeches.com/ for endless examples [<]
2. Original article [<]

Tags: Biden, Christ, examiner, free speech, hate speech, Jesus Christ, Obama, right not to be offended

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 8:42 am and is filed under Activism, Atheism, Government, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.