“Is there a religious way to pump gas, sell groceries, or advertise for a craft store?”
In a new paper, “God and the Profits: Is There Religious Liberty for Money-Makers?,” Mark Rienzi asks the question. (HT)
Read more on For God and For Profit: Do Money-Makers Have Religious Liberty?…
When future historians attempt to narrow down the exact point at which the concept of free speech died in Canada, they’ll likely point to Saskatchewan (Human Rights Commission) v. Whatcott, specifically this sentence:
Truthful statements can be presented in a manner that would meet the definition of hate speech, and not all truthful statements must be free from restriction.
Jesus might have claimed that “the truth will set you free” but in Canada speaking the same truths proclaimed in God’s Word could potentially land you in jail.
“The ruling and the reasoning [behind it] is terrible,” defendant Bill Whatcott told LifeSiteNews.com. “They actually used the concept that truth is not a defense.”
The court ruled that making claims which could be construed as “detesting or vilifying” homosexual behavior is enough to classify speech as “hate speech”:
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During his address to German students yesterday, Secretary of State John Kerry offered a defense of freedom of speech and religion by saying that in the United States “you have a right to be stupid if you want to be.”
“As a country, as a society, we live and breathe the idea of religious freedom and religious tolerance, whatever the religion, and political freedom and political tolerance, whatever the point of view,” Kerry told the students in Berlin, the second stop on his inaugural trip as secretary of state.
“People have sometimes wondered about why our Supreme Court allows one group or another to march in a parade even though it’s the most provocative thing in the world and they carry signs that are an insult to one group or another,” he added.
“The reason is, that’s freedom, freedom of speech. In America you have a right to be stupid – if you want to be,” he said, prompting laughter. “And you have a right to be disconnected to somebody else if you want to be.
“And we tolerate it. We somehow make it through that. Now, I think that’s a virtue. I think that’s something worth fighting for,” he added. “The important thing is to have the tolerance to say, you know, you can have a different point of view.”
No one familiar with John Kerry’s career should be surprised that he is snootily dismissive of Americans who hold views different from his own. And perhaps we should be grateful that a man who could have been president of the United States believes in “tolerating” those of us who stupidly oppose infringements on our religious liberties.
Still, as Ken Blackwell says, instead of talking of “tolerance” and how we “tolerate” ideas we think are stupid, Kerry might have told the young Germans about George Washington’s eloquent Letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport.
Read more on Sec. Kerry Defends Liberties in Germany by Saying Americans Have ‘Right to Be Stupid’…
There are no more Christian churches in Afghanistan — not a single public house of Christian worship is left standing. In other news, NATO success against the Taliban may have been intentionally exaggerated, although we already knew that progress in that country is… slow. It’s no surprise, of course, that the United States hasn’t been able to establish self government-in-a-box in a country where, according to the State Department, religious liberty has declined measurably even in the last year.
