January 19, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

No, no… the Muslims have a point

The Saudi Arabia-based Organization of Islamic Cooperation is planning to sue the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo following its publication of a front cover depicting the Prophet Mohamed.

“It’s hate speech,” they argue. And they have a point.

You see, in most of Europe,”freedom of speech” is limited. They don’t have a 1st Amendment over there, after all. Certain types of speech are illegal, such as denying the holocaust. Nazi symbols are prohibited. In France, there is a law prohibiting speech that is “defamatory or insulting, or which incites discrimination, hatred, or violence against a person or a group of persons on account of place of origin, ethnicity or lack thereof, nationality, race, specific religion, sex, sexual orientation, or handicap.”

What a terrible law.

But the Muslims have a point. If you are banning hate speech, you need to ban all hate speech. You can’t make it illegal for anyone to say something bad about Jews while allowing Charlie Hedbo to insult Muslims with every issue.

My hope is that this lawsuit will point out the hypocrisy of any law that punishes speech.

We have to protect speech we hate. We have to protect speech that is insulting.

Speech everyone agrees with doesn’t need protecting.

Editorial cartoon: The Political Oscars

January 18, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Man in Dress Says Gay Marriage will Harm his Non-marriage

A man wearing a dress in Italy today declared that even though he has never had sex and is not married, allowing all people to be able to marry the person they love will destroy families.

Citing the supernatural, the man argued with a straight face that if people in love create loving, caring families, that such a thing would cause loving, caring families to be ruined.

Surprisingly, his audience did not laugh him out of the room. Perhaps they were just being kind to the old fellow, dressed as he was in a flowing white gown and a quaint little cap, which he said was required by the aforementioned supernatural being who spoke to him in his head and which no one else could hear or see.

Ironically, in other areas the man was completely coherent and spoke passionately about the evils of unbridled capitalism, the importance of caring for those less fortunate, and how we should all love each other no matter what. Apparently, the magical being who speaks to him said, “Whoa there, kid, let’s not go too far. Sure, love them all but don’t let them love each other if you know what I mean.”

Editorial cartoon: A need for education

January 16, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Porn watching highest among the repressed

A new study has found a very high consumption of porn in sexually-repressed middle eastern countries. According to google searches, of the top eight countries searching for porn online, six are Muslim.

This is actually not surprising. The more repressed a society is about sexuality, the more they will secretly seek it out, despite whatever their religion tells them.

We have seen this in America as well. The state that consumes the most porn is Mormon Utah, followed by most of the southern Christian-dominated states (with the exception of Hawaii for some reason). The people who are most likely to say they support “family values” and complain about seeing sex on TV are the ones most likely to be searching it out on their computers.

More disturbing is seeing subject of the porn search. One of the top search terms in Iran is “pain.” In Pakistan, it’s “animals.” Syria wants porn about incest.

In the middle east, searches for gay sex are prominent in their top ten. In America, states where a majority of residents agreed with the statement “I have old-fashioned values about family and marriage,” bought more porn per capita than states where a majority disagreed. In the states that fought against gay marriage, the search for lesbian porn was high on the list.

Hypocrisy runs rampant. And are we surprised by any of that?

Editorial cartoon: The real candidate

January 14, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Yes, the Mohammad Cover is Insulting. And?

NBC just did a segment on their news about how brave Charlie Hebdo magazine is for putting a drawing of Mohammad on their cover after what happened to them. I couldn’t help but notice that NBC specifically refused to show the cover themselves and only described it.

Here it is, in case you are interested.

They then interviewed French Muslims who were upset about it, calling it insulting. “I don’t go around insulting your religion,” they said. “Why must you insult mine?” Fortunately, none of the ones interviewed showed any sign that they intended to cause harm to the cartoonists.

Is the drawing insulting to Muslims? Of course. Just like the thousands of examples I can find of the way Jesus has been portrayed in comics, movies, cartoons, and comedy bits is insulting to Christians.

Tough.

If your faith is so weak that you can’t handle criticism of it, maybe you should rethink your beliefs.

And, just as an aside, killing people who disagree with your religion isn’t really a very smart way to gain converts. Just saying.

Editorial cartoon: They’re all alike

January 13, 2015 by Michael A. Ventrella

Obama: Always wrong

While I agree with the criticism of Obama that says he should have gone to France, it’s not because Fox News is telling me I should be thinking that way.

As anyone with a brain should realize, Fox News would be criticizing Obama no matter what he did. This meme I found this morning says it best.

As we know by the way they are criticizing Obama because gas prices are too low, it doesn’t matter what Obama does — Fox News will find a way to make it look bad. (His wife once said we should all drink more water to be healthy and they attacked her for saying that. I am not making this up.)