One of the things that makes this country great is that we are free to engage in whatever public discourse that we wish, openly holding even the most unpopular of opinions. That we do so without threat of death is one of the founding virtues of this country.
There has been a recent controversy over whether or not a cross should be placed at the 9/11 memorial and whether this constitutes a First Amendment violation. Personally, I have yet to reach an opinion on the subject and openly confess to not having read much about it. I have come to understand that there are various opinions on the issue and that opinion is divided even amongst secularists. As American citizens, it behoves us to engage in civil public discourse and debate on these sorts of contentious issues.
Nonetheless, I have seen some comments left on the Fox News facebook page condoning an extreme level of violence (including the mass rape, torture, and sometimes crucifixion) of people who either identify as atheists or disagree with the inclusion of the cross as part of the display (I should state that these two groups do not totally overlap; there are many atheists both for and against the inclusion of the cross and some religious people against the inclusion of the cross as well. However, it would appear that those leaving these comments totally fail to differentiate between atheists in general and those who disagree with the placement of the cross.)
In so far as its application to this case, the legal precedents on hate-speech and death threats are clear and unambiguous. It truly is a sad day in this country when self-identified American patriots spew such deleterious and execrable non-sense (click to enlarge):
There has been a recent controversy over whether or not a cross should be placed at the 9/11 memorial and whether this constitutes a First Amendment violation. Personally, I have yet to reach an opinion on the subject and openly confess to not having read much about it. I have come to understand that there are various opinions on the issue and that opinion is divided even amongst secularists. As American citizens, it behoves us to engage in civil public discourse and debate on these sorts of contentious issues.
Nonetheless, I have seen some comments left on the Fox News facebook page condoning an extreme level of violence (including the mass rape, torture, and sometimes crucifixion) of people who either identify as atheists or disagree with the inclusion of the cross as part of the display (I should state that these two groups do not totally overlap; there are many atheists both for and against the inclusion of the cross and some religious people against the inclusion of the cross as well. However, it would appear that those leaving these comments totally fail to differentiate between atheists in general and those who disagree with the placement of the cross.)
In so far as its application to this case, the legal precedents on hate-speech and death threats are clear and unambiguous. It truly is a sad day in this country when self-identified American patriots spew such deleterious and execrable non-sense (click to enlarge):
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