As Carlos passed counter protesters, one man ripped a picture of Alex from the memorial. Carlos leaped on the man to retrieve the picture. It was at that point that approximately five others all began to attack Carlos by kicking him in the head, legs, stomach and back.

some people make me sick…

oooh, great printable invites.

the HRC/LOGO format was superb, and explored issues beyond the terrible soundbytes we’re accustomed to. the commentary on it may be standard, but it is a very worthwhile watch. listening intently to the candidates changed my views on several of them (and dramatically upped my respect for a few).

richardson, unfortunately, stepped on several landmines, evading questions by focusing on his otherwise (very admirable) record. this is a shame, since he is a pretty impressive candidate. (and my current favorite, but only slightly).

i’d never heard of pat condell before today, but i have a ton of respect for him.

(from Idealizing Fantasy Bodies, at the Iris Network)

i hate to admit it, but i play a fair amount of world of warcraft. i’m not ashamed that i enjoy the game – it really is a great way to connect with friends across the country – its just… i feel like i fell in with the wrong crowd. wow gamers are notoriously sexist. and homophobic (not only by player behavior – even game design and blizzard’s treatment of LBGT guilds plays a role).

i find it ironic that fantasy is often a conservative genre, playing with narrow concepts of history and tradition. history, to me, is a robust place, filled with forgotten possibilities. even supposedly simple traditions are the product of diversity that was pruned as a narrow approach won out. it is honestly a shame that these carryover stereotypes go unchallenged.

take the bodies of characters in world of warcraft. it is fairly clear that the designers chose to make models that fit ‘idealized’ human forms. bulky men. hourglass women. even the non-human fantasy races follow these roles – completely ignoring the diversity of body forms between males and females in the animal kingdom, or even the varying gender roles of men and women in human history.

if even our dreams and fantasies are so constrained, what hope is there for our lives?

a gang of super-wealthy businessmen plotted to overthrow FDR with half a million veterans and “adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression”. (more on wikipedia – under “the business plot” – it even appeared in History Today, an american coup d’etat)

… i’d only recently heard about the assasination attempt by Giuseppe Zangara, who got Anton Cermak instead. (talk about an interesting counterfactual history, if he’d shot FDR instead)

imagine if they taught this in schools. it gives a completely different gloss on the nature of our government, and the dangers it is exposed to. i imagine support for bush’s overreach and the bogus “money = speech” argument would have have dramatically less support.

(horray mercury rising)
(oh wow, you can even see it on video)

In short: An individual was arrested and charged with a hate crime for flushing a Koran in a toilet on the campus of Pace University [AP].

Ah, good old Pace. He clearly deserves some sort of punishment, that building has a ridiculous shortage of toilets (they were rather sketch to begin with – or maybe that is just NYC in July…).

Vandalism is the offense (and perhaps theft – as noted below). That certainly needs to be addressed. The question is whether a particular intent – hatred – should be considered an aggravating factor to the crime. [Note that nobody knows the intent, we're all just, perhaps unfairly, speculating.]

With hate crime legislation, hate is added as a factor to redress the harm done to (an implicitly minority) community, the hostile environment the action fosters. As commenters note, “it’s the affect it has on that worshipper that makes it a hate crime.”

This is one of many reasons hate crime legislation is so dangerous.

Sticks and stones aren’t the only things that hurt. Speech hurts. Consider the Piss Christ debate. Believers frequently advanced the argument that this NEA-funded art fostered a hostile atmosphere toward Christianity. As the Justice said, “It is often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.”

Fine. Christians aren’t really an oppressed minority, even if they sometimes claim to be one. But artistic expression has run up against interpretations of Islam before. “A Koran with a Buddha shape carved into it (a reference to the Bamiyan Buddhas destroyed by the Taliban)” was removed from Roq la Rue. Or even political expression, when a gay artist burned an antique Koran (worth $60k) to protest its homophobic content. Perhaps both speakers were hate-free. But suppose otherwise. Do the intolerant really deserve fewer speech rights than the rest of us? (Mill would say no – the best way to show them error is to debate them freely.) PZ Meyers could certainly be construed to ‘hate’ religion. Does that limit his speech?

I really like books, and I really like community, but I am an even biger supporter of the pointed criticism of ideas. There is a long and proud tradition of treating undue sanctimony with disrespectful insolence. It is, perhaps, even central to debates about the place of religion in society. The pomp holiness of the devout is best countered with a little irreverence. But a free debate cannot have legal limits enforced by one side.

Attacking beliefs through criticism (even creative responses) is legitimate, necessary, and hopefully protected speech. At least it should be.

Note 1: This isn’t exactly a stellar example for a hate crime. As a result, several commenters – including Shakespeare’s Sister – make the rhetorical connection to cross burning. But cross burning is a clear threat of violence, deeply rooted in a bloody and terrible history. This makes it an extreme case, and removes it from the category of otherwise protected speech. Anti-Muslim sentiment doesn’t have that sort of connection to Quran flushing.

Note 2: Shakespeare’s Sister says it was stolen – Deep Thoughts suggests it was his. No, wait, apparently there is a photo of him taking it out of the Muslim student center. Vandalism makes sense there. But that is irrelevant to hate, I think, and touches more on the underlying crime. Stealing a flag and burning it doesn’t suddenly demote the act from expression. It just makes it theft.

Note 3: “There is no law, including hate crime laws, that would prevent you from doing what you suggest in private.” But speech, of course, has to be public. Sure, I can criticize the President in the privacy of my own home and not offend anyone. But I imagine the First Amendment had a more robust, democratic, purpose. Ditto for public debates about religions of all sorts.  It is precisely the impact it has on the community that justifies its protection.

it is wonderful to finally be able to talk and gossip about the last harry potter. staying up all night to finish the book was still the right idea, i just wish a few others had waited up with me. that said, it seems i’m late, and all thats to be said has been said. reading other blogs, i’ve come to the conclusion that the epilogue was really worth it.

more importantly, i had to laugh out loud:

Jane Austen would have LOVED the fact that Hermione and Ron only kiss after he has expressed his sincere concern over the house-elves—thus demonstrating the completion of his moral education, and therefore his worthiness of Hermione’s love. I love it too.