The Gloves Come Off

Over the last couple of days, I have been really trying to formulate my approach on this subject, and in the process, I have garnered a little bit of popularity from general frivolity. Here comes the test then.

Pamela Geller. A month ago, you could have mentioned her name to me and I couldn’t have told you who she was at all.

“I don’t know, was she a cousin of Ross and Monica from Friends?”

Just a quick intro, for those of you who may not know. She is the co-founder of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, an “extreme-right” political activist organization that has been recently labeled as an anti-Mulsim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (full list of SPLC hate groups here). Full disclosure, I am not going to go down the road of supporting Pam Geller’s point of view, nor am I going to argue against it. It is clearly pointed out on my profile that I am a Christian, but I am not a bigot, racist, or xenophobe. Today I want to talk about the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

As many already know, on May 3, the AFDI held an art contest in Garland, TX, offering a $10,000 prize for the best depiction of Islam’s prophet Muhammed. It should be noted that, according to the rules of the contest, “While engaging in criticism of and mockery of Muhammad and the belief system and ideology that underlies global jihad terrorism, they must not be threatening or libelous or contain any content that is inappropriate, indecent, profane, torturous, slanderous, discriminatory in any way, or that promotes the denial of human rights to any group or person, or otherwise does not comply with the theme and spirit of the Contest.” (full rules) It should also be noted that according to the rules, the picture should not violate any local, state, or federal laws. The contest was to follow the Law of the Land, working within the parameters of the First Amendment.

During this contest, two gunman approached to commit a heinous act of terror against American Citizens expressing their Freedom of Speech in a free country. These artist were not breaking any local, state, or federal laws, but according to Islamic Law, or Sharia, they were committing a blasphemous heresy punishable by death. Specifically, depicting any “Prophet of Allah” in a graven form.

Thanks to brave local law enforcement, these barbaric terrorists were stopped before any serious problems could arise. The terror group, ISIS has taken responsibility for this action, and has not only threatened future attacks, but has put out death threats on Pam Geller.

OK, current events class is over.

So, before we continue, let’s look at the First Amendment specifically:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

According to the Legal Information Institute (LII) out of Cornell University, the Establishment Clause at the start of the Amendment prevents the government from not only creating an official religion of the Nation (i.e. COE or Islam), but it also prevents the government from favoring one religion over another. Let’s stop and talk about the second part of this clause.

According to Sharia, it is unlawful to depict their prophet; however, it is not unlawful to do so in the United States, because of this clause in the First Amendment.

There is a music band out there called Christian Death (lovely name right?). One of their albums is “Sex, Drugs, and Jesus Christ,” and the album cover of this record is a depiction of Jesus Christ wearing a crown of thorns shooting up heroin. As a Christian, this is not only offensive to me, but as functioning part of society, I find it vulgar and tasteless. However, I am not going to go to the record company’s headquarters and gun down a bunch of record execs because of that image. Furthermore, if I did, I would be condemned for infringing the band’s freedom of speech if I did so. I would also be looked at as a murderer and terrorist if the act was successful.

As well I should.

The disturbing societal tone concerning the incident in Garland is how the American citizens who were potential victims of terror are being vilified for hosting the art contest in the first place. They are well within their rights as Americans to host the event, and yet they (not the terrorists) are receiving inflammatory comments, because of how insensitive they are to the Muslim faith.

Huh???? WHAT?

Check out this video…

I can’t even begin to understand the logic behind this. The wave of political correctness, which has permeated our cultural identity, has reached a tipping point so much that we have created a protected class for anything, including certain religious groups. This goes in direct opposition to what the Framers intended for this country, and this is specifically why they put the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.

Both of the television shows of South Park and Family Guy have irreverent depictions of Jesus. Where is the uprising from the media saying that it is insensitive to Christians to have these shows? Moreover, just by Googling the phrase “Jesus cartoons and depictions,” I get tons of blasphemous and irreverent images of Jesus too numerous to count. One in particular shows an image of Jesus kissing what appears to be a Muslim man (presumably Mohammed) on the mouth with the caption “Road to Tolerance.”

Here’s what is funny, only Jesus’ face is shown, with only the back of the head of the other man being shown.

Now, because of the sensitive nature of this subject, I’m not going to show some of the things I Googled. This is because I don’t want to offend any religion, including Christians, with tasteless or crass things that aren’t necessary to prove my point.

Just know that overwhelmingly, it seems to be perfectly acceptable to offend Christian iconography, yet, this art contest is deemed inflammatory, racist, insensitive, and xenophobic to depict Muslim iconography as a political cartoon.

So, on to the second part of the First Amendment, “or abridging free speech.” Cornell’s LII outlines the various ways that abridging, or limiting, free speech is actually permitted (read more here). One of the ways it can is through the term Obscenity, and quite frankly folks, that is what we are talking about here, something that is deemed to be obscene by a group of people.

So, here is what the LII states obscenity judgments are based on:

“Currently, obscenity is evaluated by federal and state courts alike using a tripartite standard established by Miller v. California 413 U.S. 15 (1973). The Miller test for obscenity includes the following criteria: (1) whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, ‘taken as a whole,’ appeals to ‘prurient interest’ (2) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (3) whether the work, ‘taken as a whole,’ lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”

Without getting to “lawyer-esque,” because (a) I am not a lawyer, and (b) because it’s boring, obscenity is not protected free speech. I didn't know that, to be quite honest. However, let’s go back to the rules of the art contest.

The depictions were to adhere to local, state, and federal law, as well as not be… promot(ing) the denial of human rights. If you want to read them again, just scroll up…

Right?

Obscenity is determined by state law. Obscenity has to do with sexual content. Obscenity has no literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

The picture in question, the winner of the contest (which can be viewed here) by this legal definition, was not obscene. Was it political? It most definitely was, but under our laws, not obscene.

Another standard for basing free speech upon is something that is referred to as the Brandenburg Test. This relates to inflammatory speech that is intended to advocate illegal action. The definition falls as such: The standard developed determined that speech advocating the use of force or crime could only be proscribed where two conditions were satisfied: (1) the advocacy is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action,” and (2) the advocacy is also “likely to incite or produce such action.”

Remember, it would be inflammatory if both conditions were satisfied.

Sure, the contest may have been “likely to incite” illegal action, but it was not designed to “directly incite or produce imminent lawless action.” Now, I am not a lawyer, law student, and certainly not a judge. I am an educated person though. I hold two degrees, and would like to consider myself well read. As I read this, I see no violation by this art contest that shows that it was blatantly created to incite the terror attacks.

See…I’m already fading away on all this law speak.

I would really like to explore this topic deeper. When has the protection of a certain religion’s belief system superseded the First Amendment? Tell me.

I would like to hear your comments.

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