Pope Opens Mouth; Inserts Foot

[Tonus]

I wear a knit hat in winter (it's cold here) and sometimes a baseball type in Summer.

And a tinfoil hat the rest of the time?

[Brian37]

Look, pope, dude, let's be honest here.
Almost anything someone says will offend someone else.
I could say, "The sky looks nice today," and someone would be offended by that.
Also, if you can't defend your religion, maybe it deserves to be mocked.

I often like to put it like this. What if you had a friend who went around saying "The Yankees won the Superbowl" and truly believed it. You can still like them, but certainly any sane person would think that claim is nuts.

Now with religion, it is not about rights, it is about claims and acts. If all you are doing is saying crap I think is nutty, the only thing I am going to do is call it nutty. Sometimes I am more polite about it and sometimes I am blasphemous about it, it depends upon the context of the situation.

[Minimalist]

We're not talking about violence Ryan, but freedom of speech.

A distinction they do not make, Frods.

[Esquilax]

I disagree about secularists. The ones I've heard have an agenda to deny the identity of theists. They want to remove the right to love God.

So, like, do you have any examples of this? An unambiguous statement to that effect from any secularist at all, perhaps?

Or is this going to be another one of those things where all you'll present (if you present anything at all, I do remember I'm talking to Frodo here!) are examples of secularists doing something with their own stated goals, to which your assertion that they're doing so to remove the right to love god will be in direct contradiction to the reasons they've actually given, either implying that you're telepathic and can divine their real intentions, or that you're making things up?

[Invisible Sky Fairy]

Look, pope, dude, let's be honest here.
Almost anything someone says will offend someone else.
I could say, "The sky looks nice today," and someone would be offended by that.
Also, if you can't defend your religion, maybe it deserves to be mocked.

He doesn't want people to avoid offending anyone in general, though. He just wants religion, and only religion, to have a free pass.

Not true, there are PC atheists that buy the taboo line along with PC theists.

Unfortunately, I'm aware.

[Minimalist]

He just wants religion, and only religion, to have a free pass.

Ah, yes...reminds me of:

Ministers say that they teach charity. This is natural. They live on alms. All beggars teach that others should give.
-- Robert Green Ingersoll

[Cyberman]

You don't censor content. You censor people because of their content. People have certainly been removed because of their bigotry or extreme language.

No we don't and fuck you for saying so. People with bigoted views certainly have been banned, but never for their bigoted views. Take a look through some of the older threads: we've had people advocating for child pornography, racial superiority, 9/11 'truth', genocide, rape, murder (and those last three from some of the theists alone, sometimes the same one). Not all of them have been banned and the ones that were violated specific rules; many of them were given lesser sanctions prior to their hammering.

[rexbeccarox]

You don't censor content. You censor people because of their content. People have certainly been removed because of their bigotry or extreme language.

If that were true, you'd be long gone.

[Drich]

I think once one personally becomes the subject of a very public 'satire' one gets to say 'that's what you get.' When someone else bloodies your nose for the same offense...

Or does freedom of speech only work when speaking against religion?

[Minimalist]

It works best when speaking against your fucking fairy tales, drippy. 'll give you that much.