Secret Service Confiscates Anti-Bush Poster

Former Member

girl with sharp teeth wrote:

Shyboy, why is it that Christians are protesting against the religious hatred bill? Surely they would welcome any legislation that prevented people criticising their beliefs....

i dunno

Former Member

I heard somewhere it's because they believe their religion is superior to others and deserves special treatment (or to put it another way, that Judaism and Islam don't deserve the same level of 'protection' as Christianity in this country).

Former Member

The only difference of opinion I'd really have with Kermit on this is where you draw the line on inciting racial hatred. Clearly this t-shirt didn't, but a national campaign comparing jews to rats, showing them abusing kidnapped wives, explaining how they weren't the same race and stole all the money in the country did incite appalling racial hatred.

Neither is directly insulting an individual but one did play its part in horrific violence against a particular group. I just think there just needs to be some common sense when examining the aims and exposure of anything that could fall under a hatred law.

Former Member

I'd agree with you on that Jim V, but there is an obvious difference between being offensive and being abusive and threatening.

Comparing Jews to vermin is obviously abusive, as it is directly targeted at one group and designed to denigrate them. Wearing a t-shirt saying that David is a Dickhead, for instance, would not be.

If the t-shirt had said "kill all Christians" then I would have had a lot of sympathy with the prosecution. But it didn't, so I don't.