I believe in Father Christmas but not the Tooth Fairy. Now you can say what you want about that, but if you offend me, you may have to live with the consequences. Freedom of speech is not the same as a right to offend. I think that you misunderstand the difference between the two things. You are free to have the Charlie Hedbo front page on here. I have just returned from my favourite Bangladeshi resturant, their Kashmire Lamb is superb by the way. In my shopping, I had a national newspaper. If that newspaper had the Charlie Hedbo cartoon on it and I took it out and started to read the paper, I am excercising freedom of speech. But if they refused to serve me that is their choice and I would not have been able to complain. As for Father Christmas let me explain. When I dressed up as Father Christmas recently and gave out gifts at a local school, I was Father Christmas, if you had asked my name I would have said "Father Christmas", I was not pretending to be him, I was him. I could never be offended by anyone taking the piss out of me for that belief and the reason is simple. Take the piss and you would only get coal in your stocking.
I agree. However, refusing to serve a customer because they offended you is very, very different from killing said customer because they offended you. The pope's comments about this atrocity are laughable at best and appalling at worst. Why does religion demand respect? It doesn't. 'Religion deserves our fearless disrespect' - Salman Rushdie
They could refuse you on that basis? But a band b owner who, because if his religious beliefs, who refuses to serve a homosexual couple can be taken to court. At least he is if his religion is Christianity.
Yet was it last year ? a hotelier ( a church going christian ?? ) who refused a gay couple a room because such behaviour offended him was vilified by the social media police and taken to court. Can't remember all the details, anyway may point is some can be easily offended and have rights while others have to get a thicker skin and put up with it.
I'm sorry to say this but how would I have known, what they would do, its a risk that I would be taking isn't it and that's the point.
So, the recent terrorist activities were carried out by Muslims. Not Sikhs, Buddhists, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons or Methodists. But Muslims.
Sorry, but what is risky about reading a newspaper which may or may not contain a cartoon in the United Kingdom? Like I said, if they're offended by cartoons of their beloved prophet, they should **** off sharpish to somewhere else where cartoons of the prophet are illegal. Charlie Hebdo broke no laws when they published their cartoons, because like I said, France is a secular republic and blasphemy was abolished on a national level shortly after the revolution.
The difference is that if the gay couples behavior had caused offence, the couple would have been within their rights, but they refused because of their own beliefs, which is wrong. In the restaurant, the owners would be in their rights to be offended by the cartoon and the refusal to serve would be valid. But if they had refused because they thought that I had a copy of the cartoon at home, they would be in the wrong.
So? Religion doesn't make a person bad, a person being bad makes a person bad. Blaming religion is lazy. Plenty of atrocities have happened, caused by people of all sorts of religions over the years, some supposedly in the name of religion, but it's always a twisted and wrong view of that religion. Christianity on balance is in the lead too. If you consider yourself a christian, do you take responsibility for all of those atrocities, including that caused by Breivik? Do you think if there were no religion, there would be no atrocities? Bad people are bad people, regardless and despite their religion.
You can legally read it in a restaurant in the UK, even a Bangladeshi one. They can ask you to leave if they think you've caused offence, but you haven't broken any laws.
Yes, but the jihadis who attacked the Charlie Hebdo headquarters used their religion as justification for the attack. They believed they were avenging their prophet. In this case, it wasn't regardless or despite their religion; it was because of it. The same applies to Breivik, as he used Christianity to justify his attack. The difference between Breivik and the Charlie Hebdo killers is that the former followed a perverted strand of Christianity, yet the jihadis are taking their justification directly from the Quran. Muhammad ordered people who insulted him to be killed in the Quran, yet Jesus taught people to turn the other cheek. That's the difference, and I say this as an atheist who has a strong dislike of all Abrahamic religions.
Then you can go on-line and start a social media campaign, get loads of others on your side and get them in court for discrimination. Ah wait you can't.
Brevil didn't do what he did because Christianity had supposedly been insulted. Christians haven't gone around killing people because they found things about Christ offensive. Remember The Piss Christ? What would Muslims have made of a Piss Mohammed? Or him being portrayed as gay as Christ was? They killed because their Prophet was merely portrayed despite in the past there being depictions of Mohammed in Islamic art. Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot are evidence that you don't need religious motivations to carry out evil acts.
IF the gay couples behaviour caused offence, the god bothering christian hoteliers would for sure have been offened probably disgusted at what was taking place in their hotel, but if they had used that in their defense they would have been called homaphobic. they used their christianity as the defense to be polite. And got called homaphobic anyway. Today the hoteliers have no right to turn the gay couple away.
How can any of this be right? We can show footage of a animal holding a bloodstained meat cleaver 10 minutes after he has butchered a serving British soldier on a British street in full public view but we cannot see the cover of a French magazine. The world has gone insane.
