Embarrassing Advocate Proves a Point

Charlie Hebdo, Hate-Speech and the Marianas Trench

When it comes to the rights of free speech the Western world is in a bit of a pickle.  Over the past twenty-five years, free speech rights have been steadily undermined.  “Hate speech” has become a crime, which is to say that any speech a particular statute d’jour just happens to say is “hate speech” is, by definition, a crime. 

Wikipedia provides the following definition:

Hate speech is, outside the law, speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation. 

The article then goes on to review the present state of “hate speech laws” as they apply in various countries around the world.   Regardless of the specifics of the French legal code, in a general (Western) sense the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo has been repeatedly guilty of the crime of hate speech.  We might as well face up to it. Charlie Hebdo scathingly satirised people and cultures for their respective religions.

So, the bottom line is this: Charlie Hebdo was undeniably guilty of the generic crime of “hate speech” (at least as it is currently defined in the general Western legal corpus); those responsible got taken out in an act of vigilante justice;  therefore, the crime of the vigilantes was their “vigilanteism”–taking the law into their own hands–not the injustice of their cause per se. 

Some voices are recognising this uncomfortable reality.  They are applying a justification for the ex-judicial murders using a variant of the the “she got what she deserved” justification for rape.  Here is one example of just such a voice in New Zealand.

The Maori Party distanced itself from former candidate Derek Fox after he controversially blamed the victims of the Paris terror attacks for their deaths.  Mr Fox said on Facebook that the editor of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo had “paid the price” for his “bigotry” and “arrogance”.

He stood by his comments, and said if the magazine had not published gratuitous insults, the victims “would still be alive now”.  “But they didn’t, in fact they ramped it up to sell more mags. Well, they got bitten severely on the bum.”  . . .

Mr Fox ran for the Maori Party in Ikaroa-Rawhiti six years ago but is also a leading Maori journalist, former Maori Television chairman and former mayor of Wairoa.  He wrote on Facebook that Charlie Hebdo editor Stephane Charbonnier was a “bully” who had abused free speech and was now responsible for the deaths of his colleagues.

“The editor of the French magazine has paid the price for his assumption of cultural superiority and arrogance, he was the bully believing he could insult other people’s culture and with impunity and he believed he would be protected in his racism and bigotry by the French state.  Well he was wrong, unfortunately in paying the price for his arrogance he took another 11 people with him.”

Mr Fox continued: “Power cultures all like to use the old chestnut of freedom of speech when they choose to ridicule people who aren’t exactly like them, and mostly they get away with it.  “These guys liked the privilege but didn’t think they’d be caught up in the ramifications – they were wrong.”

Apart from the implicit endorsement of vigilante actions, Mr Fox stands four square upon the modern Western notions of the crime of “hate speech”.   Pillorize Mr Fox all you like, but whilst you dance around the stocks throwing rotten cabbages at him, at least be cognizant that Mr Fox is more in tune with modern Western law a this point than you are.

We cannot have it both ways.  You cannot extend that old forked tongue ridiculing Mr Fox’s comments out of one side of your mouth, and yet support the notions underlying Western “hate-speech” law, out of the other. 

Our position is clear and, we trust, consistent:

• Free speech is virtually an absolute freedom right as far as the State is concerned.  The only limitations historically recognised are those which put people in clear and present danger as a result of speech (crying “fire” in a crowded theatre) and civil actions such as defamation (which generally have a very high burden of proof). 
• Speech can be evil or good.  The tongue can be used for sublime good, or gross evil.  (James 3: 5-18) But few sins are crimes in this life, and rightly so.
• There are many sins of speech, all of which shall be adjudicated by the Judge of the heavens and the earth, on the Last Day.  But criminalising speech in this life always represents an unjust arrogation of power by the State.  It cedes to the State sovereignty over the thoughts and intentions of human beings.
• The sinfulness of some speech does not justify the State criminalising such speech. 
• The state which criminalises human speech has become a tyrannical state which persecutes those who disagree with the accepted state orthodoxy of the day.  For example a state-orthodoxy of our day is that homosexuality is amoral–neither good nor bad–in the same way as ethnicity or trees are amoral. In some Western jurisdictions, if a Christian church or Christians were to proclaim openly that homosexuality is not amoral at all, but a grievous sin against God and man, they would risk indictment and punishment under hate-speech laws.  

Is Mr Fox right?  Not at all, although many who would raise their hands in ridicule and horror at his views are actually stirring their objections in a bowl of thick hypocritical gruel.  These same people also champion “hate-speech” laws when it suits them.

If Charlie Hebdo deserves free speech rights then Western notions of “hate-speech” need to be tossed into the Marianas Trench, once and for all. And that, we believe, would be an exemplary thing to do.

Letter From the UK (About Bert and Ernie)

Bert and Ernie gay marriage cake leaves Christian bakery facing court threat

Christian bakery facing legal action from equality quango for refusing to make cake with Sesame Street characters saying ‘support gay marriage’ 

The Daily Telegraph

By John Bingham, Religious Affairs Editor 

July 07, 2014

A Christian-run bakery is facing legal action from a Government agency for refusing to produce a cake carrying a picture of the Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie and the slogan “support gay marriage”.

Ashers Baking Co, based in Newtownabbey, Northern Ireland, cancelled an order for a novelty cake with a picture of the puppets arm in arm printed onto the icing saying that it went against the directors’ religious beliefs.

They believe that producing the cake with the slogan and the logo of QueerSpace, a gay rights group the would-be customer supports, would amount to endorsing the campaign for the introduction of gay marriage in the province, and go against their religious convictions.

But the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland has now written to the firm claiming that it is breaking the law. A letter signed by the legal office orders the firm to “remedy your illegal discrimination” within seven days or be taken to court by the commission.  It claimed that refusing to print the cake amounted to discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation against the man who placed the order.

It establishes a dangerous precedent about the power of the state over an individual, or business to force them to go against their deeply held beliefs.

The Christian institute, which is supporting the bakery, says it is not discriminatory for managers to refuse to endorse a political campaign.  Gay marriage is not legal in Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK in which it is not on the statute book.

Colin Hart, chief executive of the Christian Institute, said: “This is a sign of things to come exactly as we predicted.  “The Government repeatedly failed to listen to members of the public, lawyers, constitutional experts even its own MPs when they called for safeguards to protect those who back traditional marriage, especially those who work in the public sector.

“Now this nonsense, more usually associated with the public sector, is being applied to the private sector. This means millions of ordinary people who do not agree with gay marriage, face intimidation and the real threat of legal action from the forces of political correctness if they, out of conscience, decline to provide good or services to campaign groups they do not agree with or support.

“It establishes a dangerous precedent about the power of the state over an individual, or business to force them to go against their deeply held beliefs.”  The customer was unable to comment.

 

Douglas Wilson’s Letter From Moscow

Circumlocutions and Faggotré

Posted on Thursday, February 27, 2014  

By Douglas Wilson

Blog and Mablog

Comes now the NFL, on the cusp of bringing in their first openly gay player, and they are also contemplating banning the n-word and the other eff-word at the same time.

The Left is currently attempting quite a hat trick — they are unleashing, simultaneously, their inner wowser, their inner totalitarian, and their inner lust monkey. The results are not pretty — it is a kind of warp spasm of irrational overreach.

This is classic overreach. It was just a matter of weeks ago that we were being told that an abandonment of the Defense of Marriage Act would leave states free to make their own decisions on the matter, yay federalism, and so what happened? Since lo, these many weeks ago, federal judges have now been striking down state laws, one after the other.

Some people might have thought — not me, incidentally — that homosexual activists were going to pursue their agenda with a modicum of judicial restraint, ascending the bench of public opinion in a black robe in order to issue carefully reasoned arguments that would cause thoughtful people everywhere to consider what they had to say. But ten minutes after their initial victories, all the restraint evaporated, by which I mean to say that it all went away. They are now pursuing their agenda by means of a metaphorical parade through the Castro District, wearing nothing but a thong and a sombrero with mangoes and grapes all over it.

They want this all to be part of the great March of Progress — Seneca Falls, Selma, Stonewall, and any other Sibilants they come up with — and they never tire of comparing what they are doing to the Civil Rights Movement, looking around for the Jackie Robinson of sodomy. Now other writers have done a good job pointing out the false comparison — God created black skin and God prohibited this particular vice. So I do not need to develop that thought further. It has been done well already. What I actually want to point out is the similarity in what is going on.

In the pre-civil rights era, segregation was imposed and enforced by the government making laws that prohibited private citizens from undertaking any free market integration on their own. When that folly came crashing down, as it should have, some thought it would be a good corrective to prohibit a private citizen running a public business from making such sinful choices on his own. But this was just the coercive hand of the state from the other direction, a heavy hand that is now being used on evangelical photographers and bakers.

Laws should be used to combat crime, not sin, and certainly not faux-sin. What the legislation in the civil rights era ought to have done was strike down every form of the government’s own discrimination against blacks, and its mandating of discrimination elsewhere, and left it there. If Bubba still wanted to exclude blacks from his ribs joint, then that was Bubba’s problem, and Bubba’s loss. Everybody’s money is the same color.

Bigotry is a real sin, but because the state pretended that it had the expertise to deal with real sin through law, we have now come to the pretty pass of them thinking that they can deal with faux-sin through a law. But all they can do is impose mischief with a law.

Businesses have a clear and obvious right to discriminate based on behavior. No shoes, no shirt, no service works because no shoes and no shirt is a behavior. So is ordering a cake with two grooms on it. So is requiring a black baker to bake a Confederate battle flag cake. So is requiring a graphic designer married to a compulsive gambler to design a billboard for the local casino. So when you, for arbitrary and capricious reasons, define someone’s personal vice as an essential part of their personal identity, and link it with iron bands to their constitutional rights, you are making a royal hash of everything.

It has gotten to risible levels. So now people who strap on pads and who run into each other at full speed for a living are going to be told that if they use particular prohibited words, words that will bruise the petals of the taunted linebacker in question, they will be fined. Got it. Today the linebackers of the NFL, tomorrow . . . the linebackers of the Internet, which I hope would include Mablog.

They will come to me and demand circumlocutions. They will want me to pretend that free speech is still operative, and yet they will insist on the passive voice, and oblique indirection. And so I will do my best and will say that if circumlocutions are required of me, at the end of the day, when all things are considered, in the course of any proffered argument that I might want to advance concerning certain persons who are individual practitioners of that class of actions historically understood as faggotré . . .

“That’s it, bub.” I find myself in court, looking at a $250 fine, and ten counseling sessions.

“How do you plead?”

“Your honor, I will be the first to admit that my French is not the best . . .”

“How do you plead?”

“Not guilty, your honor.”

“And yet you acknowledge that you used the word . . . the word spelled f-a-g-g-o-t-r-é?”

“Yes, your honor. I did use that word . . .”

“How was that not a violation of the ban on the eff-word? The Constitutional Amendment concerning this passed a entire year ago.”

“Your honor, I didn’t know that was the word. I thought the eff-word law was referring to fudgepacker.”

There was a loud clatter as the court reporter fell out of her chair, and some moments before things were all recombobulated.

“You can’t use that word either!”

“Well, which word is the law referring to?”

“You can’t use any eff-words.”

“I see that I can’t be too careful. Can I use fruit?”

The judge said no, but not without a hesitating and possibly illegal glance at the plaintiff.

“Flamboyant?”

“I . . . I don’t think so. Look, that will all be covered in the counseling sessions, where you will almost certainly be going to for the next ten weekends.”

“What about free speech? Can I say free speech?”

“That’s the worst eff-word of all. No, you can’t that. Not any more. All done with that.”

Sorry, judge, but I was not quite done.

I have had to explain this before, but let me conclude by saying it again. It is our duty to be transgressive. Prior to the rise of homosexual activism, I had never once in my life taunted a homosexual because of his vice, whether with word, gesture, or epithet. I was not brought up that way, and I simply wouldn’t do it. But the pretense — and that is what it is, pretense — that these speech codes are being designed to address that particular problem is simply bogus.

And since the rise of “gay pride,” I haven’t taunted victims of vice under these new circumstances either. Why would a preacher of grace taunt victims of sin? What kind of ministry goes around kicking sad people?
So what am I doing then? Consider the difference here:

“When Jesus had lifted up himself, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8:10-11).

“Such is the way of an adulterous woman; She eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wickedness” (Prov. 30:20).

There is no difference in the one sin (adultery), but a huge difference in the other — which is contrition v. the sin of high-handed arrogance in the second example. The grace of God teaches us to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Those who are enslaved by the chains of vice should receive nothing but sympathy and grace from Christians. Nothing but.

But there is a category of sin that is scripturally outside this “no fly zone.” This would be the cluster of sins that can be grouped as pride, arrogance, malice, spite, insolence, blasphemy, haughtiness, and hearts that are fat like grease. Those who rattle their chains, declaring them to be wings, with which they will soar far above our tired old ethical categories, need to be treated like the wizened old Pharisees they are. This is something I am happy to do, and as a preacher of grace, I am required to do by Scripture. Rough treatment for Pharisees is something prescribed by Scripture, not proscribed by it.

So would I ever taunt a slave of a particular sexual sin with a word like faggot? Of course not. But when these Pharisees of Phootball are falling all over themselves to ban the ph-word — and all driven by an insolent spiritual pride that represents our current apostate elites very well — I am more than willing to have some phun over their phailures of imagination when it comes to fallic placement. It’s their pride that makes it so funny.

Some people might think I am just being bad, but I hope to assure them that I am just getting started. Comstockian sodomites are the worst, and when I am finally convicted of renegade free speechery, and ascend the scaffold to be hanged, and I survey the assembled crowd eager to see the First Amendment defended, I will try to make a point of saying so again.

“Jesus said unto them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin: but now ye say, We see; therefore your sin remaineth” (John 9:41).

Letter From the UK (About Thought Police)

Christian arrested for calling homosexuality a ‘sin’ warns of ‘real-life thought police’

A Christian street preacher has been arrested and questioned about his beliefs after saying that he thinks homosexuality is a “sin”.

By John Bingham,
Religious Affairs Editor
Daily Telegraph

11:45AM BST 04 Jul 2013

Tony Miano, 49, a former senior police officer from the US, was held for around six hours, had his fingerprints and DNA taken and was questioned about his faith, after delivering a sermon about “sexual immorality” on a London street.

Mr Miano, who served as a Deputy Sherriff in Los Angeles County, said his experience suggested that the term “thought police” had become a reality in the UK. He said he was amazed that it was now possible “in the country that produced the Magna Carta” for people to be arrested for what they say.

Mr Miano, who was provided with a solicitor by the Christian Legal Centre, was arrested under the controversial clause of the Public Order Act which bans “insulting” words or behaviour. The clause has recently been dropped by the House of Lords after a high-profile free speech campaign but the change has yet to come into force.

The father of three, who took early retirement from the police to become a full-time preacher two years ago, was detained after was preaching outside a shopping centre in Wimbledon, south west London, on Monday.
He was speaking from a passage from Thessalonians which mentions “sexual immorality” and listed homosexuality alongside “fornication” as examples what he believed went against “God’s law”.  A woman out shopping called the police to complain that she was offended, prompting two officers to be dispatched to arrest him.

In a video placed on YouTube he can be seen explaining the changes to Section Five to the officers who said they were not aware of it.  During the subsequent questioning at Wimbledon police station he was asked about his beliefs on what constitutes “sin” and about how he would treat gay people in hypothetical situations.  “As the questioning started it became apparent that the interrogation was about more than the incident that too place in the street but what I believed and how I think,” he said.

“I was being interrogated about my thoughts … that is the basic definition of thought police.”  He said he had arrested many people in his career but never over something they believed.“It surprised me that it is possible for a person to be taken to jail for their thoughts,” he said. “It surprised me that here in the country that produced the Magna Carta that an otherwise law abiding person could loose his freedom because one person was offended by the content of my speech.”

He said he feared Britain and other countries were already on a “slippery slope” towards the erosion of free speech and has written to MPs outlining his experiences.  Andrea Williams, of the Christian legal Centre, said: “We might joke about there being ‘thought police’ but this case shows that it has already become a reality.  “Sadly we are seeing cases like this increasingly often”.

Mr Miano said that after he was questioned he was advised by his solicitor that police had indicated that they expected to charge him with a public order offence.  But after being sent back to his cell for around another hour he was informed that an inspector had decided that no further action would be taken. He was released about midnight.

He added that at one point he was passed a Bible through the food port of his cell, something he said underlined the “ridiculous” situation.  “I believe that every human being should have the right to speak their mind,” he said. “Homosexuals should have the right to free speech, as should atheists, Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus.

“All I’m asking is that we are allowed to be part of the conversation and that society stops treating itself as tolerant when the authorities are intolerant to the Christian point of view.” A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: “Police were called to Wimbledon Hill Road, SW19, at approximately 16.40 on Monday, July 1, following reports of a man speaking through a public address system who was alleged to have made homophobic comments. Officers attended and arrested the man, aged 49, on suspicion of offences under the Public Order Act. He was taken to a south-west London police station and spoken to by officers before being released with no further action later the same day.”

Letter From Oslo About Censorship

Censoring Naomi Riley 

She was fired for having the courage to state the obvious.
By John Fund
May 12, 2012
National Review Online

Oslo— The Oslo Freedom Forum is an annual event sponsored by the New York–based Human Rights Foundation, which brings together dissidents and journalists from all over the world to show that people of good will can promote basic freedoms without an overlay of ideology.

Censorship, both official and self-imposed, is an important theme here. We have heard stories from brave journalists such as Ecuador’s Nicolas Perez and Kosovo’s Jeta Xharra of efforts to silence them for expressing views unpopular with officials or special interests. So it was strange to be here and read that one of my friends and former journalistic colleagues back home in the U.S. has been fired merely for speaking her mind.

Earlier this week, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the trade paper for faculty members and administrators in universities, fired Naomi Schaefer Riley, a paid blogger for its website. Her crime? She had the courage to respond to a Chronicle story called “Black Studies: ‘Swaggering Into the Future,’” which stated that “young black-studies scholars . . . are less consumed than their predecessors with the need to validate the field or explain why they are pursuing doctorates in their discipline.” The article used five Ph.D. candidates as examples of those “rewriting the history of race.” Riley looked at the subject areas of the five proposed dissertations and concluded that they were “obscure at best . . . a collection of left-wing victimization claptrap at worst.” One dissertation dealt with the failure of the natural-childbirth literature to include the experiences of non-white women, another blamed the housing crisis on institutional racism, and still another attacked Thomas Sowell and Clarence Thomas for leading an “assault on the civil-rights legacy that benefited them.”

Many academics I know agree that black-studies programs are often slipshod, academically non-rigorous, and repositories for “grievance” politics. But they won’t say so publicly, for fear of being branded as “racists.” Naomi Riley had the courage to state the obvious. The author of two substantive books on higher education, she has worked with me as an editor on such topics at the Wall Street Journal. She knows her stuff. Certainly in a 500-word blog post she oversimplified, but that’s the nature of the blog that the Chronicle hired her to write for — it consists of quick opinion takes on issues of the day. It is even called “Brainstorm” to make clear it doesn’t publish the definitive word on any issue.

Her lone blog post brought a torrent of criticism, attacks by MSNBC, and finally a petition demanding that the Chronicle “dismiss” her. It was signed by 6,500 professors and graduate students.  At first, the Chronicle defended Riley’s right to speak out and invited people to debate her on the subject. But within days, its editor caved to the mob, fired her, and wrote the following craven apology:

We’ve heard you. And we have taken to heart what you said. We now agree that Ms. Riley’s blog posting did not meet The Chronicle’s basic editorial standards for reporting and fairness in opinion articles.

The publication has not commented on the appropriateness of the other bloggers on its site who ridiculed Riley, engaged in name-calling, or otherwise smeared her. The authors of the petition celebrated their victory with the ironic statement “Viva Civility!”

Though it was far away, this hubbub attracted attention from some of the speakers at the Oslo conference. A couple noted how surprising it is that political correctness in academia is now shutting off debate in the U.S., the country where academics supposedly prize vigorous discussion and vigilantly guard against any sign of McCarthyism.

Nick Cohen is an atheist and former leftist who writes for the Observer and Guardian newspapers in Britain. His most recent book, entitled “You Can’t Read This Book,” examines the new forms of censorship that are emerging in the 21st century. He warned those at the Oslo Freedom Forum that many in the West now “surround taboo subjects with a bodyguard of politically correct humbug. This form of self-censorship has had a profound effect on liberalism.” He noted that “censorship is at its most effective when no one admits that it exists. ‘No one else is complaining, so move along now,’ becomes the mantra.”

While Cohen’s warning was directed at those who stifle debate on Muslim radicalism in Europe and refuse to recognize the failure of officially imposed multiculturalism, he lost no time in telling me how appalled he was at the news of Riley’s firing. “These people calling for her head are the same ones who would scream McCarthyism if someone demanded that academics who defend Iran, excuse terrorism, or accept support from dubious Middle East regimes be called to account,” he told me. “At the same time, they would of course be appalled if someone accepted funding from the Pentagon for a research study.”

James Kirchick, a contributing editor to The New Republic and a former writer-at-large for Radio Free Europe, told me of the Riley case, “This is precisely why I am no longer on the left. It is disturbing to see such bullying.”

For decades, academics have demanded tenure, ostensibly not to secure the effectively lifetime employment it creates but to give them the freedom to voice unpopular opinions and conduct research that challenges conventional thinking. Well, Naomi Riley isn’t an academic and didn’t have tenure at the Chronicle. But she had a right to express her view, have her employer back her up, and not see her reputation attacked. Few, if any, of her critics actually tried to refute her criticisms of black-studies dissertations.

Instead, they sought to shut her up, and in so doing, they sent yet another message that some liberals today have become at least as intolerant of debate as any of the fundamentalists and traditionalists they abhor. The same people who nodded approvingly when Barack Obama criticized people who “cling to guns or religion” during the 2008 campaign are clinging to the destructive view that there should be different academic standards for those in minority-studies programs — and that anyone who speaks out against them should be labeled a racist, a possibly career-ending stain for some people.

The Internet’s reach being what it is, a remarkable number of the 400 people attending the Oslo Freedom Forum this week were fully informed of the Riley firing. It obviously paled in comparison to the brutal actions of dictators and vicious torture of dissidents that were featured during the Forum’s panels. But nonetheless it was embarrassing for me, as an American, to admit to foreigners that our country has slipped into a soft censorship on certain taboo subjects. After Riley’s firing, I have no doubt there will be fewer people brave enough to challenge that censorship.

— John Fund is the national-affairs columnist for NRO.

Two-Faced Facebook

Facebook Hates the Christian Gospel

Social networking behemoth, Facebook has decided to promote homosexuality by classifying opinions and speech critical of homosexuality on Facebook as hate-speech.  As you all know, hate-speech is a big, big no no. It is the latest attempt at censorship and the denial of free speech. It always devolves into an attack upon Christians and Christianity.  The reason is that the Gospel is offensive to the natural man.

The Bible declares that the Unbeliever abides under the wrath of God (John 3:36).  Now to the natural man in his pride and arrogance, that is offensive.  He regards it as “hateful” speech. So, over time, banning “hate-speech” morphs into restrictions upon and persecution of Christians and the Church.
  When Christians declare that the Bible condemns homosexuality as abhorrent, a perversion, an evil–denounced in the same ethical terms as murder, theft, God-cursing and paedophilia–homosexuals and Unbelievers regard that as hate-speech.

Ironically, of course, the Unbeliever cannot argue or prosecute his cause without expressing hate-speech towards Christians and the Church.  Thus when your opponent expresses his views he is denounced as being guilty of hate-speech; when one denounces the “hater” it is regarded as just, and righteous, and fair.  The “hate-speech” construct is simply a device to exert hegemony over others. 

So, Facebook has decided to enter the lists and engage in hateful acts against those who condemn the ethical perversion of homosexuality.  Here is the Daily Caller‘s take on the matter.

Facebook: Criticizing gays no longer allowed, but hoping for Limbaugh’s slow death OK

By Caroline May – The Daily Caller    10/19/2010

At the end of last week Facebook announced that it had allied with the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to remove what it considers anti-gay references from the social networking site.
“This violent, hateful speech has no place in our media – whether it is in print, on the airwaves or online,” GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said in a press release. “Facebook has taken an important first step in making social media a place where anti-gay violence is not allowed. Our community needs to continue to be vigilant and report instances of hateful comments and images across the site to Facebook moderators as well as post messages of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth.”

The site’s “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities” already demands that users to adhere to basic precepts of civility while using Facebook. “You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user. You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence,” the agreement reads. Facebook further reserves the right to remove any content that violates these standards.

But not all threatening language is created equal, apparently. Among Facebook’s many online communities are groups such as, “I Hate Rush Limbaugh,” “I Can’t Wait For Rush Limbaugh to Die,” and “Rush Limbaugh Should Die Slowly.” Hateful? Yes. Threatening? Sure. So why are these groups still on Facebook?

In an email to The Daily Caller, Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes did his best to explain why language criticizing homosexuality is hateful and will be censored, while calls for Rush Limbaugh’s slow death are legitimate and allowed. “Direct statements of hate against particular communities violate our Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and are removed when reported to us,” Noyes wrote. “However, groups that express an opinion on a state, institution, or set of beliefs — even if that opinion is outrageous or offensive to some — do not by themselves violate our policies. When a group created to express an opinion devolves into hate speech, we will remove the hateful comments and may even remove the group itself.”

Got that? Looks like Limbaugh needs his own anti-defamation alliance.