A Year In Blasphemy: An Important Post By Popehat That Also Includes The Words "Monkey Crotch"
Popehat's Ken White, a guy who's too funny to be a lawyer and former prosecutor, but is both anyway, has a great post up about recent calls to diminish free speech in this country, basically because we might offend violent Muslims with our blasphemy.

He takes a at how the nations of the world have treated blasphemy during the previous year. An excerpt (links are live at Popehat's site):

I confined my search to posts and articles about accusations of blasphemy. Therefore this list does not cover the the related concept of apostasy, which can lead to your execution (and the imprisonment of even the lawyers defending you) under the competing values of some countries that punish blasphemy. I also didn't pick up stories about people being punished for "sorcery" or "witchcraft" -- usually by decapitation -- even though I see that as part of the culture that demands anti-blasphemy laws. Finally, I didn't address cases involving the far broader category of "hate speech" -- I eschewed prosecutions for speech disrespecting groups in favor of prosecutions for speech disrespecting religions and religious figures.

Without further ado, I give you a year in blasphemy.

October 2011:

In the United States, "Underwear bomber" Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab pleaded guilty on the second day of his trial for attempting to blow up a plane carrying 300 people. He explained that if the United States continues "to persist and promote the blasphemy of Muhammad and the prophets," it risks "a great calamity ... through the hands of the mujahedeen soon."

In Pakistan, a young Christian woman charged with blasphemy after a dispute with Muslim women in her village was beaten in prison by her guard.

Also in Pakistan, a man sentenced to a month in prison for blaspheming the family of Mohammed found his sentence increased to three years by an appellate court.

In Egypt, a man was sentenced to three years at hard labor for mocking Islam on Facebook.

And at the bottom, the upshot -- yay! -- by Ken:

That Was The Year That Was

There you have it -- a year of what Eric Posner might call "other values and the need for order," a year of what Anthea Butler might call incidents of people being "inflamed," a year of what Garrett Epps might say are different understandings of freedom and different views of the "essence" of free speech, a year of the competing "international norms" referred to by Professor Peter Spiro. These are the values to which we, as Americans, are invited to yield.

I think not.

As the Posners and Butlers and Eppses and Spiros of the nation have begun to speak in the wake of Benghazi, others have refuted them. Some have pointed out a truth illustrated by this year of blasphemy: anti-blasphemy laws are a tool for religious majorities to suppress religious minorities, and a mechanism for the more powerful to oppress the relatively powerless, and tend to be used in a lawless manner resembling modern witch hunts. That is the norm we are asked to embrace.

It is right and fit that any nation be prepared to examine its own values, and evaluate competing ones. But I feel no qualms whatsoever at rejecting the competing values embodied in that year of blasphemy. Instead, I will stand by the values embodied in the modern interpretation of the First Amendment. When others advocate that America ease protections for free expression to ease international relations or to protect feelings and sensibilities or to move towards some imagined international consensus or to achieve "progress," I will point to this year and ask: do you truly grasp what values you are promoting, and what values you are abandoning?