Law

A couple years back, while putting up some posters on the Ryerson campus for an atheist event, two of my atheist comrades got into some trouble.

No sooner than they had put up a poster on a bulletin board, someone came by and ripped it down. Now if you have been around the secularism movement very long, you know this happens quite a lot. But on this occasion it was seen by our two intrepid atheists, and one of these atheist men decided to confront the ripper and ask him why he did it. This led to an altercation that ended in one of the atheists being head-butted by one of the rippers.

This was reported to the police, but the cops denied it fit the bill as a ‘hate crime’, and without much in the way of witnesses or even suspects, that was pretty much the end of it legally. Essentially, it involved university aged males, and so it was written off as a minor incident of ‘boys will be boys’. Did the atheist community rise up in support? Nope. Not really, at all. Many agreed it was probably a case of provocation and testosterone.

Me, I just wish I had been there… That said, I’m not sure that mine, is a ‘good’ reaction to have. Boys will be boys.

If you call someone’s mother a whore, make fun of someone’s fashion sense, or insult them in some other personal way, often as not, it can end in violence. Having been involved in numerous altercations in my own life, I can say that most violent incidences are not reported, and of those that are, the standard for proving ‘who started it’ is pretty difficult. Unless it involves significant amounts of blood or injury(this will get the cops attention), unless it has multiple witnesses or actual video footage… invariably the common reaction is ‘boys will be boys’. Get over it, move on.

I think this is why I find this American case so fascinating… atheism, activism, provocation, allegations of violence… CNN does a decent job with the details:

District Judge Mark Martin dismissed the case, saying it was one person’s word against another’s, and that there was no other evidence or eyewitness testimony to prove that Elbayomy had harassed or touched the alleged victim.

This is the part that doesn’t surprise me. The youtube video, which I posted earlier really doesn’t show what happened, and lacking any witnesses… I can see this not getting past the ‘reasonable doubt’ hurdle. People are still presumed innocent. I think its fair to say, we all know what probably happened, at least to some degree, but you need more than that in court.

What makes me wonder though… is that the judge doesn’t seem to understand the law in other areas.

“You have that right, but you’re way outside your bounds of First Amendment rights,” Martin said, according to a recording Perce made of the court hearing. “I think our forefathers intended that we use the First Amendment so that we can speak our mind, not to piss off other people and other cultures, which is what you did.”

Evil little atheist… but wait.

“That’s greatly disturbing to people that believe in free speech,” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley. “You can say things that are hurtful to others. We hope that you don’t, but you most certainly can be protected. People like Thomas Paine spent his entire life ticking off people across the colonies.”

What’s even more disturbing…

The judge went on to point out that in many Muslim countries, ridiculing Mohammed could warrant the death penalty under Islamic law.

Now, neither the ‘islamic law’ comment, nor the ‘first amendment’ nonsense would probably change the outcome of the case, but I think this is still something that needs to be criticized. While I don’t agree with being needlessly offensive, atheists don’t need to do much of anything to get religious people angry, after all, I will however, defend your ‘right’ to be a dick, even if I’m happy to criticize you for being one.

Pro-tip: When you are doing something provocative or protesty, get someone else to hold the camera. Youtube works better that way.