Freedom of (offensive) speech

Prize-winning British author Philip Pullman has attracted outrage with his book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Naturally, for Pullman gives us a Mary who bears twins, one of whom is persuaded by a dark stranger to play the role of Judas so that a wealthy institutional church can be founded and sustained. All of which entertains and instructs in a way that befits his atheism, as reviewer Christopher Howse explains.

The nature of his tale does not detract from his defense of freedom of speech any more than family minister and street preacher Shawn Holes' attack on homosexuality changes the free speech implications of his arrest in Scotland:

[H/T: Andrew Sullivan]

Stimulus act anti-Religious in its impact on institutions of higher education?

Red meat for the religious right, that claim came recently from former Arkansas Gov. and Southern Baptist pastor Mike Huckabee.

Tobin Grant of Southern Illinois University — Carbondale, writes:

In the final version of the stimulus bill, funds for higher education are included as part of the block grants to states. Not only does the bill state that these funds may be used to renovate facilities at private institutions, it also states that governors may not consider "the type or mission" of a college or university. The states must consider religious institutions along with public and other private colleges and universities.

The funds may not be used for facilities where admission is charged and the buildings must be religiously neutral in purpose. Thus neither football stadia nor chapels my be renovated using stimulus funds. No one should plan to renovate a department of divinity with them. Yet college and university student religious life is unaffected, as it has been in the half century that current law, as included in the stimulus bill, has been applied.

The restriction is on individual facilities, however. Funds may go to support religiously neutral structures at religiously affiliated colleges and universities.

Grant, who is coauthor of Expression vs. Equality: The Politics of Campaign Finance Reform and dozens of academic articles on politics and religion, explains in Christianity Today:

In the nearly four decades since [the 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court decision] Tilton v. Richardson, the constitutionality of federal funding for projects and programs at religious institutions has been upheld in the courts and supported by Congress. In the last Supreme Court case to consider public funds and religion at colleges, Rosenberger v. University of Virginia in 1995, the court found that as long as the purpose of a facility is religiously neutral, students have the right to use that facility for religious purposes, even at public universities. If a college allows students to use a conference room for any social function, it must allow them to use it even as a place to pray and study the Bible together.

Thus inclusion in the stimulus bill of the language over which Huckabee and others made such a fuss, ensured that there is no adverse impact on religion.

The entire uproar over that language was a canard.

Huckabee's 'anti-religious' slander of the stimulus bill [Updated]

The red meat claim from Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is that the stimulus bill is anti-religious.

Because it contains 46-year-old boilerplate [.pdf] prohibitions against spending the money for unconstitutionally religious purposes, as Steve Benen correctly explains.

What a delicious falsehood to toss out and lard with the throwaway line, "You would think the ACLU drafted this bill."

"What can we do?" Huck asks.

Since he's willing to try to whip us into a irrational frenzy over nothing, ignore him.

It is passing unlikely that a former governor was ignorant of this issue when he started laying it on us, but if so, it's almost as bad to fail that egregiously to do one's homework.

Addendum:

Hucabee's frenzy manufacturing began as a fund-raising ploy.

Last week, he sent an email calling Obama's stimulus package "a real stink bomb," and recommending his supporters donate to his political action committee in order to eventually "change the math" in Congress.

Or fuel his unfulfilled presidential aspirations?