There seems to be a tantalizing double standard around campus.
When the Danish papers and the Oregon Commentator published the cartoons satirizing (and in a couple of instances directly insulting) Mohammed and the Muslim faith, there was a massive cry from people, all the way to the creators of South Park, that the cartoons should be published under the auspices of free speech. These people argued that even though the cartoons were, as some people called “a slap in the face of Islam,” the cartoonists and writers had a right to free speech that included taking on the sacred. This argument was even further expanded by some to insult those who were fighting to get the cartoons stopped, even for altruistic reasons, were somehow trying to destroy free speech.
However, as we look to the latest campus controversy with The Insurgent, the opposite seems to be said. The Christian-focused cartoons are a “slap in the face” of Christianity, they are an insult to Christians everywhere and The Insurgent should be punished or removed. The art is a persecution, it’s insensitive and just plain mean.
What’s wrong with this picture? We can’t have free speech only be a one-way street. Just as people have seen the ACLU defend pornography and Nazi rallies, the doctrine of free speech means that speech that you don’t like is just as valid as that you do. We can’t insult Muslims with a batch of cartoons only to quail away when artists turn their pens onto Christianity. To do so would mean that the controversy around the Muslim cartoons was not about free speech, but just plain old hatred towards Islam.
I don’t like speech that insults others. I wish we lived in a world where everyone was treated equally and fairly and where nobody was hurt because of others’ words. But I know that’s not going to happen. I argued against the Mohammed cartoons because I felt that they were being used as an insult, not to have them censored. To be honest, I don’t like the stuff The Insurgent did, either. But I cannot stand by and watch them get censored while other speech is allowed to go free even though it’s just as inflammatory.

Joe Hatfield is a History Major at the University