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Self acclaimed liberals often claim that freedom and equality are the two most important values society can have. Indeed, this is evident in their moral systems, and as a liberal democracy (which is distinguished from the ideology) our society generally reflects those values, or at least the profession of them.

These values are supposed to protect the weak and vulnerable, or the unpopular from the majority, yet in modern western society it is exactly when the most unpopular ideas are expressed that the otherwise champions of freedom suspend these values to silence dissent. This, of course, happens with almost every controversial issue, and both conservatives and liberals (and everyone in between) are guilty of it. However, while they all nit-pick the circumstances under which to champion freedom, conservatives are not being hypocrites while doing so. Conservative ideology often places other values above that of freedom and equality, and it makes sense to sacrifice them in order to maintain higher values. Liberal ideology, however, places freedom and equality above all else, so to suppress them in favour of some other benefit, that is being hypocritical.

From XKCD: http://xkcd.com/488/

The SFU Human Rights Office recently sent out an email message dedicated to the accommodation of religious “holy days”. The contents are based on British Columbia’s Human Rights Act, which, much like the Charter of Rights, embeds religious accommodation in the legislative and social framework.

The message specifies that student and staff requests for days off in order to observe holy days as prescribed by their religion must be accommodated without penalty unless it presents undue hardship. This would apply for example if a holy day conflicts with an exam, where a student will not lose grades due to it. The message goes on to say that “it is difficult to imagine, in a University of this size and scope, the point at which we would be justified in saying that undue hardship had been reached”. Verifying whether a claimant actually belongs to the religion they claim is discouraged, and a rule of thumb for acceptable religions is provided as those listed in the interfaith calendar, which the same office makes available. Even more onerous requests are accepted, such as “Orthodox Jews and Seventh Day Adventists, [who] practice their religious faith by worshipping from sundown on Friday until sundown on Saturday”, or “Muslims who fast during Ramadan”.

While it seems everything is being monopolized these days with Microsoft, Apple, MPAA, RIAA, and your local ISPs, etc…the bigotry industry remains a largely competitive market. Apparently some Christians are not content with a Muslim monopoly on bigotry, and a certain sect decided to have their own ridiculously insignificant subject of disproportionate whining, except this time it’s a cracker instead of line drawings.

What happened? Some guy decided to smuggle a cracker from the ceremony, and now he’s getting death threats. From Fox (Full Article):

A UCF student claims he’s getting death threats for messing with something sacred.
Webster Cook says he smuggled a Eucharist, a small bread wafer that to Catholics symbolic of the Body of Christ after a priest blesses it, out of mass, didn’t eat it as he was supposed to do, but instead walked with it.

PZ Meyers wrote an amazing commentary on this:

Came across an interesting cartoon while doing research for a paper:

Some additional information at the source
http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000783.html.