Legal defense fund set up for Stanislav Shmulevich (Pace University)

LGF and Hot Air have information up on Pace, Koran flushing incident and the legal defense being established for the Koran-dunking Stanislav Shmulevich.

While I think Shmulevich’s actions were disrespectful (just as I thought tax-funded works of “art” like Piss Christ, Madonna & Child II, and The Holy Virgin Mary were disrespectful), I have a lot (A LOT!) of trouble with the notion that this fellow flushing a copy of the Koran amounts to a “hate crime.”

Whether some people like it or not, free speech is very often offensive speech. Just because you don’t like, doesn’t mean you get to send someone to jail over it. Just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean you get to trample the Constitution to ban it. (In fact one of the people most closely involved with the drafting of the Constitution and our Bill of Rights went so far as to redact the Holy Bible — removing any mention of the deity of Jesus Christ and republishing it as his own version of the Bible. Many people consider what Jefferson did as, at the very least, offensive. However, the notion of prosecuting Jefferson for something like that would be seen as nonsensical because he had a right to do it.)

As this YouTube video (from Hot Air) describes, it appears that the politically correct and/or the emasculated in our law enforcement community and at Pace University have caved in to the irrational and hypersensitive demands of CAIR.

LGF also has the actual complaint against Shmulevich posted here, so people will have accurate information on what he was charged with. From what I have seen, if the university wants to go after Shmulevich for destruction of private property (they apparently owned the books in question), that’s fine. Other than that, the hate crime charge appears concocted out of a politically correct fear of offending this group of Muslim students, and exacting revenge on Shmulevich for disrespecting their holy texts, nothing more.