I Thought It Was Stupid At First, Too

Upon hearing that September 30 is International Blasphemy Day, I immediately asked, “why the shit does blasphemy need a day?”

So I looked.  Turns out that the Danish cartoons of Mohammad were first published in Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005; some radical Muslims freaked out and a bunch of people died. 

That was all it took to convince me, so I thought about how best to write this post. The impish part of me wanted to make a list that read something like this:
Fuck Yahweh Fuck Allah Fuck Jesus Fuck Quetzalcoatl Fuck Krishna Fuck Zeus Fuck Thor
But then, I recalled H.L. Mencken’s “graveyard of dead gods,” and John Lennon’s song “God“. They took care of that conceit just fine.

And then I thought about the law. That fucking law. This summer, Ireland outlawed blasphemy. On the Emerald Isle, insulting god – more appropriately, insulting the his puerile followers – is punishable by fines of up to €25,000. That’s $36,380.

My understanding is that gods can typically stick up for themselves with floods or hellfire or rivers of blood or curses, and that they didn’t need a European government to make a buck off of their hurt feelings.

So rather than going on and on about gods being fake, and their followers being deluded, I have decided to end on a high note. I am glad to live in this country at this time, protected from the tyranny of both gods and churches by one of the most powerful and gorgeous sentences ever written:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amen.