Are they hoping that the defense will be confused and overwhelmed by the number of ways this charge is unconstitutional or something?
Hey, it’s only fair – Jesus has been putting his meat into the mouths of millions every Sunday for ages.
Seems a pretty damn straightforward case for the defense there.
I assume this occurred in one of the new theocracies?
Yup. 'Merika.
(Get me out of here.)
The government deciding which objects are sacred. What could go wrong?
Love INC's mission statement:
To mobilize local churches to transform lives and communities in the Name of Christ.I assume that means transform communities into theocracies...
Edit: I looked at the Bedford chapter’s newsletter, etc – just a group of people who help people get to appointments, supply furniture/etc to those who need it, even have a bunch of volunteers who repair stuff for folks (if you can get past this part: We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God. We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. )
This is the sort of thing that deserves a weekend grounding from the parents.
Not more prison time than your average priest gets for raping children.
who wants to live in a world where you can’t have simulated oral sex with a statue of jesus?
I can see having a law that specifically adds a stiffer penalty for damaging or destroying an item that has religious/historical importance above and beyond the value of the ordinary object itself. But the item was not harmed in this act. The people that respect the statue as special aren’t deprived of use of it or out money to repair it. If it was sacred because it’s a likeness representative of their important religious figure, it still totally is. If it’s sacred because it’s been specially blessed by their religious leader or their congregation, it can be easily re-blessed. This kid posed in an inappropriate way with it. No real harm done. Yeah, the kid’s parents totally need to teach him a lesson about why that’s not cool, but there’s no crime there.
What a waste of time and taxpayer money.
I’m thinking they might be trying to discourage this from becoming a regular thing for people to do with the statue – in which case they seem to be weirdly ignorant of the Streisand effect.
It is a piece of tacky lawn art. Unless authorities also respond similarly for garden gnome abductions and R-rated configurations of lawn-critters this is much ado about nothing.
I think if I was the kid, I’d go for the maximum trolling defense on this one and dispute that he couldn’t have possibly known that the figure was supposed to be Jesus. I’d claim there was no religious association attempting to be made from the act. According to the Christian history from their own sacred texts, Jesus would have been a Middle Eastern guy from about 2000 years ago. He wouldn’t have been a white guy with European features and long flowing Rennaisance hair. There’s no way that he should have expected that that was a statue of anything but a rock star in a barber shop smock.
One more…
Nobody pretends to Fuck the Jesus!
Dammit! Hit my daily upper limit for ‘likes’!
If this is really a law, then everyone who eats spaghetti in the state of Pennsylvania should go to prison because they’re violating my religious sensibilities by actually performing an oral sex act on the embodiment of my lord of savior: the FSM!
Ah yes, the classic Kenny Loggins Defense:
This can’t possibly be true, because I have been repeatedly informed by Fox News and patriotic Republican statesmen that only non-Christians ever harass and persecute people for offenses against their religion, and that only Muslims use the legal system to do so.
