In the contrary, I have made clear that I sort this offence with the equivalent directed at blacks, gays, whoever.

You want to make offending people a crime?

Then I guess nobody can ever say anything at all, since there'll always be someone somewhere who can claim to be offended. Or does it only apply if enough people claim to be offended at the same time? A big fan of mob rule, are we?

And I am astonished that you demand a right to hurt people.

I'm not. I'm demanding the right to not have to worry about whether some asshole claims that what I say offends him. Since that is, you know, entirely his decision to make. As opposed to objective criteria like "did this damage somebody's stuff?" Or "did this interrupt something someone was doing?" Or "does this contain an unlawful threat?"

You know, little details like actually proving harm in order to have standing to prosecute.

I'm kind of touchy about little details like that.

Persons who "choose to become political figures" don't lose their personality rights. We are no bloody yank journos hunting for politicians' sex lives and the like, are we?

People who choose to become political figures - and those scare quotes are bullshit, by the way - lose the right to not be made targets of mockery and derision by detractors.

That's far cry from losing all personality rights, as you pretend. It's just the minimal necessity to prevent democracy from descending into demagoguery, hagiography and hero-worship.

The pope is treated with an irrational deference that no secular politician is granted.

Huh? By whom?

By everybody who thinks he has anything remotely interesting whatever to say on the subjects of ethics, governance, sex education, human rights, politics, or, indeed anything not strictly related to the purely internal functioning of the Roman Catholic Church.

Oh, and those who make apologies for his covering up the rape of little kids, for his HIV/AIDS denial, for his homobigotry, for his misogyny and for the financial double-dealings of the church he heads.

You know, in case anybody was counting.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.