You set out to prove that political speech against the Pope's protection of child rapists, and other topics was repressed. You said "The pope is treated with an irrational deference that no secular politician is granted." When I asked by whom you clarified: "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."

Extraordinary claims, that have no base in reality.

You have now presented a case where the Catholic Church announced they would lodge a complaint, but apparently didn't and if they did there was no prosecution, let alone a conviction. By the way this case concerned an ad, not political speech. Laws that make dangerous and impossible political speech against the Pope choosing to be a political figure, eh?
And now you are unearthing a case involving a cross and male genitalia, but not the Pope. And another case which involved a cross and beer cans, which was prosecuted as blasphemy (and by ET standards well might be blasphemy if the beer cans are treated unfairly). Still no Pope.

So we can sum up that political speech against the Pope's political aims is perfectly okay and that we know of NO case where this was prosecuted.

Told ya so.

If hypocrisy and arrogant privilege could actually make people puke, you'd owe me a new dinner.

You have already both feet knee-deep in your mouth. Perhaps you try and get them out of there if you want to puke at the complete deflation of your argument?

I don't care at all if anyone shares beliefs or not, but I don't think I have to put up with mockery or have performances such as Pussy riot's forced on me or any other believer.

What, precisely, about their performance in the church do you object to? It can't be the "screeching," because the sound was added in post.

Apparently, nobody found their dress or miming sufficiently offensive at the time to warrant any action beyond telling them to fuck off. Which they did, without further ado.

To get back to the point that started the whole debate: I want PR's behaviour criminalised for these reasons.

For what reason? Dressing provocatively in church? Filming a video in church? Staging a miming act in church?

Or posting a song you don't like on YouTube?

If an action is directed against political statements of clerics or hierarchies I have no issue with them. It's the activists responsibility not to take the church members hostage.

It is the laity's responsibility to not associate itself with reactionary clergy. To not give their time to reactionary clergy. To not go to the sermons of reactionary clergy. And to not give money to reactionary clergy.

If they won't do that, they own the policies, and they get to live with the criticism.

I have no sympathy at all for someone who claims to be offended by Pussy Riot and then meekly shuffles along to hear the Patriarch incite hate crimes against homosexuals, and peddle partisan political propaganda. No sympathy at all.

Just like I have no sympathy at all for people who are members of the British National Party "just for the rock concerts."

PR did that and that's what I want punished.

How did they take worshipers hostage? There were mostly tourists in the church at the time, and what they actually did while they were in the church didn't even merit a disorderly conduct charge.

Can you take people hostage retroactively, by publishing a video on YouTube?

I notice all right that you are forever telling me about US American TV preachers and other reactionaries. If that is not meant to insinuate that you find political influence of religious is necessarily right-wing, what else do you want to tell us then?

That if you argue for the right of religious people to not be insulted, you are arguing for the prosecution of people who say that gays are people too. Because there are religious people who find that sentiment to be a mortal insult.

And they are many. And they vote. So that is really not a precedent that any progressive with two neurons to rub together wants to set.

Add to this the fact is that the political influence of religion is predominantly right-wing, and it becomes really glaringly obvious why it is stupid and short-sighted to demand the right for religious groups to censor people they don't like on no other basis than that they don't like them.

Censorship is also morally wrong, but that argument doesn't seem to carry much weight with people whose religious knickers have gotten into a twist.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Precisely what part of Pussy Riot's actions inside the church at the time do you find such grievous disturbances of the public peace that they must be criminalized?

No vague generalities about "offending believers" or "taking worshipers hostage," please. Only concrete, well-defined actions which could have been clearly stated ahead of time.

If you do not, in fact, object to any of the actual actions they took in the church at the time, then do you believe that an action can become criminal retroactively? That you can have some jigsaw of in and of themselves perfectly legal actions which, taken together, transsubstantiate into a crime?

Because then you're in seriously shitty company: That's the line that the Danish terrorist police has been peddling every time they pick up some chap with excess melanin and a taste for recondite Islamic theology.

Fun fact: They tend to win in the lower courts, then lose on appeal.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Church is NOT public place open to whoever pays for it like some public hall. It is place of worship.

Totally irrelevant.

It is a historical site, and as such belong to all the people. You don't get to exclude non-communists from visiting Lenin's tomb, or the memorial to the fallen of the Great Patriotic War either.

The fact that it is open for tourists to see its historical value does NOT mean that tourist do not have to obey with rules of this specific place.

They have to obey the secular rules.

What we're discussing here is whether the Orthodox Church should get to make the rules for how to use a public historical site which it happens to use for ceremonies.

C'mon, is it so hard to understand?

No, I just don't agree with granting religions that sort of undeserved, unearned and discriminatory privilege.

And this was hardly silent performance

Actually, it was. The sound was added in post.

and even if it was, and even if we ignore dress code, the fact that they hijacked altar is a huge thing in the eyes of believers

So what?

The eyes of believers do not matter. Only the eyes of disinterested secular observers. And no disinterested secular observer can find anything particularly special about the alter, aside from the fact that it can be seen from most of the church. But that is also true for a great many other places in the church.

Putting the whole shit on YouTube is another story but not less offensive

So putting a song you don't like on YouTube should be illegal?

to ridicule believes

Appeal to faith is not a valid argument.

of so many millions of people

Appeal to popularity is not a valid argument.

pointing what they ( those few so called artist, huh, fucking their political position in the museum before) happen to think about " God's shit" is definitely criminal act.

Ah, so you do want to make it a crime to upload a song you don't like on YouTube.

Thank you for clearing that up. You must be on Medieval Savings Time - when it's 12:00 in London, it's 1200 AD where you live.

Question: Do you support criminalizing drawings of the prophet Muhammad (pbuh)? Do you support criminalizing videos that insult Bush the Lesser? No? Then on what basis do you want to criminalize the particular videos that offend you?

They can do that in public hall tho (if they pay to rent it for their performance) and still some of believers or church can sue them.

Ah, so you want to make it illegal to sing songs you don't like.

Wonderful. Do you also want it to be illegal to wear provocative clothing, or to push elevator buttons on Saturdays? To get a divorce? For two men to kiss in public?

Where does your privilege to not have your parochial religious feelings "offended" end, and my freedom to not have to live in a fucking theocracy begin? And who gets to decide that?

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

So... you acknowledge that there are limits to religious privilege? And that it is important to have a fair jurisdiction to test them in? And that, if the jurisdiction is biased in favour of excessive protection of religious privilege, then legitimate free speech gets suppressed?

I'm starting to understand why you have so systematically refused any dispassionate discussion of what Pussy Riot did and its political fallout.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}

No, satire of public figures really actually is different from mockery of private individuals.

Again, you deliberately skip over the balance of power in the underlying relationship. You and I need to be protected from the press, because the press has more power than we do. The Pope does not need to be protected from the press, because the Pope has as much or more power than the press.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.