Is Art What Decides if it is Hate Speech or Just Opinion?

There is a move to redefine hate speech and hate crimes. It is actually redundant to all actions that are now illegal.

Do we question that a man hates a woman when he rapes her? That certainly isn’t an act of love.

Does a man of one race kill one of another race because he loves him? No . . . whatever the motivation . . . it is still a murder and it was obviously hateful.

But what if the hate takes on a more elitist character . . . one less hostile, but more, say, artistic?

For example the anti-Catholic art exhibit in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Because it is artistic in nature, it is intended to be controversial, illicit passion and emotion.

Art is after all . . .the great license of the age. But we the public are not supposed to think it is hateful to see “blasphemous misuses of rosary beads and crucifixes”, or to see the Virgin Mary depicted as the “Great Harlot.”

But what if a very impressionable person learned to hate Catholics as a result of this display and committed a hate crime against one?

Or what if this artist decided it was another group that he wanted to defile? It becomes selective hate . . . and teaches people to tolerate some types of hate. But when society fails to draw that line . . . people start doing it themselves . . . and . . . its not a pretty picture.