Right and Wrong and Free Speech

I came across this today which amazingly continues on the theme of my Right and Wrong post. This is from an article in response to Obama's U.N. Anti-Free Speech resolution; as USA Today stated "the Obama administration has joined a U.N. effort to restrict religious speech." From the John Birch Society, "It has been pretty clear that the Obama administration does not look with particular favor on the second amendment, but it is also becoming increasingly evident that the President is not much of a ‘fan’ of the first one, either...The Obama administration has marked its first foray into the UN human rights establishment by backing calls for limits on freedom of expression."

Apparently, Obama described the measure as a method to stop blasphemy and to protect religion. Yet why, world wide, are people being persecuted for saying "homosexual," being "anti-gay," by classifying disagreement with abortion as "hate speech," etc? These things may show intolerance, but they do not deal with religion or blasphemy.

So what is the common thread running through all these speech prohibitions? The standard being applied is not one of blasphemy.
It is offensiveness.

Thus, what’s happening here is not religious but quintessentially secular. After all, blasphemy is predicated on the idea that external, universal, unchanging laws (God’s laws, the Truth) dictate that certain things really are sacred and that we must respect them, that we must, in a manner of speaking, avoid “offending” God. Yet [they] are only concerned about offending man. And in making “man the measure of all things,” they are guilty of a typical atheist mistake. That is, if there is no Truth (a notion that reduces morality to opinion) who is to say it’s wrong to offend people?

Moreover, making man god and then saying “Thou shalt offend no god” is far scarier than anything Mideastern Imams conjure up. This is because blasphemy prohibitions are actually fairly limited, only pertaining to impious utterances relating to a certain religion. Yet, since the secularists are using that which “offends man” as the yardstick, and since man comprises thousands of groups the world over, there conceivably is no limit to the number of speech prohibitions such a standard could spawn (Selwyn Duke).

Obama says he is stopping blasphemy, but his blasphemy has nothing to do with God. Looking at his war on Fox News, Obama seems to define blasphemy as anything that contradicts him. He has out rightly attacked Fox News, attempting to stop their reporting. The other major news agencies, having watched the circus the last few weeks, have finally banded together with Fox.

Now, I know all the articles I have quoted are extremely conservative. I apologize for that. I actively sought for a balanced perspective on this UN Free Speech discussion. Shockingly, none of the larger media other than Fox have touched this; but it is moving like wild fire on the smaller sites and blogs. And obviously my support for an eternal Right and Wrong only comes from conservatives. As Selwyn Duke put it:

An atheist would say that religionists' reasoning is based on a silly assertion; namely, that the divine exists. I won’t argue that here but will only say that the secularists’ offensiveness-based speech laws are silly regardless of the facts. After all, while secularists’ relativism dictates nothing can be wrong, they claim it’s wrong to offend others. They also claim nothing can be sacred but yet would have us treat certain people’s feelings as sacred.

They just don't make sense...