Apparently, the right to free speech doesn't apply to everyone.
Especially if you happen to be pro-life.

That's the lesson the Louisiana State University Students For Life
learned recently. You see, last weekend, in anticipation of the
anniversary of Roe v. Wade, they placed 4,000 crosses on the campus
parade grounds. (The 4,000 figure represents the average number of
unborn children killed per day by abortion.)

It was a nice, silent witness to the atrocity of abortion.

But even that is just too much for some people. Around midnight
Monday morning, a group of pro-abortion students vandalized the
display, destroying 3,000 of the crosses and using some of the others to
spell "pro-choice" on the grass. All told the vandals did over $9,000
worth of damage.

Amazingly enough, one of the university police officers saw them
doing it and ordered them to leave. But he didn't arrest them. One
wonders if he would have acted similarly had he caught them
spray-painting graffiti on a dormitory wall.

The perpetrators were later arrested and charged with criminal
mischief -- a misdemeanor. But is that enough? Richard Mahoney,
president of the St. Mary and St. Joseph Memorial Foundation and
owner of the vandalized crosses certainly doesn't think so. The cross is a
religious symbol, he noted to The Daily Reveille (the student newspaper of
LSU), and "defacing a religious symbol is a hate crime."

In an amusing exercise in rationalization, John Philip Morlier, one
of the perpetrators, wrote a letter to the Reveille, defending his
actions:

"I engaged in what I believe to be an act of free speech. The
crosses were planted in an effort to join a debate, conversation. By
removing from the ground and disassembling the crosses, I was voicing a
counter point. I know that my actions were rash; however, the statement
made by the crosses was rash, inappropriate, invasive and hostile."

Where to begin? I wonder if Mr. Morlier would appreciate my own
"counter point" if I were to scratch the word "Idiot" into the side
of his car? Probably not. And yet, that's the kind of reasoning he's using
here with his vandalism-as-genuine-debate argument.

But it gets even better. He goes on to try to explain why he wasn't
guilty of a hate crime... only to shoot himself in the foot in the
attempt:

"The crosses are not an invitation to engage in a give and take
debate on the issue, rather the issue is evasively hidden behind the most
powerful symbol in our community. Those crosses were a black and while
framing of a very complex issue veiled behind the threat of hell; a wood
and glue manifestation of the self-righteous, mislabeled 'Christian'
mentality that fuels itself off of the punishment it threatens or
administers to those that it persistently persecutes."

Did you catch his misstep?

When I first learned of the vandalism and the attempt to label it a
hate crime, I had my doubts. After all, the crosses were used in the
display to represent tombstones -- objects that have taken on a secular
value in our culture. Most likely, I thought, the vandals were reacting to
them as such.

But Mr. Morlier shows that this is not so, thereby surrendering his
single best defense. According to his own statement, he DID consider the
crosses religious symbols. In defacing them, he was acting against the
spiritual message he thought they communicated.

And that sounds like a hate crime to me.

I'll keep you updated on new developments in the story.

Have a great weekend,

Brian