BARE NAKED HYPOCRISY ON DISPLAY

The Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh is asking Carnegie Mellon University to reprimand a female student who dressed as the Pope - but naked from the waist down - to pass out birth control in an art parade.

The student reportedly shaved her pubic hair into the shape of a cross while passing out the condoms.

The Catholic League said in a statement:

CMU did not have to ponder what to do about a recent incident involving one of its fraternities: it simply suspended the students, as well as the entire Beta Theta Pi fraternity, for taking sexual pictures and videos inside the frat house and then emailing them to other members; an investigation is pending. But when it comes to a female student who walks the streets naked from the waist down while mocking the pope, the administrators are much more relaxed: she has not been suspended during a probe of this matter.

"The Freedom of Expression Policy" at CMU prizes individual expression, but it is not absolute: it explicitly ties rights to responsibilities. Perhaps most important, the "Carnegie Mellon Code" says students "are expected to meet the highest standards of personal, ethical and moral conduct possible." It would seem axiomatic that the offending student violated these strictures.

If CMU tolerates this incident, invoking no sanctions whatsoever, then it is opening a door it may regret. What if instead of shaved pubic hair in the shape of a cross, a student chooses to depict a swastika?

CMU's decision not to suspend this female student, who publicly ridiculed Catholics and violated the local ordinance on public nudity, while invoking sanctions against the frat boys for offensive behavior behind closed doors, is legally problematic and morally indefensible.

Naturally liberals think it's hilarious and the protest from Catholics is much ado about nothing.  This attitude, of course, is not only completely self-serving but totally hypocritical.  What if the girl had been dressed up in a feathered headdress and leather, naked from the waist down, carrying a tomahawk and dancing around like a stereotypical Native American? Would the libs laugh that off as well?  

How about dressing up like a 19th Century Chinese peasant, complete with coolie hat and pigtail?  Would that be hilarious and no big deal to campus lefties?  What about dressing like some Mexican bandito?  In other words, pick a minority or a religion (other than Christianity, naturally) or a sexual orientation and imagine the uproar from the Left when somebody does exactly what this girl did.

I would think that the public nudity would be a violation of some campus behavior policy.  So regardless of her intention to mock the Catholic Church, the nudity should be enough for her to receive some sort of punishment from the school.  I know for a fact that these kinds of activists think that it is clever strategy to go naked.  The thinking is that Catholics are so uptight and so patriarchal that displays of nudity will freak them out to the point where they are unable to function.  It's stupid but it's also straight out of the Alinsky playbook. At the very least, of course, it is meant to be deeply disrespectful.  

The hypocrisy of these left-wing haters - who demand respect for all of their various protected groups but do not feel obligated to be respectful to those with whom they disagree - should be the focus here. That, along with any double-standards by the schools in terms of who gets punished and who doesn't.  They simply can't have it both ways.  Either free speech trumps sensitivity or sensitivity trumps free speech but it can't be one standard for the dominant liberal culture on campus and another standard for those in the minority.

Another example of this kind of behavior, much more troubling in my opinion because it involves an actual assault, happened recently in Belgium. (Caution, there is a photo that is definitely not safe for work!)

A group of naked women bum-rushed Belgian Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard while he was speaking in Brussels and doused him with water from bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary on Tuesday.

The women were reportedly feminist protesters from the Ukranian-based FEMEN group, which is known for organizing topless protests against the Catholic Church and others.

The look on the faces of the screeching, topless harpies as they attack the Archbishop while he prays tells the story.  They are the haters.  It's an ugliness that the hypocrites of the Left have neither the maturity nor the intellectual honesty to acknowledge.  This is the point that needs to be hammered home again and again.