Back To School: Christian Bashing at UVa

The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights reports on some anti-Christian goings on at the student newspaper for my alma mater, the University of Virginia:

September 5, 2006

BACK TO SCHOOL:
CHRISTIAN-BASHING RETURNS

The Catholic League was recently contacted by students at the University of Virginia regarding two anti-Christian cartoons that appeared in The Cavalier Daily, the student newspaper on campus. The August 23rd edition showed a drawing of Jesus crucified on a mathematical graph with the inscription, “Christ on a Cartesian Coordinate Plane.” On August 24, the newspaper ran a cartoon of Mary and Joseph, with Mary holding baby Jesus. “Mary…I don’t mean to ruin this special moment,” Joseph says, “but how did you get that bumpy rash?” To which Mary says, “I swear, it was Immaculately Transmitted.”

We requested an apology, citing precedent: In November 2005, the newspaper apologized to homosexuals for publishing a cartoon that described a crane as the “gayest-looking of all birds.” Michael Slaven, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper, replied to us over the weekend: “Under our newspaper’s policies, satire of religion, or any other belief or creed, is acceptable.” [Ed.: Except, of course, when it comes to Islam and depictions of Mohammad.]

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“When gays were offended at the University of Virginia for some throw-away line, The Cavalier Daily said it ‘regrets printing this comic and deeply apologizes to those who were offended.’ Yet when it comes to Christians, not even a shallow apology can be mustered. So it can be implied that the Mother of Jesus has a sexually transmitted disease—and that’s okay with the editors—but making flip comments about homosexuals is unacceptable.

“Nice to know that the newspaper actually has a policy that justifies anti-religious commentary (of Christians, of course), but deliberately fails to apply the same libertarian policy to gays. Par for the course: this is what passes for sensitivity these days on college campuses. And the new school year is just beginning.”

The offending cartoons can be found here (scroll down) and here (scroll down).


UPDATE
Just above the cartoon depicting the baby Jesus, the Virgin Mary and St. Joseph is another cartoon in which Jesus refers to a woman as "Bitch".


UPDATE # 2
It seems that on February 29, 2006 the Cavalier Daily ran an apology for a February 23 comic which "contained depictions of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed which many members of the community found offensive."

However, reading this ombudsman piece that ran a month later (and which seems to focus primarily on the Mohammad depiction in light of the Danish cartoon controversy), one wonders whether the real concern was with the portrayal of Mohammad in the cartoon as opposed to the portrayals of the other religious figures.

(NOTE: From what I can tell, based on my research of the newspaper's archives, the cartoon for which the Cavalier Daily apologized back in February is the ONLY depiction of Mohammad - albeit alongside other religious figures - that the paper has ever published.)