People were far more scandalized by Mel Gibson's *Passion of the Christ* than they were by cultural gems like Andres Serrano's *Piss Christ*. Just as they're far more likely to object to "Holocaust denial," whatever that means, than Resurrection denial.

That's what it's come to. The latter is widely accepted as an expression of religious liberty. The former is The Thought Crime that Dare not Speak its Name.

I can mount a soapbox and spout the vilest blasphemies against God, Christ, His Blessed Mother and His Holy Church. I can do this in London, Paris, Rome, Brussels, Berlin--any of the leading centers of what we now quaintly refer to as Christendom. If I am noticed at all, it will be in expressions of admiration for my hip and sophisticated derring-do. Now try disputing the existence of the Nazis' homicidal gas chambers or the canonical six million felled by them. Those same post-Christian civilian authorities who shrugged off your anti-Christian venom will proceed to toss you in the hoosegow for hate speech.

Hollywood had it in for Gibson before he even released his movie. They made no bones about it. "He's an anti-Semite," they said. "He'll incite pogroms in Pittsburgh!" Then the coup de grace: "His father's a Holocaust denier!"

When, pray, has a director ever had to defend his father's views on anything?

So a Jewish cop arrests a drunken Gibson. Gibson unleashes his filthy anti-Semitic venom--totally out of the blue of course.

Christ is a divisive figure. He said He would be.