Holy Eucharist is Peeeeeeeeeple
Ok, this is a complex and convoluted story that will make you question your 'faith' in humanity. Ready? Alright.....
Once upon a time, a college student attended a mass and decided not to eat the wafer that was placed in his mouth during communion. He took it home, and showed it to his non-Catholic friend. A complete shitstorm ensued, and there was much hyperbole:
“We don’t know 100 percent what Mr. Cook's motivation was,” Susan Fani, a spokeswoman with the local Catholic diocese, told myfoxorlando.com. “However, if anything were to qualify as a hate crime, to us this seems like this might be it.”
The student received death threats from the public and threats of excommunication from the diocese, and returned the Holy Eucharist (or cracker, as it will henceforth be referred to).
PZ Meyers finds out about this and goes gets righteous because A) A person's life was threatened over a cracker, and B) The above quote really denigrates the experiences of real victims of hate crimes.
"Wait, what? Holding a cracker hostage is now a hate crime? The murder of Matthew Shephard was a hate crime. The murder of James Byrd Jr. was a hate crime. This is a goddamned cracker. Can you possibly diminish the abuse of real human beings any further?"
He also issues a challenge to the (considerable) audience that reads his blog: "So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them - my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure - but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart."
And then the world explodes. Apparently threatening a population of crackers is not only a hate crime, but something that justified 39 pieces of hate mail in the first 12 hours after the post: Four of them have included death threats, a personal one day record. Thirty-four of them have demanded that I be fired. Twenty-five of them have told me to desecrate a copy of the Koran, instead, or in some similar way offend Muslims, because - in a multiplicity of ironic cluelessness - apparently only some religious icons must be protected, and I would only offend Catholics because they are all so nice that none of them would wish me harm. I even have one email that says I should be fired, that the author would like to kill me, and that I only criticize because Catholics are so gentle and kind.
Furthermore, the Catholic League then states that the web hysteria resulting from PZ Meyers amounts to a dangerous atmosphere for Catholics. They convinced Thomas Foley of Virginia, a delegate for the Republican National Convention, to apply for more RNC security given the threat that Meyers (an acclaimed evolutional biologist, who as far as I know has never promoted violence) poses for the convention.
Given that the only publicized death threats have been coming from the Catholic side of the aisle, I think Foley is not running on all cylinders. This suspicion was confirmed when he was interviewed about Meyers: "What I think he has done, he's loaded a cyberpistol and he's cocked it and he's left it on the table. He may have set something in motion that no one can stop. It was irresponsible, a hell of a thing to do."
Now one of the death threats has resulted in a woman being fired from 1-800-FLOWERS. The message was sent from her work computer and includes the line: "You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in." Sadly, her husband was the one who had sent the message. Way to go, Chuck.
Conclusion: PZ Meyers gets tagged an "Unrepentent science-heathen" by his local paper. He's coming out like a superhero in this - he's got a cyberpistol as well? Awesome. Maybe Adam Savage from Mythbusters can ride around in his sidecar and they can be the Leauge of Skeptical Heroes! (Along with Richard Dawkins, Phil Plait from Bad Astronomy, and Skepchick as the token hot girl)
I'm damn sure we haven't heard the end of this, since Meyers has promised to commit acts of barbarity as soon as he gets the time (considering his email gets over 5k messages a day now, most of them dreck):
It's just so darned weird that they're demanding that I offer this respect to a symbol that means nothing to me. Something will be done. It won't be gross. It won't be totally tasteless, but yeah, I'll do something that shows this cracker has no power. This cracker is nothing.