je suis Charlie

James E. White’s blog Church and Culture carried an insightful article on the trending hashtag  #jesuischarlie…. “I am Charlie.”  Those who post on this hashtag show their solidarity with the victims of the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris last week.  The march in Paris over the past weekend has shown not only Paris, but the world of the determination of people to have freedom in the press and freedom of expression.

That is, unless your freedom has to do with expressing your Christian moral values.  Ask fired Georgia fire chief Kelvin Cochran.  His “freedom of expression” in a personal book expressing his Christian viewpoint that marriage was to be between a man and a woman cost him his position.

#jesuisCharlie?  Not in Atlanta, Georgia.

It’s interesting that a paper like Charlie Hebdo, whose satirical writing and cartoon illustrations critique Islam and other targets, expects the free world to protect their freedom to lampoon and criticize religion and politics, culture and government, church and state.  And the world should.  Yet the same people turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the freedom of expression violated in the United States of America when a person expresses a viewpoint not held to be politically correct.  Where is the outcry?

Where are the protests?

#jesuisCharlie?  I don’t think so.

Selective freedom is not freedom.  It is editorial censorship….certainly not what our founders had in mind when this freedom was afforded the people of the United States. Freedom isn’t freedom when one person’s liberty is limited by another.  That’s what is at stake in Paris, France.  I hope they win the battle.

But maybe the #hashtag in America should be changed….

#IamKelvin,too