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Ms. Marcotte's joke is offensive not just to Roman Catholics but to every Christian--and probably, I'm guessing, to Muslims, too, since they also believe in the virginal conception of Jesus. Unless Ms. Marcotte is a very dense person indeed, there is no way she could have imagined any other reaction to the joke. The idea that it wasn't meant to mock anyone's personal faith is utterly absurd. It manages to demean not just one, but two of the most sacred realities in Chrsitianity--the Holy Spirit and the Virginal Conception. What if Ms. Marcotte had said something similarly offensive about homosexuals, or about African-Americans? The result would have been the same. Had the Edwards campaign not thrown her over, they would have been utterly, completely doomed. This is America, and her right to blog away is not in question--but the First Amendment does not entitle one to a job with the Edwards campaign, nor does it make one exempt from criticism. Expecting a major political campaign to tolerate foul blasphemy is ridiculous. Unless Democratic political voices can tame their vocabularies and hatred of religion, they will make it very hard for their party to consolidate the gains of the last election.
