Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
You probably recognize this as (the first part of) the first amendment of the United States constitution. The Freedom of Speech part of the first amendment specifically gives us the right to be hateful. Who is to say what is hateful? Our courts have, when they carved out some hate speech restrictions.
Still, we, like the guy who holds up the sign in the photograph that accompanies today's NYT article, are free to say that "mosques are monuments to terrorism". He could also have said that "churches are monuments to pedophilia", that "synagogues are monuments to a false god", that "Obama is the anti-Christ", or that "Sarah Palin is an idiot". It simply does not mean that these statements are true, at least not all of them . . .
Them framers were pretty wise white guys.
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