
Satanists are renting out the Oklahoma City Center Music Hall for a September 21 “black mass,” Fox News reports (hat tip to Eugene Volokh). Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City told Fox, “Not all speech is protected if there is hate speech and it is intended to ridicule another religion. I don’t believe it is a free speech matter.” But wait a minute. . . isn’t Coakley’s speech hateful toward Satanism? Obviously, if free speech means anything, it means people have a right to criticize ideas, including religious ones, that they believe deserve ridicule. The real problem here is that the government owns an event center and thereby forces taxpayers to subsidize speech with which they disagree—that is a violation of the right to free speech.