Geller Ban Challenge: Washington Buses Won’t Run Religious Ads. Now The Justice Department Is Stepping In.

It is good to see the Trump Justice Department taking action to defend the freedom of speech. The reason why did the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority rejected these ads was because of the Geller Ban. The ban was put in because of the fear that Muslims would riot over my ads. Instead of confronting Islamic savagery, they restricted the freedom of speech.

This goes back to June 2015, when my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), created a free-speech ad campaign defying the blasphemy laws under the Shariah. We put up 100 billboards around St. Louis, depicting the winning cartoon in our Muhammad cartoon contest that was fired upon by jihadis in Garland, Texas, under the headline, “SUPPORT FREE SPEECH.” The cartoon depicted Muhammad being drawn by an artist. Muhammad says, “You can’t draw me!” The artist responds: “That’s why I draw you.” It was an apt summation of the courage and refusal to be bullied that we need to have in the face of violent intimidation from Islamic jihadis.

The billboards featuring this Muhammad cartoon also went up in and around the northern tri-county area of Marion, Baxter and Boone counties in Arkansas. But in what could only called an end-run around the First Amendment, when we tried to run them in the Washington, D.C., subway, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) enforced the Shariah under the guise of banning all “political ads.” No other ad had compelled WMATA to take such drastic action. My ads violating Islamic blasphemy laws led to Shariah bans in New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco et al.

The ban itself is mutable and unclear. No contemporary medium of communication may pass the test of being merely commercial and non-political. The New York Times runs an editorial page every day – not to mention the slant of their “straight news” – and therefore, if they can advertise, so can the Village Voice, the Socialist Militant and Dabiq (ISIS’ four-color magazine), for that matter.

The WMATA threw in public safety for good measure, as if these craven quislings knew what was conducive to the public good. Color me skeptical. They said the buses would be a target for jihadis. Yet if we’ve learned anything since 9/11, it is that America is the target. The West is the target for Islamic terrorism. Abridging our freedoms so as not to offend savages is surrender and un-American. It results in more demands, more surrender, more capitulation to Shariah law (which is what WMATA did).

Running and hiding is no strategy in a war. Operation Fetal Position is a recipe for disaster.

No one cared when my ads were banned, but it was never about me. The enemedia makes it about me, monsterizes me, so that people run in horror at the bogeyman and say yes, yes, shut her up, shut her down. It’s covert totalitarianism.

The Catholic Church, of course, would not have dreamed of sticking up for my free-speech rights at the time the Geller Ban first was put into place. But it’s like the famous Martin Niemöller poem:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

Now they have come for the Catholic Church. And what most people don’t know is the Geller Ban is not unique to Washington, D.C. In fact, the Geller Ban is in effect in every major city in the United States: New York, Boston, Miami, Chicago, liberal San Francisco, Denver and more.

So who will speak up for the other organizations that want to run perfectly reasonable ads, as mine were, and run afoul of this ban?

This is what the left does to anyone who stands in the way of the Islamic agenda. It’s all in my book, “FATWA: Hunted in America.” Get the book, buy it for friends. Educate those around you.

“Washington Buses Won’t Run Religious Ads. Now The Justice Department Is Stepping In.,” by Kevin Daley, Daily Caller News Foundation, January 16, 2018:

The Department of Justice filed a brief Tuesday supporting the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington’s challenge to public transportation guidelines that prohibit explicitly religious advertisements on Washington buses.

The Washington Metro Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the agency which administers bus and subway service in the D.C. metro area, does not run ads that promote religious observance. The archdiocese claims the policy is unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.

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“As the Supreme Court has made clear, the First Amendment prohibits the government from discriminating against religious viewpoints,” Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand said in a statement attending the filing. “By rejecting the archdiocese’s advertisement while allowing other Christmas advertisements, WMATA engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination.”

The archdiocese brought the case after WMATA refused to run advertisements promoting its “Find the Perfect Gift” holiday campaign, which encourages participation in Catholic Christmas observances. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit declined to issue an injunction against WMATA, finding that the archdiocese failed to prove the agency favors secular Christmas views over religious ones. They further said the policy does not appear to burden religious practice.

The department’s brief stresses that the message featured on the proposed advertisement, “Find the Perfect Gift,” is not itself inherently religious, and could just as easily be used in a secular context. Therefore, they claim, the agency is discriminating strictly on the basis of religious view.

“Under WMATA’s view, two otherwise identical advertisements with the same underlying message—for instance, two ads encouraging gift giving or charitable donations during the holiday season—could be construed as addressing entirely different ‘subjects’ as long as they used different Christmas symbols reflecting different purposes for giving gifts or making charitable donations,” the brief reads….