At the risk of stirring up yet again the pot of shite that is the avatar issue, I would like to comment on the point about free speech that has been raised here as a consequence, as I do think it's an important one, and shouldn't be passed over blithely. I think it's important to re-emphasize it. As I've understood it, it is, and always has been, an opinion website for all varieties of same. Hostility against Christianity is as valid as love for Christianity. I've gotten over the intense hostility I felt for it as a teen...I felt I had been brainwashed by it...but the negative attributes of it still outweigh any positive ones for me personally still. For those Christians who want to validate each other in their beliefs, perhaps they are on the wrong website. For those who wish to proselytize, they're definitely on the wrong website, as far as I'm concerned. I don't know CanadaSucks personally, obviously...I've enjoyed his posts and found them informative and entertaining...but this recent controversy reminds me of a late friend of mine who went to Catholic school as a kid and was intensely and vituperatively hostile against Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular as a result of whatever hardships he experienced. At parties, when drunk, he had a tendency to "imitate" Christianity's most revered scenarios in the most degrading fashion-- the Virgin Mary giving birth (with him sprawled on his back, bellowing in pain), Christ being nailed to the cross (my friend cursing out the imaginary Romans driving nails into his wrists), etc. Most people at the party were nominal Christians...99.9% of us had been raised as Christians, certainly...and most of them were certainly offended at the antics of my blaspemous friend, but they realized he was drunk, or they wrote him off as a jerk, and turned their attention to other matters. Generally speaking, I try not to p*ss on the things or beliefs that other people revere, even if privately I might vehemently disagree or even feel some degree of contempt for those things or beliefs. My grandmother's belief in Christianity got her through a wretched life, even if I might have thought her belief was a chimera that never really addressed the very real problems plaguing her. Still, if it comforted her, who was I to ridicule it? As I felt towards her, so I try to feel towards others (unless they're intolerant of me and attempt to crowd me with their "belief"). That's me. But if someone had been badly impacted by religious fanatacism or intolerance or hypocrisy, where else should they be able to express it if not a website specifically designed for the expression of opinions? FranksWildYears made a very salient point, I think, regarding this. If I was a homosexual, I'd be extremely offended by some of what Christians have said here over the years. As a person from a mixed Catholic/Protestant background, I've been extremely offended by some of what I've read here over the years regarding Catholics (I've always found Protestant antipathy towards Catholicism so ridiculous; after all, aren't they both basing their religion on the same book of what Bill Maher calls "Jewish fairytales"?). If I was a Muslim, I'd be extremely offended by some of what I've read here over the years. As an agnostic bordering on atheist, I find the constant expressions of Christian sentiment tiresome and excruciatingly dull, but they come from people expressing what they feel and think, and, again, that's what I think this website is supposed to be about. To those who believe in God so fervently and are so sure of his unlimited power and majesty, surely He's above whatever Canadasucks or my late drunken friend or anyone else might have to say negative about him, no? To put it in another context, I tend to think people who burn the American flag (and, no, I'm not putting CanadaSucks in this category at all, but I think it's another illustration of my point) are silly exhibitionists desperate for attention even if the attention is strenuously negative, but if the freedoms that flag ostensibly represents are strong and valid, why should their actions inflame and threaten so many people? Write them off as misguided fools, if you will, and move on to something that really does affect our lives. The reactions of some of the people here...many of whom I respect and like...to CanadaSucks' admittedly tasteless avatar DO put me in mind of the fanatical and disturbing reaction of zealots in Denmark to a cartoon. True, RIA's Christians haven't set anything on fire, and I'm sure they wouldn't even if they could, but the enduring intensity of their reaction does bring it to mind.