I live about a mile from the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Texas. By now, we all know what happened there, but I'd like to offer some personal perspectives.
1. The building is owned and maintained by the Garland Independent School District. They have a director who schedules events. One event that occurred in January of this year was an event to help Muslims combat violence and the image of Islam as a violent religion. This event was picketed by people claiming to be Christians.
Now why would anyone protest something that was against terrorism? If we play absurd strawman games, this means that those Christians are supporters of terrorism and should be arrested.
2. I personally believe that this previous event was the sole reason the Center was picked for the Cartoon event. It wasn't just about being "free speech" (meaning "free to be a bigot"); it was a deliberate choice to counter this Islamic event.
3. People protested the Islamic conference. The response from GISD was that they couldn't discriminate rental of venues on the basis of religion. This is good. However, by allowing this cartoon event to be held, I think that GISD violated its own policies about using the Center, namely sections 1.04 and 1.05.
The issue that keeps coming up is "when is hate speech protected"? Why was this event allowed to happen? When a group is asked to pay an extra $10,000 for police presence, shouldn't that be a warning sign that this event isn't "in harmony" with the purposes of the center?
4. North Texas, including the area around Garland, is home to a lot of Muslims. The main mosque for Dallas is just one suburb over in Richardson. My personal experience with Islam is that of wanting to build bridges to it and cast out fear, because creating the division of "us" and "them" is where hatred starts, ignorance spreads, and foolishness awaits.
5. How do I explain to my kids about the explosions going off at night, when the bomb squad took the precaution of detonating suitcases and other material in the shooters' vehicle? Or how some of their friends were caught in the Wal-Mart close by and had to be locked down and evacuated?
I'm fine with free speech. However, when the result of it is potential harm to my family, it is not okay. It's not even free anymore -- the emotional cost of dealing with this isn't worth someone's right to insult a religion. It just isn't.
Take your hate elsewhere, Ms. Geller. Take your lack of understanding of Islam, your lack of caring about anything but the sound of your own voice, and go away.