Once again, this time by the New York Times, it has been proven that the only group that it is politically correct to bash or offend is Christians.  They turn the other cheek and forgive those who trespass, rather than behead and bomb, or storm newspaper offices to murder and maim.

That much was admitted by New York Times editor for standards Phil Corbett in defending the newspaper’s decision to publish Monday a picture of Pope Benedict XVI fashioned out of condoms, after being among those that refused to publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons of the Mohammed that prompted a murderous attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine in Paris, murdering 10 journalists and two police officers. As Corbett told the Washington Examiner:

“I don't think these situations -- the Milwaukee artwork and the various Muhammad caricatures -- are really equivalent. For one thing, many people might disagree, but museum officials clearly consider this Johnson piece to be a significant artwork”

“Also, there's no indication that the primary intent of the portrait is to offend or blaspheme (the artist and the museum both say that it is not intended to offend people but to raise a social question about the fight against AIDS). And finally, the very different reactions bears this out," he added. "Hundreds of thousands of people protested worldwide, for instance, after the Danish cartoons were published some years ago. While some people might genuinely dislike this Milwaukee work, there doesn't seem to be any comparable level of outrage.”

Of course, suspending a crucifix in a jar of urine is considered art in the liberal circles of the New York Times as was the painting of the Virgin Mary fashioned entirely out of feces and adorned with cutouts of genitalia from pornographic magazines it published in 1999. Christianity doesn’t teach that you have the right to kill those who offend you so their sensibilities are fair game. Besides Christians are bigots anyway, don’t you know.

In January,Politico explained why New York Times editor Dean Baquet decided his newspapers shouldn’t publish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons:

"Ultimately, he decided against it, he said, because he had to consider foremost the sensibilities of Times readers, especially its Muslim readers," Times public editor Margaret Sullivan reported Thursday. "To many of them, he said, depictions of the prophet Muhammad are sacrilegious; those that are meant to mock even more so. 'We have a standard that is long held and that serves us well: that there is a line between gratuitous insult and satire. Most of these are gratuitous insult.'"

The sensibilities of its Catholic readers apparently don’t count at the New York Times, which might be surprised to discover that most Catholics probably do find the Virgin Mary covered in dung or a Pope’s picture composed of condoms a gratuitous insult.

According to the New York Times and its liberal defenders, the Pope condom portrait and the dung-covered Virgin Mary is free speech but the Mohammed cartoon contest run by Pamela Geller was hate speech, pure and simple. In a May editorial the Times thundered:

(T)he Muhammed Art Exhibit and Contest in Garland, Tx., was not really about free speech It was an exercise and bigotry and hatred as a blow for freedom.

The condom Pope exposes the anti-Christian hypocrisy of liberal newspapers like the New York Times but also the differences between Christianity and militant Islamists. To mock the symbols of Christianity is free speech worthy of a Pulitzer prize. To mock Muhammed is a crime punishable by death.

Telling the truth is also a crime as the murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, as well as the criminally charged Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders and Canadian commentator Mark Steyn have all found out. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized in 2011:

Van Gogh, the great-great-grandson of the famous artist, was shot and his throat slit on an Amsterdam street after making the film "Submission." It criticized, many would say accurately, the Islamic world for its harsh treatment of women.

In March 2008, Wilders posted a film about the Koran, “Fitna,” on the Internet. It equated Islam with violence and the Koran with Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf," at least in the sense of the advocacy of obscene violence against humanity and as a blueprint of things to come….

As Wilders' film shows, his "hate speech" largely amounted to quoting the Koran accurately and reporting the statements of Muslim organizations and their supporters, many of which cannot be repeated here….

Columnist Mark Steyn felt Wilders' pain in 2008 when he went on trial for "Islamophobia" in Canada. As with Wilders, this consisted largely of quoting Muslim speakers verbatim and then drawing some obvious conclusions. Steyn ultimately prevailed, without civil libertarians warning of any "chilling effect" on public discourse from the experience.

The publishing of the image of the condom Pope painting and other incidents speaks volumes about the double standards and hypocrisy of the left, the unequal treatment of Christianity vs. Islam and the differences between the religions themselves. Tolerance in the liberal definition of the word is a one-way street.

Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.