Subway ads: A right to hate speech, a duty to condemn

 at 10 subway stations around New York, commuters will encounter ads from the virulently anti-Islam group headed by Geller, the American Freedom Defense Initiative. Geller has been cited both by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center for her anti-Muslim activity.

The subway ads say, "In Any War Between the Civilized Man and the Savage, Support the Civilized Man." Below that are the words: "Support Israel. Defeat Jihad," with a Star of David on

either side of the phrases. The coded message makes clear who the savages are: those who support jihad, which in Geller's mind includes all Muslims. She has called Islam "an extreme ideology, the most radical and extreme ideology on the face of the Earth."

At first, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority rejected the ads, but a district judge ruled the ads were protected under the First Amendment. The ads follow similar ads in San Francisco as well as posters at New York's Metro North train stations that made unsubstantiated claims about the number of people killed in terrorist attacks since 9/11.

The Metro North ads denied their bigotry by stating, "It's not Islamophobia. It's Islamorealism," claiming the actions of a few represented the "reality" of Islam. But when did it become acceptable to spread bigotry against any American religious, racial or ethnic group in the name of "realism"?