Hypothetical rape and political idolatry

A STANCE that defends free speech is totally different from, and not mutually exclusive of, the stance of vehemently condemning and arguing against an offensive one. After all, the antidote to offensive speech is not to deny it the space provided to it by the Constitution, but to exercise our right to speak against it. The reason I say this is that two columns ago, I wrote about defending the freedom to offend and I do not want you, my readers, to accuse me of being inconsistent now that I speak against people whose speech is patently offensive.

And there is nothing more offensive than one who promotes misogyny, and worse, would threaten raping someone. And this is exactly what one loyal supporter of President Rodrigo Duterte just did when, if only to demean a law which was authored by Sen. Francis Pangilinan, which exempts child offenders from imprisonment, he threatened Pangilinan’s daughter Frankie with rape. And without losing a beat, the loyal Duterte base defended the man from the wrath of Sharon Cuneta, the mother of Frankie, who gave him an online dressing-down that only an aggrieved, offended mother can give. Their defense is that the man was only speaking in the context of a hypothetical, that he would seek out Frankie if he were only 12 years old and rape her, and he would not be imprisoned thanks to the law that her father wrote.