The name Charles Merrill is most commonly associated with the co-founder of Merrill Lynch, an important stock brokerage. It's also the name of his cousin, a self-made millionaire and artist who uses his art to make provocative statements against he homophobic and repressive ideologies of traditional religions. Recently, he began making statements against the scriptures of traditional religions: the Bible and the Qur'an.

Is this an appropriate subject for art? Some would probably argue not and might even say that such actions are more an example of being childish than art. This perspective may not be entirely without merit, depending upon the circumstances, but it's a mistake to think that art cannot or should not take political stands and work for political change. In this case, it is precisely the allegedly "holiness" of the books which Merrill is undermining by his actions. He isn't merely denying that the books aren't holy, he's demonstrating it.

Charles Merrill's first subject was a Thomas Kinkade Family Bible, which he edited with scissors and a black marker in order to edit out hateful and violent passages. The second subject was a rare Qur'an — valued at USD $60,000 — which Merrill burned. Some will surely ask what any of this has to do with art, but Merrill's art is deliberately and consciously activist. According to Charles Merrill's web site:

Like Picasso and the passion of his mural, Guernica, Merrill is working with a profound sense of artistic purpose. He states, “The role of the artist is to fix unjust laws in the fabric of society that need to be fixed.” What has to be fixed, according to Merrill, is the repressiveness of an increasingly theocratic US Government toward same-sex couples and the denial of equal treatment to all citizens as guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Perhaps in order to prove that he is right about how religions like Christianity promote hate and bigotry, many Christians in his area reacted to his outspoken homosexuality with harassment and threats:

Before 2004, both Merrill and Boyle had also been active in protesting an anti-gay resolution passed in Rutherford County, N.C. in 1996. “They wanted to make it clear that they didn’t want the gay lifestyle in their town,” said Merrill, who founded Citizens Against Discrimination, organizing nearly 100 LGBT people from North Carolina and the surrounding area to protest the resolution. As a result of their visible role in countering the resolution, the couple soon began to feel a backlash from their small-town neighbors.

“We once got a rabbit in the mail with the feet cut off,” Merrill recalled. “It really took [an emotional] toll on us. I wouldn’t eat all day and then I’d drink and try to moderate,” said Merrill, who is now an enthusiastic member of the religion-free Save Our Selves (SOS) recovery program. Boyle also started drinking and smoking marijuana excessively as a means of coping with the increasingly negative atmosphere. The couple decided to sell the farm in 2004. Today, Merrill and Boyle reside in Palm Springs, Calif., where they are registered as domestic partners.

Merrill also made headlines recently for his passionate stance on the issue of religious freedom. (He acknowledged that it was more difficult for him to come out as an atheist in rural North Carolina than as a gay man.) A lifetime member and contributor to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, Merrill is an outspoken blogger. He stirred controversy among fellow bloggers on the North Carolina- based Hendersonville Times News blog site when he changed his username from “Charles 6” to “Anti-Christ.” The New York Times Corporation, which owned the site, suspended Merrill.

“The more I discussed gay and atheist issues, the more they started referring to me as ‘Charles 666,’ Merrill said. “So I thought, Since they’re calling me the Anti-Christ already, I’ll just change it.” The name incited fellow bloggers on the North Carolina-based Hendersonville Times News blog site, who sent content alerts to the online director. The Times has maintained that Merrill was blocked because “the username ‘Anti- Christ’ is a form of trolling.”

So, calling someone else the Anti-Christ is acceptable but calling yourself the Anti-Christ is not acceptable? This reveals a strong bias in favor of Christian beliefs, attitudes, and prejudices. Christians are allowed to treat others as inferiors, but as soon as a person seeks to adopt a denigrating label in order to transform it, suddenly everyone is concerned about appearances. It's analogous to Christians attacking gays as queers, then a gay person adopting "Queer" as their nickname but getting banned for it.

This is what those relegated to inferior positions are supposed to expect from the privileged classes. They are supposed to accept denigration with meek acquiescence, never standing up to turn their oppressors' tools and words against them. Indeed, the very idea of standing up to object at all is anathema — society doesn't need uppity people who refuse to learn them place.

This is why actions designed to demonstrate that certain books, images, and ideas are not "holy" and should not be given special deference can be so important. When laws protect such books, images, and ideas, then believers are given a privileged status while others are prevented from expressing the sorts of criticisms and dissent which are accepted in every other context. This places particular religions, religious beliefs, and religious believers in a favored position above everyone else; public actions made to deny the superiority of others are necessary protests.

Almost as if it were planned as a counterpoint to Charles Merrill's protest, Stanislav Shmulevich was charged with a hate crime because he threw a Qur'an into a toilet:

The Islamic holy book was found in a toilet at Pace's lower Manhattan campus by a teacher on Oct. 13. A student discovered another book in a toilet on Nov. 21, police said.

Muslim activists had called on Pace University to crack down on hate crimes after the incidents. As a result, the university said it would offer sensitivity training to its students.

The school was accused by Muslim students of not taking the incident seriously enough at first. Pace classified the first desecration of the holy book as an act of vandalism, but university officials later reversed themselves and referred the incident to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit.

Source: Newsday

Shmulevich certainly committed vandalism for clogging a public toilet, so it's clear that he cannot and should not get off without any sort of punishment. It also appears that Shmulevich didn't do this with his own copies of the Qur'an, so that's additional charges of theft and more vandalism. No matter how you cut it, Shmulevich is in trouble and committed several crimes. But where does the "hate crime" come in? Shmulevich wasn't committing a crime against another person, class, or organization which could be enhanced by a hate crime statute.

The question is whether the action was designed to send a message of intimidation to a group or was simply regarded as offensive by the group. When someone spray paints swastikas on a synagogue, the message is one of intimidation and harassment — it's someone trying to tell Jews that they are unwelcome and should worry about their safety. That's why a hate crime enhancement would be applied to such an act as compared to "John luvs Suzie" spray painted on a bridge.

When it comes to burning, flushing, or otherwise desecrating a Qur'an, though, there does not appear to be any intent or effect of sending any analogous message to Muslims. On the other hand, it is true that Muslims find such acts highly offensive — for them, such treatment of the Qur'an is more similar to such handling of Jesus than of the Bible. Making it a "hate crime" to offend someone or some group while committing a crime is a good way of preserving the favored, privileged status of some groups over others. I think we all know that there would be no "hate crime" enhancement if the book had been Dawkins' The God Delusion.

This is why actions like Charles Merrill's may have a positive, long-term impact: by removing objects like Bibles and Qur'ans from the status of "privileged" or "protected," they counter efforts to privilege or favor particular classes of people. Ultimately, criminal law shouldn't treat such handling of a Qur'an or Bible any different from any other text. The alleged "holiness" of objects, places, and people has played a significant role religious violence for millennia. Thus Merrill's actions combat religious hatred and violence on multiple levels.