So, Chad Hardy is in a bit of hot water with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, for publishing a calendar that depicts 12 male Mormon missionaries without their shirts. Apparently, that runs afoul of some sort of dress code that requires Mormons to be modest.

Hardy says he was simply trying shake things up a bit in the faith of his youth, although he allows he hasn’t been active for the last couple of six years. Still, he’s been called to a meeting with the principal, in this case one Frank E. Davie, who oversees LDS churches in Las Vegas. He could face punishments up to and including excommunication if he’s found to have behaved in a way unbecoming a member of the faith.

“I just feel like my right to free speech is being violated,” Hardy says.

Well, no, Chad, it’s not. You see, you are perfectly free to publish your calendars, free from censorship by church or state. Mr. Davie, no matter his spiritual power, has no temporal power to order you to do anything, much less give up a sacred constitutional right.

However, with that freedom comes responsibility. We at Various Things & Stuff have free speech rights, too, but if we libel someone, we can get sued. In other words, there are consequences to the right of free speech, which we must all assume when we exercise that right. And since the LDS church is a private organization with entirely voluntary membership, we see no reason why it cannot extend its discipline and standards over those who wish to remain members in good standing.

Certainly, the meeting may serve to dissuade Hardy from exercising his free speech rights, but that, too, depends on a simple premise, one that he may have already begun to reject. And that’s this: The church only has power over you if you believe it does.

If, for example, you were to include that it’s an entirely made up system of human invention, why, you’d be perfectly free to do whatever you wished, hocus pocus and mysterious incantations notwithstanding. If you came to that conclusion, then the harshest punishment available — excommunication — would no more frighten you than a Gypsy curse or a voodoo doll. Assuming you came to that conclusion, that is.

That’s why we think free minds go better with free speech. We’re just saying.

UPDATE: The council of elders decided after 45 minutes of deliberations to excommunicate Hardy. “I really feel sorry for my family. They are going to be so sad. But I feel empowered and free and I feel like I no longer have to apologize for anything,” Hardy told the Associated Press. That’s the right attitude, we think. Plus, with nearly 10,000 calendars sold at $14.99 each, that works out to, let’s see, almost $150,000. So, there are compensations.

If you’ve driven to California, you’ll know what we’re talking about. You’re cruising down the freeway, maybe going up a hill, and everything’s fine. You’re in the No. 1 (fast) lane, and a couple 18-wheel, big-rig trucks are in the No. 2 (left) lane. Suddenly, the truck going 63 miles per hour jumps out in front of you, causing you to slam on your brakes and wait for a couple minutes while he struggles past the truck in front of him that was going 62 miles per hour. If you’re really unlucky, two or three trucks do the passing maneuver while you and your fellow drivers idle. In the “fast” lane.

It’s called getting “truck fucked.” And it happens all the time, even in zones where “no passing” signs are clearly posted. And you don’t want that happening to you.

But now, the nation’s truckers are attempting to collectively truck fuck all of us, by demanding that we return to the days of low speed limits. No, they’re not going all the way and demanding a return to 55 mph, which had to be the most widely violated law in America for the two decades it was in place. But they are suggesting — through their lobbying group the American Trucking Associations — a 65 mph national speed limit. And they’ve convinced a senior Republican senator, John Warner of Virginia, to start the debate.

Why? High gas prices. If we all slowed down a little, everybody could save money on gas, including and especially the truckers.

Now, call us crazy, but we seem to recall that when higher taxes or fees were suggested for the trucking industry in Nevada, one of its representatives replied that the truckers would simply raise prices to cover the additional cost of fuel, thus increasing the cost of goods and services. (And by “one of its representatives,” of course we mean Gov. Jim Gibbons.) So, pray tell, why don’t truckers simply increase their fees?

What’s that? They have? And that’s why bread and milk and stuff is more expensive? Oh, we see. Well, why not raise those fees more to compensate even further? Or has the industry reached a breaking point, where they are forced to — oh, the horror! — eat profits?

We, of course, oppose a national speed limit of 65 mph. As regular readers know, we are the leadest of the lead-foot drivers. Our “speed limit” is either Warp 3 (39 times the speed of light, or 7,254,000 miles per second) or the structural integrity limit of our vehicle, whichever comes first. We hate speed limits for myriad reasons, not least of which is the fact that states short on revenue (hello, Nevada!) will use the extra money generated by fines to boost the general fund, when clearly some sort of tax on the trucking industry should fill that gap.

Warner, for his part, said he was motivated to advocate for a speed limit when he read that a charity group couldn’t afford gas to deliver hot meals to people. May we suggest to the good senator a tax credit for charities that deliver hot meals to people? You can offset it with … hey, how about a tax on those lovable people who are trying to slow us down on the roads — again — even when they can’t be there in person to jam up the fast lane?

You remember them: The truck fucks.

The Associated Press has weighed in with the full story about Gov. Jim Gibbons’s strong personal commitment to paying no new taxes on rural land he owns out in Elko County. After Gibbons tried to pressure Republican Assessor Joe Aguirre to lower his taxes and was rebuffed, Tax Commission member and lawyer John E. Marvel asked again, and an “uncomfortable” Aguirre gave in. Instead of paying $5,000 in taxes on residential land, Gibbons paid $15 for a parcel Aguirre reluctantly classified as “agricultural.”

But that’s not the best part of this story. Guess who Gibbons purchased the land from? Guess who allegedly paid him — in two checks totaling $5,777 — for the “agricultural” use of the land, thus satisfying a state standard that says one must derive $5,000 in annual revenue to get your parcel declared “agricultural”?

Disgraced former Washoe County District Court Jerry Carr Whitehead.

For those who don’t know, Whitehead resigned from the bench in disgrace in 1996, after reaching a deal with federal prosecutors not to be charged with unspecified federal crimes. He’d been accused of holding improper meetings with lawyers and bullying attorneys who sought to disqualify him from hearing cases.  The investigation of the Whitehead case sparked another scandal at the state Supreme Court, including an investigation into where the crusading Review-Journal — which owned this story — was getting its information and a threat to sue the newspaper. (Two justices even appointed a special “plumber” to try to identify leaks.)

Now, we know the R-J has relentlessly defended Gibbons from its editorial page. But that same page couldn’t think less of the likes of Whitehead. So with Whitehead and Gibbons thick as thieves in a highly questionable land deal, what will the R-J say now?

Like we said, this one should be fun.