Christian Zealots: "Respect Our Bigotry!"

No respect for nutjobs at Liberal Street Fighter

The first few paragraphs in the LA Times story Christians Sue for Right Not to Tolerate Policies sums it up pretty well:

Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she’s demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.”

THIS is the most pressing issue to these people, these Christians … they are CALLED by their Lord to spread hatred. The fact that other people in the society around them ask them to be civil, to show some respect when interacting with others is “discrimination” against them for their faith. In fact, they claim that policies that constrain them from spewing their bile result in a war on Christians.

“The message is, you’re free to worship as you like, but don’t you dare talk about it outside the four walls of your church,” said Stephen Crampton, chief counsel for the American Family Assn. Center for Law and Policy, which represents Christians who feel harassed.

Critics dismiss such talk as a right-wing fundraising ploy. “They’re trying to develop a persecution complex,” said Jeremy Gunn, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief.

Others fear the banner of religious liberty could be used to justify all manner of harassment.

“What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn’t mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn’t work?” asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay rights group Lambda Legal.

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.

By equating homosexuality with race, Baylor said, tolerance policies put conservative evangelicals in the same category as racists. He predicts the government will one day revoke the tax-exempt status of churches that preach homosexuality is sinful or that refuse to hire gays and lesbians.

“Think how marginalized racists are,” said Baylor, who directs the Christian Legal Society’s Center for Law and Religious Freedom. “If we don’t address this now, it will only get worse.”

A person who was capable of self-reflection might be able to see that his homophobia is every bit as objectionable as racism, but self-reflection is too much to ask of someone like Mr. Baylor, a person who is motivated by fear, hatred and a few verses in Leviticus. We should be no more “tolerant” of this hatefulness than we are of the Klan, or of radical Muslims stoning women for being “dishonored” by a rapist. Believe what you want, but don’t stomp your feet like a five year old when others tell you NOT to act out your pathetic superstitions on others around you. Hell, you’re the one with the keys to Heaven, take some damned comfort that you’ll get your reward in eternal bliss for holding the hot coals of your homophobia close to your shrunken little heart.

Personally, I’m fine with them demonstrating just exactly what hateful people they are. I like that they reveal themselves in all of their ugliness, all of their backwards glory. I’m not a big fan of speech codes … I think it’s easier to stomp on roaches when they are running around in the light. What I AM sick of, however, is the constant whining about being “persecuted” when they are confronted and told that persecuting others isn’t appreciated by the rest of us. I’m more offended and disgusted by the wild contortions of language, logic and common sense that these troglodytes create with their bitching.

At a recent conference, there was much discussion amongst the hate-filled right about the dangers posed by the “homosexual agenda” and our society’s coddling of dangerous soddomites:

Homosexuality was singled out for special opprobrium, not only on the panel devoted explicitly to unmasking “the homosexual agenda” (“The Gay Agenda: America Won’t Be Happy”), but throughout the entire conference. On the panel on Christian persecution, for example, two of the four speakers devoted their time to the Christian struggle against homosexuality. Tom Crouse, a Massachusetts pastor who has inaugurated a “Mr. Heterosexuality” contest in his town, spoke of his persecution by officials who billed him for the increased police presence required at his contest when “rabid homosexual activists” showed up at the event. (Crouse also characterized persecution as “a blessing and a joy,” and advised the audience that, “If you are not persecuted,” you have to ask yourself, “are you living a Christian life?”) Meanwhile, Michael Marcavage of Repent America testified about the arrests of several Christian protestors who sought to interrupt a gay event in Philadelphia in order “to show the love of God to those who are lost and damned to hell for all eternity.”

The panel on Hollywood predictably attacked Brokeback Mountain and the recently released V for Vendetta, but also featured an especially peculiar excursus: an analysis of The March of the Penguins, which was praised for not featuring a single gay penguin.

“The gay sensibility,” one speaker informed the audience, is ironic and characterized by the excessively performative use of “air quotes.” Indeed, irony itself is a gay invention, a coping mechanism for gay people who recognize that they don’t really fit in with normal society. Moreover, Chris Carmouche of Grasstops.com, the moderator of the Hollywood panel, singled out academic programs in theatre, film, and performance studies as hotbeds of secular and sexual deviance: Students in such programs, he asserted, “want to attack your values.”

Wow, consumed by hatred AND fucking nuts. No wonder they can’t wait for the next world … they obviously can’t deal with reality. Some would say that pointing out this obvious fact is counterproductive, that we should take care to “respect” people for their religious beliefs. This line of thought is being pushed more and more by the Democratic Party and their experts-at-losing consultants. I have to go with what Sam Harris has to say about it:

The most controversial aspect of my book has been this criticism I make of religious moderates. Most people think that while religious extremism is problematic and polarizing, religious tolerance is entirely blameless and is the remedy for all that ails us on this front.

But religious moderates are giving cover to fundamentalists because of the respect that moderates demand of faith-based talk. Religious moderation doesn’t allow us to say the really critical things we must say about the abject stupidity of religious fundamentalism. And as a result, it keeps fundamentalism in play, and fundamentalists make very cynical and artful use of the cover they’re getting by the political correctness in our discourse.

Religious moderation is just a cherry-picking of scripture, ultimately. It is just diluted Iron Age philosophy. It isn’t a 21st century approach to talking about the contemplative life, or spiritual experience, or ethical norms, or those features that keep communities strong and healthy.

Religious moderation is a relaxation of the standards of adherence to ancient taboos and superstitions. That’s really all it is. Moderate Christians have agreed not to read the bible literally, and not read certain sections of it at all, and then they come away with a much more progressive, tolerant and ecumenical version of Christianity. They just pay attention to Jesus when he’s sermonizing on the Mount, and claim that is the true Christianity. Well that’s not the true Christianity. It’s a selective reading of certain aspects of Christianity. The other face of Christianity is always waiting in the book to be resurrected. You can find the Jesus of Second Thessalonians who’s going to come back and hurl sinners into the pit. This is the Jesus being celebrated in the Left Behind novels. This is the Jesus that half the American population is expecting to see come down out of the clouds.

Wait, though, it’s not just we non-believers who have a problem with this escalating insertion of superstion and religion into the public sphere. Check out Gary Wills:

THERE is no such thing as a “Christian politics.” If it is a politics, it cannot be Christian. Jesus told Pilate: “My reign is not of this present order. If my reign were of this present order, my supporters would have fought against my being turned over to the Jews. But my reign is not here” (John 18:36). Jesus brought no political message or program.

This is a truth that needs emphasis at a time when some Democrats, fearing that the Republicans have advanced over them by the use of religion, want to respond with a claim that Jesus is really on their side. He is not. He avoided those who would trap him into taking sides for or against the Roman occupation of Judea. He paid his taxes to the occupying power but said only, “Let Caesar have what belongs to him, and God have what belongs to him” (Matthew 22:21). He was the original proponent of a separation of church and state.

The continued imposition of religion/superstition/cult-like-behavior into the public sphere is making political change more and more impossible. It’s far past time that a sort of truce be called so that we can all figure out ways to coexist and solve our problems in the world we all share here, in this life. It’s REALLY important that wackjob fundies be confronted on their bigotries, their hatreds, NOT just for some sense of “political correctness”, but because hate and eliminationist language has consequences.

Sometimes, those consequences are deadly.