Millen:
AFAIK, you picked exactly the wrong time to pull this shit.
There are two or three self-described fundamentalists on this board who are held in very high regard by the community. Vanilla comes quickly to mind. Scotticher, though she prefers “conservative Christian” and probably doesn’t subscribe to all five petals of the TULIP, is so universally loved that anyone flaming her would be treated to the fastest growing Pit thread in history.
Virtually no regular here has any problem with anyone else’s well-thought-through religious beliefs, or lack thereof. What we do have a problem with can be listed as follows:
[ul][li]Unwillingness to dialogue. Someone who shows up to let us know that Jesus died for our sins and we need to repent, and who does not have the time nor courtesy to stop and answer questions, discuss issues raised by what he or she says, and who makes it obvious he or she does not care about what matters to the people he or she is witnessing to, is being a jerk – the evangelistic equivalent to jerking off to a Playboy centerfold, instead of actually getting to know a girl as a person. We’re convenient fodder for their need to “spread the Gospel” and not people about whom they care. And the mirror image of this is true too – the person struck by the realization that the God they learned about in Sunday School doesn’t exist, who is prepared to denounce everybody else’s beliefs as superstition or dominance games, is the antiparticle to the drive-by witnesser. (Unfortunately, they don’t mutually annihilate, though it did come close to happening in one thread!)[/li][li]Hypocrisy. If you believe in the literalness of the Bible commands, be prepared to be called on the ones you are not yourself keeping when you start using them to denounce somebody else.[/li][li]False accusation: The OP gives a good example of that. Ivygirl’s brother-in-law is running a business tailored to meet a community market for recreation. Because some people at their church have bought into the idea that role-playing games are evil (nowhere mentioned in Scripture, AFAIK), they are out to destroy his business.[/li][li]Attempts to enforce your morality on another: The OP is a good example; the good Senator from Tennessee’s desire to limit marriage to what he thinks is what it ought to be, for religious reasons, is another.[/li][li]Ignorance: You may have noticed the purpose of this website: fighting ignorance. Around here we believe in supporting what we say with facts, or the closest thing to them if the actual facts are not ascertainable, and in refuting viewpoints which fail to be supported by the facts. And any one of us may be in a thread siding with X against Y and still offer a fact that supports Y’s point – out of respect for the truth.[/li][li]Bigotry. If it’s not self-explanatory, you have problems.[/li][/ul]
“Fundy” is no more hate speech than “’Piscy,” which Siege affectionately refers to the church she and I share, is. It’s often used to belittle the variety of fundamentalism which engages in hypocrisy, false accusations, refusal to dialogue, and attempts to enforce morality on others, like the people who have forced me away from another board I loved – and such an attitude deserves all the slamming it gets, IMHO.
I honestly can see how you might have taken it as hate speech. But there’s one more quality we respect, though we don’t always practice, on this board, and I recommend it to you: Get all the facts before you start bitching.
Good evening.
