Way to take a serious statement that has credence and attempt to piss all over it with an attempt at humor.
Pathetic.
Christianity and gay-bashing do not go hand-in-hand. There are all sorts of types out there, always looking for a reason to hate someone else. They may even hide behind a religion to do it. They bring down the religion. That doesn’t mean that everyone with that belief is going to follow that path, and vice versa.
Gee.
So… our favorite demogogues like Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell don’t have followers who follow them lock step and enrich them while mindlessly parrotting their venom masquerading as Christian love?
For all the Christians who are moderate and actually follow the precepts of Jesus rather than using the Bible as a method for spreading their personal bile and bigotries, they are drowned out by a loud contingent of those who aren’t content until Tituba is burned.
Until Christianity ceases to be used as a cudgel and bully pulpit that the President can whore himself to at the expense of a segment of the American population. each Christian is responsible for the poisoned message and the messengers of a toxic version of Christianity that is over whelming a message of love with hate.
I see people like Polycarp who live a life in action to the principles of not simply saying ‘all Christians aren’t like that,’ but instead works to educate and fights the good fight.
If you wish to prove that all Christians aren’t living in a desire to foment bigotry, Heloise, you have a responsibility to go further than saying we aren’t all that way. You have to show people who you are as a Christian and make it known that judgement and hatred are not your Christian values.
Or all you have just done is give lip service.
That we all aren’t what way? Gay bashers? Or gay haters? My point was that not all Christians condone that sort of behaviour, but if you mean I need to prove that I’m not a gay hater, email me. I’ll have my former roommate give you a call. And he knows my beliefs quite well. Other than him, I think most people who know me also know my beliefs and know how I feel. What is it, exactly, that you want me to prove to you? My lifestyle? What, you want references?
We know who the most public haters are. They are the ones using half baked, mentally deficient personal versions of religion. They are the ones who take it and pervert it for their own agenda. They call themselves Christians, but they are not, by any stretch of the imagination. They are liars and bullshitters. Robertson, Falwell, Phelps, those guys. They make the noise and get the attention. The sane ones we never hear about. They don’t make the evening news or have TV shows on which to spread their filth.
Maybe it’s time for the real Christians to take back their churches.
“I want you to go the window right now. I want you to yell I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore”.
Start making noise. It isn’t enough anymore to just say I’m not like that. It’s time to start telling the vipers" That’s bullshit". It’s time to tell them nobody is going to listen to hate anymore. It’s time to stop being polite and noncommittal when you know someone is a grade A first class asshole. Start reporting the bashers you know, to the cops. Stop funneling money to the phony preachers, and give it instead to the good ones. Stop watching the bastards on TV.
What kills me is the deafening silence from Evangelicals during trials like these. Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, the whole crew, ought to be on television urging the defendants to drop their defense, repent, and submit themselves to the temporal authorities for punishment.
Unless, of course, they really believe slashing a gay guy is no crime at all.
Or perhaps they’re not anxious to throw a spotlight on how comfortable many evangelicals (including the victim’s preacher parents) are with the use of physical force. Just what is meant by “Spare the rod and spoil the child”? I’ve never seen any exegesis on that.
Although there’s no question that the Pats and Jerrys are morally reprehensible, that doesn’t mean they are not real Christians. As long as they accept the tenets of the faith as laid down in the Apostles’ Creed, they’re in the club. Now, they may not be good Christians, and their extremist rhetoric and deceitful tactics definitely make them hypocritical Christians, but they are nevertheless Christian. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it until you guys get it, but using “Christian” as a synonym for goodness is both a distortion of language and Christo-centric bigotry. Could we say that Meir Kahane was not a real Jew? Could we say that Osama bin Laden is not a real Muslim? If not, why not? “Christian” is a definition of someone who believes a certain set of doctrines, not a description of that person’s moral character. Acting like a Christian is not a synonym for being a mensch.
I think referring to the gay-hating, Dubya-worshipping, “God is a Republican” crowd as “legalist Christians” would be more useful for discussion and would lack the loaded semantic denotation that “fundie” seems to possess.
Being Christian or Muslim or Jew certainly does include that person’s moral behavior. Is it enough to just lip synch “praise Mohammed and Allah” or “praise Jesus” when everything you do violates the most basic teachings? The Apostle’s Creed is just words. You can recite it all day long, it doesn’t mean squat by itself. You can not say “I believe and therefore I am saved” if your entire existence is one big train wreck. I could say I believe in flying monkeys and alien anal probes too. So what. You might say you believe Bruce Lee and Elvis are still alive. So what. Saying so doesn’t mean a thing. How can you claim these “people” accept any tenets of anything when their whole lives are built around doing the exact opposite?
These individuals are using “religion” to hide their “true faces”, just like a Klan member would use a mask to hide his true face. They twist it and defile it to suit their innate foulness, a vile disease that would be there even if there were no religions at all. They would just find some other thing to hide behind.
Reread what I wrote, step off the cross, and stop being a victim.
That’s my hint for you.
People do that all the time and just don’t make the news with it.
I don’t know if I agree with you there, just because the basic teachings are themselves up to debate. So, to some extent, membership in any of those religions does rely on self identification.
FTR, the religion itself addresses this very subject:
In my experience, not many right wing fundies are down with Matthew chapter 7.
They’re not looking to understand, Heloise. They’re looking for targets. For scapegoats. It’s easier to say “you Christians” are complicit in the actions of people subverting the religion, than it is to say that we all are complicit in the actions of people who try to subvert the separation of church and state. It’s easier to speak out for freedom from religion than it is to fight for freedom of religion; the latter means you might have to actually accept that viewpoints different from your own as valid.
If you try to show people what it really means to be a Christian by, oh I dunno, telling them outright what it means to be a Christian, then you ruin everything. Because you’re messing with their easy target. The fact that you have nothing more in common with people like Pat Robertson than they do is irrelevant; he’s your problem to deal with. And apparently, the only way to deal with the problem is to state the obvious over and over again on a message board that’s already filled with people who are mostly in agreement over the issues that matter.
The writer of that article interviewed all the people involved, attended trials, did all his research, but it doesn’t all tie neatly together unless you can find a pat common thread. If you had to take ethnic tension, abusive families, corrupt lawyers, drug abuse, prostitution, and homophobia all as separate issues, it’s overwhelming. When you can say that it’s all tied to organized religion, you’ve got an expose.
And I’m just sitting here as, apparently, the exception that proves the rule – a gay man brought up in a Pentecostal family who turned out okay, more or less – depressed as hell and wondering how anything’s ever going to get better.
Wait a sec, who’s “they”–my posts and those of SteveG1 are very specific in referring to right-wing Christians, so you are guilty of the same broad brush you like to accuse others of wielding.
I’m not being mean here, so bear with me. Please define “valid”–the word is usually defined as “well-grounded, justifiable; logically correct” and nobody believes that to be true of other people’s religious or philosophical viewpoints. Mormons don’t believe non-Mormon churches are valid because they are founded by false teachers; Sunni Muslims certainly don’t believe Shi’a Twelver theology has any validity; Jews don’t believe that Jesus was the promised Messiah, so what do you mean by “accepting that other viewpoints than your own are valid”? You mistake “validity” with “tolerance.” I think religion is an absurd notion, but I defend the rights of churches to practice their faith with complete immunity to government interference. You don’t have to agree with someone to defend their rights.
And freedom from religion is part and parcel of freedom of religion. Our founding fathers set a system in which government and relglion were kept separate, so that we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of Europe in which one religious group used its control of government to punish adherents of dissenting religious groups, taking the Anglican control of the English government to persecute Quakers as an example.
I don;lt think you can define “what it really means to be a Christian”–you can pnly define your notion of what it means to be a Christian. There seems to be no commonly accepted definition of what being a Christian means. As I said to Siege in another thread, it’s not on you personally to combat the fundie evildoers like Pat and Jerrry. There are definite denominational struggles over these issues, as in the schism cleaving the Episcopalians over the appointement of Gene Robinson as an openly gay bishop. Just be a good person and a good Christian, and that’s all anyone can ask of you.
You’ve certainly got a point there, but that’s not to say that the anti-gay teachings of some churches do not have any effect on inculcating an attitude that gay people deserve to be hurt for “flouting God’s law.”
Except that you are way too vulnerable to getting hurt by what some anonymous strangers on message board say about religion. People are not going to hold sacred the same things you do, but they can learn to like you and get along with and accept that you believe what you do.
If I had the time, I might be inclined be inclined to study the another link common to all three perks. They were all of Russian heritage. They were all young men as well. And it seems that they were all imbibing in that demon alcohol. That Russian vodka is particularly bad. And they were all white. Come to think about it, I’ve never heard of a gay bashing incident perpetrated by African-Americans. Could gay-bashing be genetic?
I know you’re being facetious, but there is a pretty big problem, especially in the UK, with reggae singers endorsing violence against homosexuals. Here’s an article. Here’s a related pit thread. Here’s another pit thread about a Jamaican father who incited a group of students to attack his own son for being gay.
Actually, no; you’re guilty of the same over-sensitivity that you like to accuse me of having. I didn’t read your or SteveG1’s posts. I was responding to the post I quoted. It’s good that you addressed the points I made that you took issue with; it’s not so good that you assume that they’re directed at you.
I assumed that it was obvious that “they” referred to anyone who was guilty of the stuff I was about to bitch about – assuming that responsibility to a group or a label outweighs personal responsibility, and playing a simple game of connect-the-dots to point a finger at one group and blame it for everything from domestic abuse and gaybashing to drug abuse and prostitution. Hell, “they” is me when I’m talking about Southern Baptists or libertarians.
Believe it or not, I do occasionally speak to people outside of this message board. And this isn’t the first place that I’ve heard people disparage “God-botherers” and “Bible-thumpers,” or joke about defacing crosses or ripping fish symbols off the backs of people’s cars, or mocking them. I’ve heard people make disparaging comments as soon as they saw someone wearing a Star of David. I’ve heard people say, “Ah well, that explains it. He’s Jewish,” just as the author of that article attributed all kinds of motivations to Evil Lawyer, apparently ignorant of the fact that there are plenty of homophobes and sleazy people who don’t use Christianity as a crutch for their evil.
I meant exactly what I said. I am not a member of any of the religions you mentioned, but I recognize them as valid. They’re systematic, they make sense to the person, and the true practitioner of the religion is aware of the tenets of his religion – he’s not pulling ideas out of thin air, changing his interpretation at whim, or making it up as he goes along – and does his best to follow them. Ergo, it’s well-grounded, justifiable, and logically correct. Is the Book of Genesis a valid scientific explanation of the creation of the universe? No. Is “Love they neighbor as unto yourself” a valid personal belief system? Yes.
You confuse “tolerance” with “acceptance.” I do not need to accept another person’s faith as my own before I can recognize it as a valid personal belief system. Personally, I think Catholicism is absurd. But if I see someone holding a rosary or making the Sign of the Cross, I’m not going to point a finger at him and scream “You’re oppressing the civil rights of homosexuals!” And if I did, and he said, “Well actually, no I’m not, in fact I support equality in --” I’m not going to interrupt him with “Hypocrite! You’re complicit in the actions of your evil Pope and condoning child molestors!”
I’m going to say, “Hmmm, that guy’s Catholic, and that ritual helps him to find comfort. Good for him.” If I want to know how he stands on the topics of abortion, or birth control, or gay rights, then I’ll ask him. And if he then tries to use his religion as justification for his views on any of those topics as they apply to other people, then I’ll point out the separation of church and state and ask him to try again.
And it goes way past religion, to anything that people use to try and compartmentalize and justify their prejudices against each other. A heterosexual man doesn’t need to be attracted to other men to accept that I am, and it works for me. Tolerance means that he has to hire me because the government says so, but when he talks to me, he’s still thinking “faggot!” (Or more charitably, that I’m a deviant, or over-sexed, or that I come from a dysfunctional home, or that I’m mentally ill.) Acceptance means that he’s still every bit the tit man, and when he talks to me he doesn’t think about sex at all.
It should be obvious to everyone that unless God gets an SDMB account, that no one here is the absolute authority on religion to anyone other than himself or herself. I don’t speak for all Christians any more than Polycarp does, although I’m sure that there are more Christians in line with his views than mine (and still more who think we’re both hellbound).
And the commonly accepted definition of what being a Christian means is pretty straightforward: accept Christ as your savior, and try to live your life according to his teachings. How exactly you do these things is the only part that’s in question, and it’s a question that every person has to ask himself. It’s only an issue of “commonly accepted definitions” when you’ve got people struggling for power, trying to impose one set of beliefs over another.
Of course. When someone says “Not all Christians are like that,” they’re not denying that some Christians are. They’re pointing out that it’s those teachings that contradict a message that is overwhelmingly about love, respect, and honor.
I should also point out that someone doesn’t have to be attacked with broken bottles to be a victim of gaybashing – the verbal intimidation that stems from being told for years that you’re “wrong” or “sinful” or at most charitable, “confused and in need of guidance” can do plenty to keep people miserable, in the closet, and ashamed of themselves. Which is why I push for legal rights as a minimum, with genuine understanding as the real goal.
And it’s also why I don’t stand for it when people say that separation of church and state is fine and all from a legal standpoint, but theists are ignorant or delusional, all Christians are complicit in an evil organization, and mocking simple expressions of faith (like car-fishes; glurge is still annoying glurge no matter how you cut it) is funny and acceptable. It’s nowhere near as violent as throwing Christians to the lions, by any means, but it’s still verbal intimidation.
And I don’t object to it because I’m a delicate flower sitting at my computer with a single tear running down my cheek at all the hateful things those internet strangers are saying about my Messiah, thanks – I object to it because it’s stupid, and divisive, and counter-productive for people who say they’re learning from the mistakes of history. Even the author of that article acknowledged that there’s a bell curve, and you can’t judge any group by looking at its extremes.
And if I seem “oversensitive” to the article, it’s because I can’t read it without drawing similarities to my own life. As I mentioned, I’m a gay man who was brought up in a Pentecostal church, but I turned out more or less okay. Painter’s problems aren’t entirely the fault of the church; they’re the fault of having an abusive father who hid behind the church. I have loving parents who recognize what the message of the Bible is, and to diminish the value of that is highly offensive.
The one fact that is without question is that Painter is 100% blameless for the attack – fuck anyone who says otherwise, or accuses me of saying otherwise. But the whole question is of personal responsibility. Who’s responsible for the attack? The attackers themselves, or the church that “drove them to do it?” Who’s responsible for Painter’s drug abuse and prostitution? The church that “told” his father to beat his son? The father for not getting the correct message out of the church?
Or can I say that because Painter is a homosexual, it’s only natural that he’s a meth addict and hustler? Well of course I can’t say that. Is it because I’m in denial that there are lots and lots of gay meth addicts and prostitutes? Or is it because it’s absurd to draw a direct connection between homosexuality and reckless behavior? And if so, why isn’t it absurd to draw a direct connection between organized religion and evil behavior? When does everyone else start to agree with “us Christians,” and acknowledge that Pat Robertson’s failings are because he’s an asshole, not because he’s a Christian?
Genetic, hell. I notice that all the people involved in the story are from the Pacific Northwest. I want to know when all you Seattle Dopers are going to step up and take resonsibility for the evil actions of your people?
Whoa, there. Dissent from the dominant ideology is not “verbal intimidation.” Conservative Christians in Congress and their puppet in the White House are hellbent on demolishing the separation of church and state, destroying science education in our public schools, and using demogoguery to herd their clueless followers to vote in constitutional amendments banning equal rights for gay people in state after state after state. In such a hyper- religious atmosphere, it is necessary for someone to stand up for freethought and a secular America.
While neither I nor anyone here thinks that all Christians are complicit in an evil organization, some churches and denominations are better than others. As someone who was raised Catholic, for instance, I can say that there are many decent, kind Catholics but that the Church hierarchy and its doctrines are corrupt and inhumane. Appointing Cardinal Law as a Mass celebrant as part of JPII’s funeral obsequies was a giant “Fuck You!” to the victims of the molestation scandal. I see nothing there to respect.
As for religion’s flaws in general, you’re going to have to get used to the idea that the magical thinking that spawns belief in the supernatural doesn’t pass skeptical scrutiny. As I said in an earlier post, despite the beliefs of many faiths that the personality is an intangible spirit that animates the body and can survive physical death, the best evidence that exists shows conclusively that the mind is a product of the brain, and when the brain dies, the personality (or “soul”) dies as well. There is no personal survival after death, hence no afterlife, no heaven, no hell. No amount of praying or Bible quoting can change that. To quote Dan Barker, a pastor-turned-atheist and author of Losing Faith in Faith:
Are you out to your Pentecostal family SolGrundy? Do they accept Miller was easily as they would a girlfriend?