"Fucking Christians"

The BBQ Pit
21

You admit you don’t know the context, and yet this little thing is enough to get your dander up? There’s a huge number of instances where this comment would be justified to most people, (especially in casual conversation!) even if not “right” in the most strict sense. What if some annoying person had just made an unpleasantly sanctimonious comment along the lines of that revoltingly ever-present bumper sticker, “No Jesus, No Peace”? Perhaps they should just sit there while all other religions and belief systems are underhandedly insulted? I mean, a Christian might get their feelings hurt here!!

Rather unkind, admittedly. Still, I find it difficult to get upset about geeks in a room somewhere making joking comments about Christians while children all over the USA are forced to recite “one nation, under God” every morning or risk discrimination and mockery.

Yes, yes, all Christians are not unpleasant, self-righteous, tyrannistic people. Many are kind and generous, etc. We all know that. But in casual conversation to friends, do you bother to specify it?

You’re baffled? Are you serious? :eek: Do you really not understand why anyone could possibly hold this hatred for Christianity? I’m not saying their reasons are right, but you must be aware of the huge amount of hate propaganda Christians have propagated against D&D and similar things in the name of their religion? Of course, again, not ALL Christians have done this. Many haven’t. Still, I’d think we could all figure out why D&D players would hold a hatred for this particular religious group… even if it is irrational.

Even away from the whole D&D thing, there are SO many reasons why people can develop a dislike of Christianity; it’d be pointless to name the whole list. Again, I’m not saying it’s rational or right, but when people of a certain religion enjoy forcing their beliefs on others, it’s NOT going to create great love for them, whether they profess to be doing it for the sake of your soul or not. (Again, insert disclaimer here that not all Christians do this, many do not, et cetera.)

Tanaqui

22

Oh please gobear. Why can’t you ascribe the same dichotomy that exists among Christianity with regard to homosexuality that you espouse for Muslims with, for example, the justification for terrorism. You, after all know quite a few Christians on this board, the vast majority here that do not share the views expressed in the link you provided.

Well, I’m not a homosexual or black or Sikh or Vietnamese.I’m very uncomfortable when disparaging remarks are advanced of any group in a social situation, which 99.9% of the time takes place in their absence. Political remarks of a negative nature are in my book exempt because that is the very nature of politics to oppose.

Well I wish you were consistant with regard to the propriety of mocking a major religion. You wouldn’t mock Islam. You’re view of Christianity as a behemoth compared to Islam in America may be correct but that would be a limited perspective. We live in the global village now, and Islam is right up their with Christanity at about 2 Muslims per 3 Christians. Or are you not alarmed when a thread title pops up that reads “Fucking Muslims”

Well, from my perspective Christians get harrassed all the time including on these boards. I’m assuming disparaging remarks (like what set you off in this thread) qualify as harrassment. Furthermore, in the global context I’m sure I can find several areas of the world where Christians are persecuted, say Africa, Indonesia etc. And as I’ve said before, your privacy argument doesn’t hold. Your tacit approval of slagging Christians will not advance us to a better society of mutual understanding and tolerance. Having said all that , I do recognize the particular injustice gays suffer from particular segments of the Christian following that seem blind to the realities of homosexuality and the consequent intolerance. Notwithstanding the need for firm opposition to this intolerance, I do not wish to see the sins of some to be ascribed to all. Your “war” against religious bigotry is only won with the “conversion” of the bigots. Please don’t make it difficult for those Christians you’ve already won. Christianity is not going to go away.

23

Andros, Diogenes, I think y’all are giving gobear too much of the benefit of the doubt on the Islam/ethnicity thing, but I’ll wait for him to respond on that. Hell, I’m still waiting for him to respond to my first comments about his initial post. We cross posted there, so I’ll be patient.

I will say one thing, though. He says he is upset about the other thread, which is why he can’t muster any sympathy. (The “Oh cry me a fucking river” comment.) That thread deals with some idiot Christians bashing gays. In that thread everyone, and I mean everyone agreed that the bigots were idiots. Still, the mere existence of some guy a thousands of miles away bashing homosexuals was enough to get gobear upset. He is confronted with the near-mirror of the situation, and he shits all over it, saying “cry me a river” and "Christians don’t get harassed - they do the “harassing”.

nice.

Apparently gobear believes there are two standards of behavior. Maybe he should reread my first post about those criticizing the fringe element of Christianity showing the same type of hatred as the ones they despise so much.

24

Fuck you, Beeblebrox. You know very well that in the mind of the majority of the American public, Islam is seen as being a religion for foreigners. So while, obviously, Islam is not the property of any particular ethnic group, it is, in the US, seen as being the property of Arabs, Indonesians, and the like.

Fuck you, too, **Guinistasia. Christian antigay groups have been active in the DC area, viz, the Love Won Out freak show. Don’t you fucking preach to me about tolerance when you so-called gay-friendly Christians keep silent in the face of antigay bigotry.

Yes, I would. I wouldn’t pick on Muslims because they are an embattled minority in this country. Christians are not a struggling minority: they own this country.

25

…and this just about says it all.
BlackKnight, your OP was a valid one, as far as I’m concerned. But whether people are bashing Christians, Republicans, Islams, gays or whatever, they’re entitled to their beliefs, however distasteful or disgusting. That others seem to get such a kick out of these hateful opinions is pretty pathetic as well.
Your challenge is to decide whether or not you want to hang out with people like this, regardless of how much entertainment they may provide gamewise.

If you do decide to continue to meet with them, I hope that you continue to kick their asses as well. :slight_smile:

26

I can’t say I blame the gamers too much. I’m not saying I agree with them, at least not any more. But having been there and done that, I know the mindset these people are probably coming from. I’ll make a few assumptions based on my own experiences as a gigantic geek, in both the literal and metaphorical sense.

First, they probably have a very small, closed social circle. They don’t make friends frequently or easily, and as such don’t have a lot of exposure to mindsets outside their small circle. And I don’t blame them for this, as this sort of behavior is usually adapted for protection. Geeks are easy targets for juvenile abuse and harassment, and the tendency is to close ranks with people who are like yourself so as not to expose yourself to further harm.

Second, and slightly less certain, is that most, if not all, of them don’t come from religious backgrounds. They weren’t raised with a religion, or at best come from very casually religious backgrounds.

Taking these two assumptions together, you have a group of people who have no familial contact with Christians, and are predisposed against meeting new and different people due to previous bad experiences. So the only sort Christians they’re ever going to interact with in any sort of a religious capacity are going to be the assholes. The Chick tract-disseminating, foaming at the mouth, “You’re all going to burn!” types that make Christians in general look bad. Fuck, they make humans in general look bad. Given their skewed sample, I don’t blame them for making incorrect assumptions about what sort of people Christians are.

Further, the level of vitriol they were showing, while not really appropriate for discussing someone’s belief system, is really not out of character for your prototypical geek. For this kind of person, there’s not a lot of middle ground. Something is either the most brilliant thing ever conceived of by anyone anywhere, or it’s total shit that was created solely as a personal insults against themselves. Think Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons. I find this attitude in general annoying and juvenile, which is why I stopped going to cons and the like. If I want to game, I have enough friends who are gamers and can act like grown-ups that I don’t need to hang out with the Peter Pan Syndrome set. But annoying as it is, at least it’s consistent. Most of them probably don’t actually care much about religion one way or the other, so like everything else they don’t have any personal use for, they savage it unmercifully.

Next time this starts up, instead of challening them on it, just ask out loud, “Hey, what did you all think of Episode One?” The resulting fracas will stamp any religious debate right out.

27

If I understand the situation correctly, this was an established gaming group with long standing members, and BlackKnight was the newcomer.

If you didn’t like the conversation, BlackKnight, you should have left. It is not the responsibility of the group to modify their behavior to accommodate a newcomer.

As for the conversation in general, given the woes that religion in general has visited on the world (and Christianity has caused it’s fair share of those), I really have some difficulty working up any sympathy for the OP myself.

28

So when the local fundies (NOT thousands of miles, but right here) run ads in the Washington Post urging gay people to “come out of homosexuality” I should say…nothing? When I am regarded as something inferior by Christians who loathe me for loving my boyfriend, I should just…smile?

Fuck you!

29

And you know that we’re keeping silent…how exactly? How do you know some of us haven’t suffered for speaking up for homosexuals? How do you know some of us weren’t TAKEN OFF THE CHURCH’S YOUTH LEADERSHIP COMMITTEE because of it?

Oh I’m sorry, you don’t.

Newsflash, gobear, I don’t bash your lifestyle, even when you’re not around to hear me.

30

Yeah, gobear, I’ll remember that the next time ACT UP barges into a Mass and starts knocking the Host all over the floor.

:rolleyes:

Where in the HELL do you get off insinuating that I sit back and allow anti-gay bigotry? WHERE DO YOU GET OFF, you sanctimonious jackass?
But then again, why should they say anything. To use your example, they’re not gay, so why should they be offended?

:rolleyes:

How about you bite me twice? Can we say “double standard?”

31

A lot of who gets bashed reflexively depends on what sort of demographics a given social circle includes.

In my experience, a lot of people in pagan, alt-sex, gamer, or fannish communities are either in active rebellion against Christianity or otherwise set up oppositionally, and therefore the practice of ragging on Christians is sort of a morale-building run-down-the-opposition thing. Personally, I think it’s childish, because by defining themselves in opposition to this thing, their self-definition is still tied up in it; doing their own thing without going on and on about how different that is from what their image of what the “fucking Christians” so seems to be a much better way of untying themselves from Big Mama Church’s apron strings.

Personally, I either avoid those subsections of said communities that behave thusly, or bitch them out for their hypocrisy. (One of my little hobbies is helping to help administrate an alt-sex religion discussion forum. The whole anti-Christian backlash shite is Not Tolerated There.)

32

Well, you aren’t taking out ads in the Washington Post, at least not that I’ve heard. And, just a note on debate technique, countering claims of Christian bigotry by citing further claims of Christian bigotry may not be 100% effective in getting your point across. I mean, you’re a swell person and a Christian, which is great, but even in your own church your views are enough of a minority opinion to get you booted off of a committee just for expressing them. This makes me think highly of you, but really does nothing for my opinion of your co-religionists.

33

And what other way would you suggest that I get it through to gobear that not all of us hate him? He doesn’t know jack SHIT about me, and yet he assumes that I and several other Christians (including Guin in particular) are ‘keeping quiet’ in the face of bigotry. THAT is fucking offensive. And I’m right here to hear him say it.

34

So let me see if I have this Right.

an Athiest magic geek, who plays type 1 (read unimaginative obnoxious basterd) (ok I dont know you at all but most of the hard core type 1 players I have ever known were absolute shits)
is in a room full of gamer geeks who have all (probably) had some negative experience with christans, a religeon that preaches tolerance for straight white christans only in spite of the fact that the phrase “judge not lest ye be judged” appears in the bible about two hundred times, gets all in a huff over the fact that they are talking shit about christans?

so are you a troll?
or is this a big fat Whoosh?
cause I smell sarcasm at some pretty fantastic levels in here.
yes I know there are some really cool people out there who claim to be christan, unfortunatly for you so do some complete assholes.

35

And there are some complete asshole atheists. What’s your point?

:rolleyes:

36

When I was in high school, my family changed denominations from a rather conservative and intolerant one because my sister and I refused to attend any longer due to what was being preached and taught there. We ended up with the United Church of Christ, which among other things, explicitly allows for the ordination of gays and lesbians as pastors. I’m afraid I don’t know about the policies of many other denominations, though.

When you swing a wide brush around, you unfairly tar many non-bigoted people in the process.

37

You, Guin are no doubt one crackerjack pro-gay advocate. But where are your ads to counter the antigay crowd? Where is the voice of the pro-gay church?

38

Are anti-gay ads permitted in America ?

39

I don’t know where BlackKnight lives, but may I suggest that location may play a role in this issue?

I went to high school in a town that was almost entirely fundamentalist Christian (mostly Mormon, a few baptists), and the effect was profound. I was ostrasized, badly beaten (twice requiring hospital stays), threatened, accused of Satenism, etc… The most positive reaction I got to my atheism was blank incomprehesion. After four years of being treated as, at best, mentally defective, or, at worst, a morally degenerate mortal threat, I don’t think I could have uttered a sentence that included “Christian” without the word “fucking” included. Those were some bad times, and I had neither the physical or emotional distance to be able to vent my pain and rage at particular Christians, rather than the whole group. I’ve met other people trapped in similar situations and I sympathsize with their emotions.

Now, more than a decade later, with 11 years in New York (where people could really give a rat’s ass about atheism), I don’t have any particular problems with Christianity. I’ve read some Christian works with attention and approval (Screwtape Letters, anyone?). I, and most of my good friends, think that religion in general is sort of absurd, but I would NOT be happy with anyone flinging vitrol about it, especially in mixed company.

My (rather circutuitous) point being that you might cut a little more slack for people who are threatened and alienated by the Christians surrounding them than for those who are just ragging on a religious group different from themselves.

mischievous

40

Why did this turn into a rant against gay-bashers? This was a rant about people bashing Christianity.

The OP explicitely stated that he put up with the people’s rude comments but he was bothered by them, despite not being a Christian at all. Just because Christianity isn’t a minority religion doesn’t mean it’s right and proper to bash it. How can those who claim that they are being intolerated against have a leg to stand on when they turn around and do the same?