Yeah. Kinda like slaves wanted to tear down a thousands of years old, morally justified (well, rationalized anyway), culturally ingrained institution. The nerve of some people !
How so ? Are gay banditos interrupting your Sunday morning church, sneaking in covertly and SUDDENLY PENISES ? Are you being forbidden from spouting your antigay nonsense or otherwise sued or gag-ordered over it ? Are you posting from a Gay Gulag ?
Free exercise of religion means you and your brethren get to congregate and hold mass, prayer sessions, catechism and what have you without fear of repercussions from the State, which is in fact beholden to protect such assemblies from other external threats and disruptions.
It doesn’t mean you get to impose your religion or its morality (and understand I use that word in the loosest of terms, because gay-bashing is neither moral nor a Christian value) on everyone else.
I kinda think it is a Christian value, wot? It’s certainly well-enough established, and if the only real Christian values are a generalized acceptance and tolerance and love of all mankind, etc., well… I kinda wish somebody would remind modern Christians of it.
I am Christianity. Hath not Christianity eyes? Hath not Christianity hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?
Well, no.
You appear to be equating attacks on a person with attacks on a religion. Perhaps you are upset when people provide reasons why Christianity (and other religions) is false. Perhaps you feel upset by people describing the harm Christianity has done through the past 2,000 years or so.
I don’t recall you providing arguments for the truth of your religion. If you want to believe on faith, that’s fine. But your unwillingness to defend your religion (I assume you are capable of doing so) does not mean that our attacks on its truth are persecution. Or should religion be excluded from the realm of debate?
My great-grandparents came to this country due to persecution by Christians about 130 years ago. The persecution they faced was a bit more severe than too emphatic arguments in the village square.
Well, for one thing, plenty of Christian groups don’t have any truck with it (whereas precious few discount, say, the Lord’s Prayer or the Sermon on the Mount). The Pope himself, the current one at any rate, is even enjoining his rather considerable flock to tone that shit down for being off message.
So, since you demonstrably can be a good Christian and not a bigot, bigotry is not a Christian value, ipso facto, QED, that’s what she said.
For another, it’s simply not much of a thing in the gospels (the OT is a different story, but of course Christians don’t much care about the OT in general outside of quote mining purposes). You find me a quote by Jesus (NOT Paul, the dude had issues) against gays, I’ll be happy to revise my opinion.
But as far as I know, what *he *said was “let whoever is without sin cast the first stone, come on you pansies if ye think yer hard enough, who’s got the balls to cast a fucking stone now ? Yeah I didn’t think so”.
Well, then you get into parsing how a value qualifies as a Christian value, i.e.
[ul][li]Does it have to be shared by all Christians? Would a majority suffice?[/li][li]Is it routinely being taught by some Christians to younger Christians?[/li][li]Is it routinely advanced in Christian sermons delivered in Christian churches?[/li][li]Are there Christians who say it’s a Christian value and act accordingly, i.e. seeking the encode the value into law?[/ul][/li]
It’s cool if the Pope is okay with gays. Now convince the rest of them.
But you haven’t remarked upon Shodan’s mean-spirited attacks on atheist whining. I wouldn’t take that to mean that you’re hypocritically calling Lobohan out and sparing Shodan - should I?
Bricker should absolutely be required to challenge attacks on atheists with the exact same vigor as challenging attacks on Christians, just like the ACLU should be required to pursue 2nd Amendment cases with the exact same vigor as they give to other Amendment-related cases.
Actually Bob Jones Jr. was right about a couple of Popes. I don’t know about demon possessed but they were rather despicable. Some Protestant fundamentalists were (and are) too. The foundation of Christianity is pure, noble and perfect. As with any beautiful thing, just let humankind get hold of it and we’ll find a way to mangle and pervert it. Quite sure God is pretty mad about that.
To borrow a phrase from the President, however, let’s be clear about what “this thinking” is. I say that poor argument, poor conduct, and personal attacks ought to be condemned even more vociferously by the people from whose side of the political aisle the attacks originate, especially when that poor conduct has gone otherwise unremarked. And I have spent many posts arguing for that.
No, he’s not. He’s calling for a definition to be agreed upon, stating simply that existing definitions are “divergent.” He says nothing about whether any of these existing definitions have a threshold or not, at least not in the article summary.
When I say, “He’s calling for such a threshold to be implemented,” I mean he is calling for his particular proposed threshold (“the illegitimate infliction of sufficiently severe harm”) to be implemented.
You can’t cite his article --as you seemed to – for the proposition that “the illegitimate infliction of sufficiently severe harm,” is ALREADY the threshold:
You cite the author’s “sufficiently severe harm,” threshold as the existing threshold, or at least seem to. But he’s proposing it, not claiming it already exists.
I think you’re high. I mean, sure, in an ideal world that might happen, maybe. But you’re suggesting that I and others are somehow persecutory when we do not “vociferously condemn” everyone who acts like a dick about religion or Christianity. I’m nto sure I can buy that.
Fine. I’m not sure who he’s proposing it to, or who would accept it, or who writes these things down. But here’s a guy who’s given thought to what “persecution” actually means, and his conclusion is in line with how I’ve always personally defined it. Got any cites from law-talking guys who are proposing simplistic, dictionary-based definitions be adopted? Still think my 7-year-old is persecuting me?