"All Christians aren't like that!"

There's something I understand better now than I used to back when I was self-identifying as a theist. I, too, was really upset that atheists were so prejudiced and bigoted and just pigeonholed any religious people they knew and assumed that if you aren't an atheist, you're an enemy. Or something.

I understand marginalization and privilege a little better now, though. Only some of it is from beginning to identify as an atheist. A lot of it's stuff I've heard from LGBT people and people of color and feminists and just... y'know, people who have experience with this stuff. Here's what I've learned about generalizing about the members (or affiliates) of organizations that hate me (or you, or someone else, or whoever).

It's hard sometimes, when someone walks up wearing the badge and uniform of one's oppressors, to assume that they don't want to be associated with the other people wearing it. It's hard for me (for example) to see someone who self-identifies as Catholic and not see an ally of the homophobia, misogyny, and just general callousness that characterizes that organization. They may not personally hate women or gays or child rape victims, but they're comfortable affiliating with an organization that plainly does, and I have to wonder at that rate whether they're true allies.

Sadly, that type of Christianity is still setting the tone in a lot of the country. While I'm supportive of the efforts of other Christians to clean up their image, I no longer feel like I should suffer at the hands of the Christian cultural system and simultaneously do their PR for them. When more Christians are like Quakers, I'll talk about them like more of them are Quakers.

I get that it's got to suck having people running around acting a fool who are using teachings from the same book as you are to do some terrible things to innocent people. It always sucks to feel like someone else has enough control over your reputation to screw with it by being bigots and just generally showing their whole ass to the world.

That's the thing, though, about continuing to wear the badge and uniform of a group that--for a lot of people--has done them nothing but personal and very tangible harm. Depending on how badly they've been hurt and for how long and how much hope they have left, they might just assume that you're an ally to the people who hurt them. They're not assuming this because they're bigoted, or bullies, or intolerant. They're assuming it because they're tired of giving chances to people who put on that uniform and then getting kicked in the face for it. So... they stop taking the risk.

I'm not quite there yet, but I've seen people get there, and it's hard for me to begrudge them. It's not hate. It's hurt, and it's weariness, and they're right. They should never have had to always be the one giving out chance after chance after chance to people who didn't take it. It's hard exhausting work, and the people I know who've given up on trying to find common ground with Christians? That's why.

So this is why I've stopped saying, "Not all straight/cis/white/etc. people are like that! Please only talk about your painful experiences in a way that protects my feelings!" and it's why I think it'd be great if Christians did, too.

Agora

Just watched Agora, a movie that I heard about from the entries about it at The Wild Hunt.

I can't speak too confidently about the historical Hypatia (nor do I particularly expect this movie to do so, because it probably doesn't). Near as I can tell from totally cursory Googling on the subject, not only was Hypatia's religious affiliation not relevant to the circumstances of her death, but she herself was barely relevant. She could have been anybody sufficiently important to Orestes. He had pissed off Cyril (who was kind of a big deal at the time) and Hypatia happened to be an appealing target for a revenge killing.

So... I wanted to say first off that I'm not really inclined to believe anybody who says, "Hypatia was killed by nasty misogynist anti-intellectual Christians because she was an educated and independent Pagan!" or anybody who says, "Hypatia was killed by nasty misogynist anti-intellectual Christians because she was an educated and independent atheist!" Near as I can tell, she was killed for being there.

There's my take on the historical Hypatia. People who have actually spent some study on her will know more about her than I do, though, so if they post in the comments and say I'm wrong, y'all should probably listen to them instead of me. I just wanted to touch on the actual real person we are talking about here so that I could talk separately about Hypatia The Character In The Movie Agora.

Hypatia The Character In The Movie Agora was a total atheist, you guys. I am sort of confused and amused and a litle dismayed by how many Pagans seem to have watched this movie and thought, "Ah! Look what the Christians did to us! They always do this to us Pagans!" Bonus points if they then go on to say some bullshit about the Burning Times (when some arbitrarily-large number of totally undeniably really real actual witches were burned alive by Christians).

Movie!Hypatia got along with Pagans a great deal better than with Christians, it's true. Historically speaking, Christians have not made very good neighbors, either literally or ideologically. So yeah, she got along better with the Pagans, but that doesn't make her one.

I've been a practicing Pagan since I started giving a damn about religion at all--so since I was about ten or eleven. Just long enough to make my parents sound ridiculous when they say it's a phase (which they evidently still think it is). I went to school in a small town where parents didn't want their children talking to me because I was a servant of the devil. The school administrators saw me as a disruptive presence because of the books I read while I sat by myself at lunch, which they took and never returned. So I get it, really I do, that Pagans aren't wanted in Christian-dominated areas.

I've also been comfortable identifying as an atheist for a few years now, too. I identify with a group that was recently found to be the least trusted minority in the USA, which I find incomprehensible but hard to deny.

Every now and again I'll watch a movie that makes me feel small, and angry, and a little unsafe. The last one I watched was actually the Stepford Wives (the new one, which I actually thought was hilarious and terrifying), and now this. It wasn't because it called to memory the myth of the Burning Times, or the time when good Christian friends and neighbors taught their children to be frightened of me.

It was because we get to watch someone be cast aside by her political allies and be stoned to death by Christians because she--the character, mind you--is an unrepentant atheist and that makes her a problem. My friends and cousins with whom I share religious practice, it's not about you this time. It's about a character whose dedication to philosophy (basically equated here to "science") was considered unwomanly, ungodly, unacceptable, and unworthy of being allowed to live.

You have to twist this pretty hard to see anything but the character of Hypatia flying her atheist flag right out in the audience's faces.

CHRISTIAN: The majority of us here… have accepted Christ. Why not the rest of you? It’s only a matter of time and you know it.

HYPATIA: Really? It is just a matter of time? …As far as I am aware, your God has not yet proved himself to be more just or more merciful than his predecessors. Is it really just a matter of time before I accept your faith?

CHRISTIAN: Why should this assembly accept the council of someone who admittedly believes in absolutely nothing?

HYPATIA: I believe in philosophy.

Can't tell you how many times I or other atheists I know have had to have the "how can you not believe in anything" conversation.

Hypatia, the real woman who lived and was killed, may well have been a woman of Pagan faith. Someone better versed in the history of the woman could speak to that better than I. This character in this movie, though, is an atheist. Anybody who can ignore that is probably trying to. Is this version of her historically accurate? I wouldn't put money on it, no. But this version of her is an atheist, and it's weird to watch it after reading the reviews of Pagans who are sure it's all about them, and find myself watching a very different movie than the one they seemed to be describing.

Maybe I just wasn't watching it through their CHRISTIANS HATE US PAGANS MORE THAN ANYONE goggles. Because y'know what? They don't. They hate Pagans, all right, but not more than anyone. At least you believe in something (read: some form of deity), right? How can they trust someone who doesn't even manage that?

This is a humanist propaganda film. Say what you will about whether that's a good thing, but if you can miss that and somehow reread it as a story of Pagan persecution by the mean old monotheists, you need to watch it again and pay attention to the parts where Christians are murdered by Pagans, Pagans are murdered by Christians, Jews are murdered by Christians, Christians are murdered by Jews, more Jews are murdered by Christians, and a self-described atheist is the only one who says that they're all more like than different and have nothing to fight over so can we please talk about astronomy now kthx.

It's a humanist fantasy with a humanist martyr and Agora departs so far from history that I have to wonder how the hell all these Pagans missed its obvious agenda.

Ended up posting this someplace today.

This is my obligatory reminder to the internet that I am an angry feminist madwoman who believes that the person who has the final legitimate say on whether a pregnancy continues is the person who is pregnant.

Why people need to stop telling me that life begins at conception because that's when babby gets soul.

Being pro-life is a position I understand completely. It's a personal choice for many women that they would never get an abortion and can't understand how anybody else could. These women should not ever be forced to get abortions, which is why pro-choicers (and I think that doing a lot of activism for Planned Parenthood, I can speak with some authority on what pro-choicers tend to argue for) disapprove of compulsory sterilization and compulsory abortion. A woman whose personal convictions are strongly against abortion should never be forced to get one, because that is what informed consent is all about. That is what bodily autonomy is all about.

When it verges over into anti-choice territory, though, things start getting dodgy. When we start arguing that a pregnant woman is not morally mature enough to be trusted with the decision of whether to stay pregnant? Dodgy.

Furthermore, as far as the whole "life begins at conception" thing, that's not a scientific or medically-founded point. How do I know this?

Obstetricians define a pregnancy as starting at implantation (which is the point when the zygote sticks to the inside wall of the uterus). They do this because this is the point at which the woman's body acknowledges that it is pregnant and that it needs to start adjusting.

This isn't a political stance on their part so that they can help Planned Parenthood get women their whore pills. This is a medical judgement based on when a woman's body begins to behave "pregnant." The pregnancy doesn't start at fertilization, because in many cases the zygote will fail to implant and the woman won't even know that the egg she's flushing with this period was fertilized. Spiritual life as you define it begins at fertilization, but the pregnancy doesn't start until implantation.

I suspect that the medical argument isn't your primary point, though, so I'll address the theological angle.

I am always sort of puzzled by the whole allegedly-Biblical view that life begins at conception. I've been giving it some thought based on what I remember from the Bible study I did in college and looked some stuff up and wanted to bring what I pulled together.

RE: Life beginning at conception. Yes, I realize that it is Catholic dogma that this is the case. The Catholic Church also only admitted about forty years ago that the Earth revolves around the sun. Are we really going to use them as a science authority? I mean, I guess you can. I won't be. But this isn't even a scriptural or Biblically-founded point they are making. That stuff is NOT in the Bible.

So what's actually in the Bible? When does a human acquire a soul? Well, let's ask when Adam was alive. When God breathed life into him.

Genesis 2:7 “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”

This is why, for a very long time historically, a woman's fetus was not considered an autonomous human being until it took its first breath. It's only when science gave us a view into what actually happens in the uterus that Christian churches had to start figuring out when this thing became a human with a soul.

At no point does any secular governing body have any call making law based on who has a soul and who doesn't. I certainly hope that in this thread we can agree on that much. However, for those Biblical literalists who care more about getting on Santa's Nice List than they do about what godless obstetricians say, I refer you back to Genesis. A fetus is a baby when it takes its first breath. Even Adam wasn't human before that.

Surprise surprise, Bible-thumping anti-choicers need to lern2Bible before pulling out their half-understood regurgitated dogma. Unless you're a Roman Catholic, your own Iron Age obstetrics manual (harr harr) points out that breath is life. Even the word "spirit" in Hebrew means "breath."

“There is a spirit [Hebrew, ruach, breath] in man: and the inspiration [breathing in] of the Almighty gives them understanding. ... The spirit [Hebrew, ruach, breath] of God has made me, and the breath of the Almighty has given me life.” -Job 32:8 and 33:4.

So seriously, to the "life at conception cuz YHWH said so" regurgitating fundies: go get some formal Bible education and then come back and tell me what it says.

It's probably obvious that the Biblical view doesn't actually hold any water with me. I prefer to use obstetrics texts that were written after the advent of modern medicine. However, I know there are a lot of people who do care about what the Bible says about what we are, who we are, and how we should live. I also know that many such people haven't had opportunity to actually sit down and do formal study of this book that rules their lives, and have to simply believe what church authorities and their parents tell them is true.

So yeah. If you want to decide how to live based on what the Bible says, I'm gonna think you're a little nuts, but at least find out what's in the book before you start making decisions and constricting the decisions of others and make sure that it's really telling you what you've been TOLD it tells you.

Heinous victim-blaming, slut-shaming crap.

Someone on my FB page asked for my thoughts on this article, in which the reprehensible "No means yes, yes means anal" rape apologism at Yale is blamed on the sexual license argued for by feminists. Yes, that's right. It's all the uppity bitches' fault.

A group of mostly female students is suing Yale University for allowing a “sexually hostile environment” to exist on campus.

The women, of course, have a point. After all, when frat boys are allowed to parade around the old campus chanting “No Means Yes,” or to hold up signs that read “We Love Yale Sluts,” I guess you could say that’s a sexually hostile environment.

But may I ask a question? What did you expect?

The rage, it knows no bounds.

I think this man is an asshole who is bitter on behalf of all jilted men that women are fighting for the right to fuck, but not with him. I mean, look at this.

The disgusting, intimidating behavior at Yale -- and on many college campuses -- is a classic example of the post-modern impasse. For nearly 50 years, academia, the feminist movement, and post-modern society have embraced sexual freedom as the ultimate good.

And the feminists led the way. They wanted to control their bodies; to be free from any consequences of sexual license.

He completely misses the point that women want to control their bodies, even though it's right there in his own description of their goals. The goal of feminism was never that women's bodies ought to be treated like public property; that is in fact the PRECISE WORLDVIEW that feminism is still fighting.

This asshole seems to think it's perfectly natural and inevitable that uppity women who have the nerve to do what they like with their sexuality should be treated like disposable whores, there for the taking by any man.

As far as I can tell, Colson literally CANNOT envision a world in which female sexuality is not controlled by somebody other than the woman herself. He presents an utterly insane and backward choice for women--either you let Jesus own your sexuality, or it will lay there unclaimed and men will just rape you all the time because you don't belong to anybody.

"Does the Christian view of sex promote intimidation, harassment, and brutish behavior like we’re seeing at Yale, or does it promote moral and ethical virtue?"

By treating female sexuality as something which must always be in the possession and under the control of a man, it certainly does promote intimidation, harassment, and brutish behavior. By treating this as the natural outgrowth of women thinking they can just walk around like they're human beings with a right to do things other than powerspawn babies for their husband and Jesus, he reinforces the slut-shaming and depersonalization of women who fuck that is the very basis of the rape culture we live in.

This man is an asshole. He is an asshole, he is an asshole, he is an asshole, and if you want the most obvious indication that he is an asshole, he is blaming feminism for the culture of degradation and rape on college campuses INSTEAD OF BLAMING THE RAPISTS. Why? Well, because boys will be boys, and it's always the woman's fault if she gets raped. She had to have done something to ask for it, right? Like demand the right to vote, to have or deny sex, to hold a job, to decide not to have children. The natural outgrowth of the fight for women to have these things is not RAPE. That is the natural outgrowth of SOMEONE BEING A RAPIST.

Blood Sacrifice

Upon reading the afterword to Letter to a Christian Nation I got to thinking about blood sacrifice. It's not necessary for you to read this link, and I'm not even necessarily wanting a discussion about the link; I'm just giving context.

Here's where my head is right now, though. In the days when Judaism and Christianity were having their major cultural foundations laid, the people depicted in the Scriptures in question were certainly a product of their times. Those people had certain expectations about how exchanges with supernatural beings worked. There was an unquestioned assumption about the rightful place of blood sacrifice that we really don't tend to have today. The assumption was that blood was a (literal or symbolic) manifestation of life itself, and that giving this to a divine figure would please it.

From this widespread assumption seems to spring everything from Abel's sheep to Abraham's son to Jesus himself. Without the assumption that blood sacrifice and offerings of live creatures is pleasing to a deity, the whole system falls apart. It seems to me that part of the reason why the "Jesus Christ died for your sins" narrative falls flat for a lot of people is that a lot of people just don't understand anymore why there was anything about that in "the rules" to begin with. They don't even understand why YHWH wants blood, let alone how big a deal it was that his own son was offered up. The "why" of it is lost because we aren't supposed to give blood to our gods anymore. Aside: if you think blood sacrifice is still considered part of polite religious worship, consider how afraid people are of Santeria for doing what Jewish and Christian scriptures clearly state gods want us to do.

For me personally, this means that while the "God spilled the blood of his only-begotten son to pay the blood debt humanity owed for their sins" narrative had broad resonance at the time (because basically every culture shared the assumption that a sin was a debt owed to the gods which could be repaid in blood), it has no meaning or place in societies where blood sacrifice is considered something that "savages" (word used with full scare quotes because I'm an anthropologist and can't say "savages" unironically anymore) do. If Christianity is dying, it is because the most central assumption that makes the whole thing work just doesn't have any relevance anymore.

Now, I'm anticipating somebody with a Christian background saying, "Well, the crucifixion was such a badass sacrifice that it ended the time of blood sacrifice, and nobody ever need repay YHWH in blood again." I think this is dodging the issue. The issue is that your potential converts probably don't understand why there ever needed to be a sacrifice in the first place, because they weren't raised to believe that blood sacrifice is Just What People Do. These people need to be convinced first that blood sacrifice is a natural and desirable thing, and I don't think Christians can make that case. Please feel free to prove me wrong if I'm underestimating you.

If the rule is that divine powers can be propitiated with blood, whose rule is that? Did YHWH make that rule, or is it a rule totally external to YHWH by which YHWH is bound? Seems most likely to me that it's the latter. It's a rule external to YHWH by which YHWH is bound because that's how humans thought they had to be interacting with gods. YHWH is a god. Therefore we have to interact with it by giving it blood. If we really seriously screw up big time or just really want to say "I love you" in a big way, we have to give YHWH particularly awesome blood.

For ancient people this was a serious "well duh" sort of a thing, but lots of people don't think like this anymore. Even the idea that someone else can rightly pay for the sins of another is considered unjust and barbaric by lots and lots of people. For Christianity to remain relevant, then the practice of valuing blood sacrifice has to be explained, justified, and thereby preserved for your religion to even be intelligible to modern people. Can you?

Stop Defending the Catholic Church: Day 4

Day Four (the day you were waiting for): The Church Loves Child Rapists

A 9 year old Brazilian girl was repeatedly raped by her stepfather and impregnated with twins: a pregnancy for which the word "dangerous" might as well have been invented. The local archbishop didn't see fit to excommunicate the rapist, but the mother and doctors who terminated the pregnancy clearly had grievously offended god. And no, this wasn't just some outlier whacko. The Vatican backed him up on it.

WI bishops opposed Wisconsin legislation to repeal the statute of limitations on child abuse cases. Whom does that one help, eh? They don't like sex abuse legislation in Connecticut or New York or the D.C. area or Denver or basically anywhere.

New Report Shows Extent of Priest Abuse in Chicago

The percentage of parishes and institutions ministered by credibly accused priests approached 25% in the mid-1990's. In 2009, one in five institutions in the archdiocese still had a credibly accused priest in residence.

"This study raises deeply troubling questions about the way credibly accused priests were sent to parishes and residences. The concentration of assignments in certain areas, the clustering of multiple pedophiles in the same place, and the total absence of assignments to parishes or institutions in other areas, all suggest that assignments were not made strictly in response to changing pastoral needs. The question of what criteria were applied to the assignment of these priests remains to be answered. It is painfully clear that these assignments were not accidental."

Another article on the RCC's habit of relocating predator priests to unsuspecting communities rather than firing them.

The Kansas City Catholic Diocese chooses not to tell the police that one of their priests--who, it should be noted, had received complaints about the way he behaved around children--had a stash of kiddie porn on his computer, and on his very own personal camera.

The Cloyne Report describes the failures of one particularly nasty diocese.

At the launch of the report, the Minister for Children Frances Fitzgerald expressed “sincere sympathy with those who have suffered”; offered an apology “for the failings of the state”; and condemned the response of the Cloyne diocese for displaying a culture of “astonishing non-compliance”. Fitzgerald also criticised the Vatican’s response to the crisis, saying that that it was evident its “sole concern was the protection of the institution – not the children”.

When, yeah. I think we knew that.

Cardinal Egan, former Archbishop of New York, once said, “If in hindsight we also discover that mistakes may have been made as regards prompt removal of priests and assistance to victims, I am deeply sorry.” But ten years later he's decided that actually no, he never should have said that because he isn't fuckin' sorry. Cute!

Some 200 Catholic priests suspected of sexual abuse--but not convicted--are living undetected in communities across California, according to an attorney who represents hundreds of plaintiffs who sued the LA Archdiocese alleging molestation they say was inflicted on them by priests and clergy of the church. Trigger warning for explicit ddescription of sexual abuse.

An Australian Bishop indicated that an inquiry into the suicide rate of victims of Catholic priests' sexual abuse was not needed. Here's the money quote: "I think we've learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what's not appropriate behaviour," Bishop Connors said. I'm glad that it only took twenty six of a single priest's victims committing suicide to get to this point! They just didn't realize before that a priest shouldn't be having sexual contact with children, but they get it now, honest, so they're quite sure no investigation is needed.

A German Catholic priest has admitted 280 counts of sexual abuse involving three boys in the past decade, saying he did not think he was doing harm. Oh, well, okay then. I mean, if nobody told him that this wasn't cool I guess I can sort of NO. NO WHAT THE FUCK. What's he waiting for, some arbitrarily-large number of his victims to commit suicide?

The Vatican is arguing the following things as reasons why Benedict shouldn't be deposed: "that the pope has immunity as a head of state; that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren’t employees of the Vatican," etc. Not "we didn't do this and you have no evidence," but "the pope has diplomatic immunity so nyah."

Another good defense: Blame the Jews! ...Somehow. There are some other hilarious scapegoats listed here.

But you know what, even if they refuse to accept any responsibility or accountability from outside organizations or governments, the Catholic Church puts the right people on the job to investigate these things when they can, people who really care about protecting kids. Oh wait no.

If you missed it, here's Day One: The Church Hates Gays, and Day Two: The Church Hates Women and Day Three: The Church Hates Africa.

Someone's Got to Set an Example

Thousands of people in Finland have left their church over recent anti-gay remarks.

This is what it looks like when a church is held accountable to members for its anti-gay rhetoric. Huge love to the former members of Finland's Evangelical-Lutheran and Orthodox Churches for actually DEMONSTRATING that this matters to them instead of whining and making excuses like Americans.

Meanwhile the suicides of two more gay teenagers have hit the news.

17-Year-Old Gay Teen Terrel Williams Kills Himself Following After-School Attack

Corey Jackson. 19. Gay. College Student. Killed Himself on Tuesday.

I want all those people who wore purple two days ago to think long and hard about what they're actually willing to do to show solidarity with these kids, or whether they were just looking for a pat on the back and an ego boost for themselves on Wednesday.

If your denomination has made anti-gay statements, show a little backbone and demonstrate that these stories matter to you. I'm tired of choking on the insincerity and excuses from people who claim their hearts are breaking, but won't so much as stop attending churches that preach the very hatred and disdain that feeds this bullying.

Dan Savage is a problematic figure for a lot of reasons (so I'm by no means saying I agree with him on everything forever), but he had it right when he said the following:

The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children. (...)

You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Stop attending churches you disagree with about homosexuality. Stop dragging your children to churches that are teaching them to hate other kids, or themselves. Stop telling me how much you love your gay friends, and then faithfully attending lectures on how depraved and inverted and unworthy they are.

Show a little backbone and stand behind those convictions, or stop asking for pats on the back for having them. Having them isn't enough. Burden of proof is on you. Nobody is going to believe what you say if you're contradicting it by what you do--or don't do.

Much love to the Finns here. Hopefully Americans will learn from this example.

About Moderation

This entry started as a comment on this entry about what "Progressive Christian" actually means. It's a subject about which I've given a lot of thought, and I've held this opinion for a pretty long time before being willing to say anything about it. There's a lot that I believe that I'm unwilling to say, for fear of alienating people who would otherwise be my allies.

Isn't that silly? Once I really looked at it, I realized what a condescending and nasty thing that is for me to think about my moderate theist friends. If you learn what I really think, you'll stop caring whether the courts blame rape victims, whether our judicial system executes an inordinate number of mentally-challenged and black or latino convicts, or whether gays ever have equal contractual rights in this country. You'll stop fighting with me if you hear the things that I didn't want to hear back when I was a theist.

I didn't, though. When I was a theist, I listened. Eventually. Brian can attest that it took a lot of time and patience on both of our parts before we came to a meeting-place on the question, but I didn't abandon the people and causes I cared about, so I'm going to trust the people reading this not to do it either.

See, when theism was still something I was down with, I'd get kind of butthurt when atheists lumped all religious people together and said that anybody who believes in a God is failing to get it, is unwilling to face their beliefs head-on and really question them, and is enshrining a dangerous irrationality. I hated it when I was painted as complicit in the social evils perpetuated by conservative religion. After all, I was a friendly science-loving atheist-dating Pagan. That stuff had nothing to do with me, and I was actively involved in fighting the tide of hatred and bigotry that came from those other traditions.

I thought, "What does this have to do with me? Don't they know that not all theists are like that? Some of us like you guys!"

I think it's the kind of argument that takes a while to really sink in. For example, I know guys who seriously have failed to understand why I didn't want to walk someplace alone at night. If I say, "Listen, if you were a woman and you lived with a target on your back and an entire culture ready to blame you for getting hurt because you weren't aware enough of that, you would refuse to go anyplace alone, too," the correct response is not, "Yeah, I mean, I see what you're saying, but you gotta understand. Not all men are like that, and it kind of hurts my feelings that you look at us all the same way."

To contrast, I've had guy friends who say, "Oh. Shit, you're right. Hang on, I'll get my coat." They didn't say that not all men are saddled with a sense of entitlement that drives them to do everything from trivialize sexual assault to actually commit it. They didn't say that. They didn't tell me. They showed me.

So what does this have to do with religion? If you're not sort of seeing where I'm going, let me make it a little clearer. I don't care anymore when people say "Not all X are like that," if they're not showing me. White people can't stop being white. We're a group of people who share a privilege whether we choose it or not. Men can't choose to stop being men. They're a group of people who share a privilege whether they choose to or not. Can we really say that Christians are similarly stuck? Or can they do more to show the victims of their privilege than white people, or men?

Can more be asked of people whose privileged position is based on VOLUNTARY factors like religious affiliation? I think it can. I think if you're choosing to be part of the dominant group, then you are a different sort of animal than the people who are born with privilege printed on their skin. Religious affiliation is a choice, no matter your beliefs. Ask Jimmy Carter. Ask Anne Rice. Ask any of the other followers of Christ who finally got tired of apologizing for the cultural system they're feeding and just finally DITCHED it altogether.

It’d certainly be POSSIBLE (not probable, but possible) to redeem Christianity and reshape it into the mold of progressive thought that I know a lot of Christians would find more palatable. But if we’re going to start deliberately molding and changing the religion to fit our beliefs, why NOT start from scratch? If the tradition needs so much change for it to be workable for progressive Christians, what exactly is their attachment to it in the first place?

I know there are moderate Christians who are trying to reform its myriad sects from within. What they’re doing is good. However, they still seem to me (as an outsider) to be more attached to keeping a Christian identity than they are to creating lasting cultural change. I mean, if suppressing women and hating LGBT people isn’t a dealbreaker when it comes to associating with a certain group, then what is? Is it too much for me to ask that people stop associating with a major world religion like the RCC until its holy men are assaulting children at a rate LOWER than the rest of the population?

I acknowledge the reformers’ hard work, but I can’t see it being sufficient. Until reforming Christianity seems like a faster or more effective way to fix the broken-ass homophobic and misogynist culture that Christianity currently feeds… then I’m not going to do their PR for them and disclaim everything I say with “but I know not all churches are like this.” If them reforming their own broken and terrible organizations relies on the cooperative efforts of the people they’re hurting in order to clean up their PR… then sorry. I guess they’re screwed, and I have a hard time regretting it.

And besides. Christian organizations and churches are not going to clean up their act until they know that their members are willing and able to vote with their feet. As long as people are content to stay with the group no matter what, Christian organizations have no incentive to reform. I don’t know if there are many self-identified workers for reform who are happy to see people like Anne Rice or Jimmy Carter voting with their feet, but unless churches realize that this is a very real risk, they won’t be listening to the reformers anytime soon. Why would they?

It’s the same reason that the DNC doesn’t listen to LGBT activists and allies. They know we’ll never vote Republican, so why appease us? They’ve got us forever. It’s not until they realize that we need to be appeased that they’ll ever start to try. The difference is that in a two-party system, LGBT people have nowhere else to go. Christians who want to find less poisonous religious organizations have plenty to pick from, so there’s no excuse not to join an LGBT-friendly congregation for the people who actually care.

The author of the blog post upon which I initially commented has another entry that goes a little further than I'm currently willing to, but which still really resonates with me. It's here, entitled Moderate Religion - Two Lies in One.

Moderate Christianity is deceptively alluring because of its seemingly scientific basis. Most educated Christians have no problem admitting that there’s something to evolutionary science, and they have no problem admitting that the earth is very old, and that dinosaurs once roamed about. In fact, if you get a good Moderate Christian into a theological discussion, they will almost inevitably tell you that they believe questions are good, and that any thinking person ought to question what they believe.

Forgive me, but the devil is in the details, and they’re missing a very, very important detail. The admission that questions ought to be asked makes it seductively simple to believe that moderate Christianity is ok, and doesn’t hurt anyone. Maybe it’s even helpful in some way. The problem, and the main point of this essay, is that questioning is not ok for moderate Christians. I can prove it. Next time you’re talking to a moderate, try getting them onto the nature of god. If you’re any good at debate, you can quickly steer them to one of the half dozen paradoxes inherent in god belief. Once you get them there, note how quickly they will revert to the position, “There are some things you just have to take on faith.” If you press them into explaining why, they will get defensive. They will probably end the discussion very quickly.

The simple, indisputable fact is that any god belief requires faith, and if you follow my writings at all, you know that “faith,” properly defined, is “belief in a thing despite evidence to the contrary, or a total lack of evidence.” Once you get them to the point of admitting that they hold a belief despite it’s opposition to reason, you can see that the facade of moderation is just that – a facade. At their core, they are exactly the same as fundamentalists. They just pick a more socially acceptable irrationality. What they really mean when they say you should question everything is that you should question everything – except for the validity of faith as a means of acquiring knowledge.

I know I'm quoting a lot here, and I apologize for leaving these great huge chunks of the other entry in here. However, for the link-phobic, I want you to understand why I'm including this.

Accepting the belief that some things are true and irrational is what gives a perception of validity to every religious belief. Right wing fundamentalists are crazy. These are people who are out of touch with reality. The reason they are not either publicly ridiculed or maybe even forcibly medicated is that they are given a free pass — because it’s religion. If people believed the Jolly Green Giant was making proclamations from the side of a can of vegetables, they would be examined by a psychologist. However, when they believe an invisible man in the sky tells them to kill abortion doctors, they’re politely encouraged to be a little more moderate.

The primary reason that moderates refuse to come out publicly against fundamentalists is the vulnerability of their own position. The really smart moderates know this, and I suspect that the rest sense it even if they can’t put their finger on it. The only way to effectively call out the fundamentalists is to challenge them on rational grounds. Moderates are too intellectually dishonest, or too scared, to apply logic to all questions, lest they have to give up the precious illusion that their own personal invisible friend will make everything ok for them. So, you see, the lie in Moderate Christianity is that it is moderate at all. It is not. It is, however, to use the colloquial term, chicken shit.

I'm not yet willing to blame the value on faith for all of our culture's ills. I'll say that right now. However, I do believe that faith can only exist under the same circumstances that allow racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia to exist. It requires that certain beliefs be above and beyond question, even if the person holding them also wishes to see themselves as rational (as, I think, most people do). I don't think faith is the root cause of all this rampant magical thinking, knee-jerk self-destructive loyalty and xenophobia, or prejudice. It's just another symptom of the same cowardice, the same unwillingness to really ask oneself a single crucial question.

"I know that I like this belief. But is it true?"

People of faith are not the cause of irrationality. However, because of their own love for their own pet delusions, they do tend to enable the irrationality of others whose insanity is far more dangerous in its impact. This... this I do resent, even if the faith they treasure is not itself a threat to me. I resent the other delusions protected by our reverence for faith. Faith may not be the root of our culture's ills, but defending faith defends those roots. By making it okay to build a worldview around an unquesetionable assumption and defending vocally the virtues of doing so, they unthinkingly (or perhaps uncaringly) defend the very premise behind what they tell me and tell me and tell me they're against.

They tell me and tell me and tell me, but this is what they show me.

Left Behind

A coworker mentioned at one point that she had the keys to the Kingdom, and that's what matters to her. She pointed to the nice Jewish fellow we work with and mentioned that he does as well. Pointedly no comment was made to me.

I said, "Well. My Kingdom's here. I got shit to do."

She replied... that she thought I'd be left behind as a teacher. That I have that light about me.

I know she probably meant this as a compliment (and given how often she compliments my fire and intellect and whatever, it seems likely), but man. I don't go to work to hang out with people whose highest available praise for me is that I'll be left behind after the Rapture.

*sigh* These people. I love my coworkers; I really do. This one woman, though, just drives me up the wall with this shit.

Dear Rapturist Christians: Find better ways of complimenting atheists or Pagans or... y'know. Generally other people who don't share your batshit insane views about when God's gonna beam us all up to the mothership of heavenly bliss, and who's not gonna get to come and what we'll be doing while you spend eternity playing Celestial Golf with Saint Fuckface, patron of Dumbass Zealots.

Huzzah!

MN Society of Friends wins at civil rights.

The congregation will continue to hold both opposite-sex and same-sex weddings at its meeting house, but will no longer sign the legal marriage certificate for opposite-sex couples. Instead, couples will need to have the certificate signed by a justice of the peace.

"Everything else proceeds as it normally has, except that we will not sign the marriage certificate," Landskroener said.

You go, guys.

(ht karjack via rm)

Catholic Bishops Enact Plan For “300,000 Terri Schiavos”

For fuck's sake, people.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops released an "Ethical and Religious Directive" this month that would ban any Catholic hospital, nursing home or hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending palliative procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an advance directive to guide their end-of-life care. The Bishops' directive even notes that patient suffering is redemptive and brings the individual closer to Christ. (...)

A 60Minutes piece this weekend looked at the cost of dying in America, showing that Medicare paid $50 billion in the last two months of patients' lives in 2008. Compassion & Choices focuses on the suffering at the end of life, not federal dollars, but they agree in general with the portrait shown by 60 Minutes. Incredibly, suffering is one of the selling points in the Catholic Bishops' directive. "It's quite specific about the role of suffering in Christian dogma," Coombs Lee explained. "It says that suffering is redemptive, that it's part of Christ's passion. So they are pretty clear on their concern for the suffering of the patient."

I don't need to say any of the things I'm thinking. You already know what they are.

(ht unusualmusic for this gem)

Surprising? No.

File this under "why I hear someone identifying as Christian and don't immediately think great things of them."

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill under consideration in Uganda was sparked by a conference in Kampala earlier this year at which fundamentalist Christians from the U.S. identified homosexuality as a threat to "family values".

The draconian law will institute the death penalty for "aggravated homosexuality" and criminalize human rights work.

Yeah. Tell me "not all Christians are like that" all you like, but you can't deny that there are Christians like that, and you can't deny that their Biblical justifications are no less valid than the ones used by people we like.

They may not be all Christians, but they're still real Christians, and they are why I don't trust people who identify as followers of the same religion. And, while I'm at it, this is why I don't trust Conservatives, either. You identify as a member of a group that does this, expect to be mistrusted by the people your fellow adherents wish were dead.

Just expect it. And if all you can do is complain about how this hurts your feelings, you can go fuck yourself.

You were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

- Galatians 5:13-14

Compare and contrast with the strongly-Christian Conservative movement.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled rational universe. Enjoy the fantasy while you can, if you're still living it.

But yes. Religion is more than Scripture. Religion is culture as well. If it weren't, Americans would have socialized medicine already, and it would be thanks to God-fearing compassionate Christians.

(And yes, if there were enough Christians on board with caring for their siblings in humanity, it would get done. Yes, it would. Don't tell me Christians don't have the power to get good shit done when they actually give a damn. I credit American Christianity with the abolition of slavery, for example. When they care about you, you're fine. When they don't, you know it. What has Christianity done for you lately?)

And here we are, after all this time.

I'm finally getting to the point where enough horrible shit has been done by Christian-identified groups in this country that I'm beginning to reflexively distrust them. Yes, I fully understand as well as any amateur theologian that Christianity is a religion capable of affirming the intrinsic value of human beings, and empowering oppressed people to protect themselves and the people they love.

But if you think that's what it generally does in America, you're living in a fantasy that I'd pay good money to enjoy again.

The Catholic Church spent half a million dollars lobbying against equal rights for LGBT residents of Maine. Never mind that whole "tax-exempt status means not lobbying" dealie. Never mind that whole "separation of church and state as a protection for both of them" bit. Never mind any of that horseshit in the Bible about service to one's fellow man and whatever is done to the least of us being done to Jesus.

No, let's just spend all our money keeping people down. It's what Jesus wants! And you know what? Jesus isn't here to speak for himself. The only voice we have for what Jesus wants--especially if you don't accept the whole "reanimated savior" narrative as unexaggerated fact--is this.

And no, you can't tell me those people "aren't real Christians," because you don't get to decide that. Certainly not if your religious leaders disagree with you.

What asking to be granted a disassociation from Christianity's spectrum and history that includes ugly things does on a practical level is expect marginalized people to pretend that none of the bad things that have been done to them in the name of Christianity have anything to do with actual Christians. (...)

Frankly, it's hurtful to me when Christians address what happened to me by saying, "Those aren't real Christians," expecting me to salve their discomfort about the baggage of privilege by not disagreeing. People who would never in a million years think to try to console a victim of a hate crime with "All [white/straight/cis/abled] people aren't like that!" nonetheless responded that way to me when I was targeted and threatened by droves of self-identified Christians.

I already know that all Christians aren't like that—and everyone who said it to me knew I was well aware of that fact. But in the wake of large members of a certain segment of Christianity attacking me, most of the Christians I knew felt obliged first and foremost to distance themselves from the group that hurt me, and do it in a way that protected their idea of Christianity, that reasserted their privilege—a privilege that is shared by the very people who attacked me, solely by virtue of their calling themselves Christians.

And they expected me to be comforted by it.

Christianity in this country strongly acts as a force for hate. Mad props to Christians who fight that, but if we're going to look at religion as a cultural system instead of simply a collection of ancient teachings, American Christianity is a cultural system that has become ugly as shit. I can't understand people who continue to identify with it.

I'm done saying that this isn't real Christianity. I'm done saying that this isn't what Jesus really wants. I'm done saying that "real" Christianity is so much more beautiful and loving and helpful to us all. Ideal Christianity (to me) is all of those things. It even exists, in small pockets. But I'm tired of letting an entire cultural system be represented by the single sliver that matches my ideology, even if it means seeing them more charitably.

Yes, this is a rant. I'm not being particularly considerate right now. I'm not protecting the feelings of Christians on my friends list right now. And right now I don't give a damn. I'm tired of hearing "not all Christians are like that!" I'm tired of hearing, "I may be Catholic/Mormon/whatever, but my church's leadership doesn't reflect my beliefs or speak for me."

I'm tired of people who disagree with what Christian groups are doing in this country coming along and responding to me with excuses, responding to the damage Christians are causing by doing their PR cleanup for them.

Ah, the Bible-beaters. They're back!

"You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." --Anne Lamott

So... Westboro Baptist Church is at it again, and this time in Indianapolis. On 09/24/2009, here's what they've got posted for their itinerary. I won't link the page where these times are listed, since it contains a lot of awful and potentially-triggering idiocy. Here are the bare bones:

1:15 PM - 1:45 PM 238 S. Meridian

2:10-2:40 6701 Hoover Rd

2:55-3:30 1801 E 86th St (N. Central HS)

These people are so venomous and heinous that other countries have decided they're not allowed out of America. As if they belong HERE, either...

I wouldn't necessarily suggest a counter-protest, because it's probably far better if they feel like they wasted their time coming to a city that didn't even know they were here. People who see WBC shaming our country might get some context from it for what LGBT people put up with if nothing else.

If you really feel called to counter-protest, try and collect a few dollars while you're there for the campaign to preserve equal marriage rights in Maine.

Look at Westboro Baptist Church, and tell me if you can afford not to give so that LGBT people can have support from decent human beings when they need it. LGBT people see this shit all the time, and frankly... so do straight people. It's just easier for us to ignore it than it is for the people who're being told that God hates them.

If anybody can find other charities for LGBT people in Indianapolis who are having to look at WBC while they're just trying to live their lives, please let me know so that I can include them here. I just had trouble finding much beyond IndyPride and GayIndy.org for this city.


List of places you should help out if you want to see something good happen instead of more bad shit:

No on One: Protect Maine Equality.

Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

List of the Five Best Gay Charities according to Queerty.com.

You may not think you can afford to give. But we're talking about very basic human rights here. If you think you can afford not to, I'd like to know what the hell you are spending your money on. Give something small, but get involved. Do something.

Christ in the hearts of men

I am sick of this apathetic lukewarm Christian shit. Christ was a fucking revolutionary, who did revolutionary shit because marginalized people were being treated like fucking ass.

Any Christian who doesn't care about social progress for people who've been marginalized is, in my book, a fucking disgrace.

I've gotten to the point that I don't care about being cuddly and sympathetic and enabling people who want to see themselves as people they aren't, who do things they aren't, who care about things that they clearly do not.

People who know what Christianity can do, what good it can bring to people, have the fucking sack to reject those who claim it while undermining it. Props to Jimmy Carter, who recently left his church--his allegiance to which having been somewhat famous--over its treatment of women. He wins at Christianity.

He has demonstrated that he understands what an engine for good Christianity can AND SHOULD be, and he demonstrated it by leaving... by refusing to allow harm to be done in his name. This is some of the ballsiest shit I've seen done in Christ's name in a good while, and it took someone leaving the church to honor Christ.

You can decide for yourself what that says. Not all Christians belong to misogynist and harmful denominations, so it's not a statement everybody needs to make. But if it did need to be made... would you? We're not all Jimmy Carter, with the fame and prestige to speak truth to power and do it as a powerful person in our own right. But we have a voice, don't we? Each individual has a voice.

We can't fight every battle or die on every hill. But for the love of shit, Christians, your religion is based around a man who died on a cross for you. Doesn't that set some kind of example that you can apply to your fellow man?

God damn it. So pissed. I have seriously had enough of this horseshit. I've had enough of Christians who claim the name of Christ but don't seem to use him as an example. They don't seem to know him at all, and these are the ones with the deep personal relationship that has--if you ask them--frequently "changed their lives."

And yet sometimes they don't think poverty is their business, that racism is their business, that the systematic marginalization of women is their business. They don't really think people in other countries are their business either, because by "neighbor" surely Jesus meant "the guy who literally lives next door to you with a similar lifestyle and values."

Sometimes I wish I could believe that Christians will really meet up with Jesus Christ someday, and that they'll be asked whether Christ was in their hearts. And then they'll ask a child, and a person of color, and a poor woman. They'll say, "Did you see Christ in his/her heart?"

Their answer will matter.

If your God is good and merciful, their answer will matter as much as yours. Their voice will matter as much as yours, because God won't care if you're white, or male, or had food on your table every night or wore the right fucking khakis. Only mortals care about those things, which is why mortals are so quick to excuse the privileged when they ignore those less fortunate because "it's not my business."

Well, guess what. Your voice doesn't count for more with your God. You were in a position to ignore others only because of your own privilege, because they sure as hell can't ignore their own problems. Why should your voice--so much more valuable here on Earth--be heard more loudly in Heaven as well?

I hope they are asked if they saw Christ in you, if they felt Christ's love in the touch of your hand or the generosity and mercy in your heart. And you had better hope to your God that they answer, "Yes, yes, I did."

Christians!

Your religion can be a beautiful thing, bringing power within the reach of the disempowered, bringing connection to the isolated and help to those who need it. Your religion can do better than this. I expect it of a religion whose leader claimed that whatever you do to the least of us, you do to him. I expect better of Christianity, because I know that as a cultural and spiritual force this religion can do so much better.

I expect better because I know what the force of Christianity can do.

I wish more Christians did.

Aggressive Hegemonizing Swarm

People who believe that their God will cause horrible suffering to anybody who doesn't worship Him properly really are under a moral obligation to save as many people as they can from Him.

I don't have to like it, I can point out that there is no respectful evangelism because there is no evangelism that does not seek to wipe out diversity and every other tradition that is not itself, but the fact is that from within... if you (and I'm using the collective you here) honestly believed that your deity was so ruthless and merciless that he would obliterate people for no other reason than that they're different? You do have a moral obligation to save them from the implications of that difference, to try to avert the brutality of your own deity.

So really. Stop yelling at people for evangelizing. If you shared their assumptions (that there was a vicious and petty magic man in the sky who would throw your soul in a lake of fire if you dared to be different), let's hope you'd also have the decency to aggressively assimilate as many people as possible to save them from your God.

Why did they pick Pope Sidious again?

This man should have been the pope.

"Can you imagine that there are those who think God is a Christian?" he said to laughter from a mostly appreciative audience. "Can you tell us what God was before he was a Christian?" (...)

"Injustice and oppression isn't just evil, which it is. It's not just painful, which it certainly is for the victim. It's like spitting in the face of God."

He invoked his friendship with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who has been exiled from his homeland for nearly 50 years. Although others would be embittered, the Dalai Lama is filled with "bubbly joyousness," he said.

"You have to be totally, totally insensitive not to know you are in the presence of someone who is holy and good."

He then asked, "Can anyone say to the Dalai Lama, 'You are a good guy. What a shame you are not a Christian'?"

Another great quote from Desmond Tutu, and one that hits close to home as far as my approach to a higher power: "What a tremendous relief it should be ... to discover that we don’t need to prove ourselves to God."

Erosion of privilege is not the same as oppression, kthxbai.

Hilzoy has an excellent essay up here.

Rod Dreher Continues To Puzzle Me

Anonymous Liberal notes this from Rod Dreher, writing about the Iowa decision to legalize gay marriage:

"This morning, I had breakfast with some guys, including a lawyer. We weren't aware of this decision, but we talked about this issue. The lawyer said that as soon as homosexuality receives constitutionally protected status equivalent to race, then "it will be very hard to be a public Christian." By which he meant to voice support, no matter how muted, for traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and marriage. To do so would be to set yourself up for hostile work environment challenges, including dismissal from your job, and generally all the legal sanctions that now apply to people who openly express racist views."

Anonymous Liberal makes two important points in response. First, if Dreher thinks it's tough being a "public Christian", he should try being openly gay for a change. Second:

"I find it more than a little pathetic that Dreher and his friends feel that they can't be "public Christians" without going out of their way to advertise their disapproval of homosexuality. First, there are millions of Christians in this country who have no problem at all with gay marriage or homosexuality generally (indeed, there are many gay Christians). But more importantly, since when is expressing disapproval of homosexuality a key part of being a "public Christian"? What about going to church or singing Christmas carols or celebrating Easter or (gasp!) volunteering your time to help those less fortunate? Aren't those pretty effective ways of being publicly Christian? Is gay marriage really going to make it any harder to do any of those things? We still do live in a majority Christian country after all, and I have a feeling that will continue to be the case even after we start treating gay people like full citizens."

But there's another problem with what Dreher and his lawyer friend think. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that being Dreher's kind of Christian does in fact require public disapproval of homosexuality. I don't know why one would want to be that kind of Christian, as opposed to the kind who follows Christ in ministering compassionately to Pharisees and (those whom one takes to be) sinners alike, but hey: it's Dreher's life, not mine. And suppose further that allowing gay men and lesbians to enjoy full legal rights, including the right to marry, would in fact produce the (specific) results Dreher's friend fears. Here, again, is how Dreher describes the problems that loom on his horizon:

"To voice support, no matter how muted, for traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and marriage (...) would be to set yourself up for hostile work environment challenges, including dismissal from your job, and generally all the legal sanctions that now apply to people who openly express racist views."

Notice anything about those legal sanctions? They all apply to people who openly express racist views at work. There are no legal sanctions for expressing openly racist views on the street or on a public beach. Why not? We have this odd thing called "freedom of speech", which precludes them. In a country that let Nazis march through a town full of Holocaust survivors, I find it hard to believe that Rod Dreher and his friends will not find some way to express their views in public.

Apparently, to be the kind of "public Christian" that Dreher thinks he has a right to be, it's not enough to bear Christian witness in public. It's not even enough to express disapproval of homosexuality in public. You have to express disapproval of homosexuality to your co-workers, in your workplace. And you have to do so even if they find your expressions of disapproval so unpleasant that they actually file suit.

The existence of laws against sexual harassment in the workplace does not mean that no one can be a public lecher. The fact that I think it inappropriate to introduce my political views into my classroom does not mean that I do not get to be publicly political. It just means that not all remarks are appropriate in all settings. This should not be news to anyone. It's certainly not a threat to freedom of religion, any more than it's a threat to public political expression.

Only someone whose life had been very, very privileged would assume that he had the right to tell his co-workers how sinful he thought they were, or that if this supposed right were threatened, that meant not that he should bear witness to the gospel in a more appropriate setting, but that his freedom of religion itself was in jeopardy.

Zoe Kentucky posted a great comment to this:

This is exactly what Dreher is talking about, and coming to a workplace, pulpit, public forum, or jurisdiction very near you very soon.

I suppose that is why Fred Phelps is rotting behind bars. Because in America we don't let people say ugly, anti-gay things in public without silencing, fining and punishing them.

Oh, wait, he isn't? In fact, Phelps and his family recently took huge their "God Hates Fags" signs and protested outside of the White House recently. For pete's sake, the Phelps family protests military funerals. They don't get arrested or fined even when they ARE harassing people.

So, as far as free speech rights are concerned, if Fred Phelps can walk around freely and say beyond-the-pale reprehensible anti-gay comments then I think you can still tell people that you don't like gay people or approve of gay marriage.

The fact is that things are changing-- openly anti-gay views are falling out of social favor. The truth is that you can say whatever you want, just don't expect that it will make you popular or be accepted with a agreeable smile. That is the part that these people are upset about, that their prejudicial views are no longer shared by most people.

That's what they're really talking about. "When we try to block equal protection under the law for people who believe differently from us, people talk like we're unreasonable, hateful, and un-Christ-like. OH MAN IT'S SO HARD TO BE CHRISTIAN POOR US THIS IS JUST LIKE BEING FED TO ROMAN LIONS."

Don't get me wrong. I think Christianity is a beautiful religion, and I know people for whom it's done a great deal of good. And it is notable that most Christians nowadays are actually not strongly opposed to treating same-sex couples with the same human dignity that heterosexual couples receive. Yes, yes, really. They're not like Dreher and other similar people, whose lives are so centered around public hatred and derision of other people that being asked to treat others with respect is a life-destroying catastrophe.

Most Christians aren't like this. This is an exceptional case of extraordinary fear-mongering irrational hatred. This is homophobia in its purest sense: the fear that if gays are around and treated like they're people something terrible will happen. Just what that is, and how it'll happen? Well, I guess that needs to be taken on faith.

For the love of--

You know what? I refuse to be careful of who's around when I mention my issues with Pope Benedict-the-whatever going to Sub-Saharan Africa and telling people there that they shouldn't use condoms. If you're offended by the fact that I'm offended that the Catholic Church's leader thinks Africans are better off dead thanks to AIDS (and orphaning their children, let's not forget) than using nasty sinful condoms that "encourage fornication," I don't know what to tell you.

I do wonder why you're bothered more by me than by the Pope. If I said that I was bothered by the stupid and evil bullshit going on in Brazil, would you bitch at me for my insensitivity? Or would you bitch at a church that kicks out a doctor who aborted a potentially-deadly pregnancy for a nine-year-old rape victim, but not the grown man who molested her?

Seriously. If you absolutely must get righteously angry about something, choose your fucking battles. Why don't you go after the ones who are actually hurting people?

I can't help but think that every time a Christian talks about how they're such a maligned group in America, they're talking about shit like this. Being forced to hear about the people their religious leaders are hurting. They see no difference between hearing these nasty truths and being fed to lions (or, in the case of modern Pagans, losing custody of their kids for practicing the wrong religion).

Christians need to not bring the persecution attitude to me ever ever again. There was a time when I could be nice about it. I think we're past that now.