Dan Savage goes off on someone who “loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage” but was “heartbroken” to hear about the male Rutgers student who committed suicide after his sexual encounter with another male student was livestreamed over a webcam by some other students.
Being told that they’re sinful and that their love offends God, and being told that their relationships are unworthy of the civil right that is marriage (not the religious rite that some people use to solemnize their civil marriages), can eat away at the souls of gay kids. It makes them feel like they’re not valued, that their lives are not worth living. And if one of your children is unlucky enough to be gay, the anti-gay bigotry you espouse makes them doubt that their parents truly love them—to say nothing of the gentle “savior” they’ve heard so much about, a gentle and loving father who will condemn them to hell for the sin of falling in love with the wrong person.
“Love the sinner but hate the sin” gets a big old pass on the American political scene, even though in practice it’s a distinction without a difference.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I hope the person who pulled the stunt regrets their decision for the rest of their life and I hope it haunts them every single moment, to the bitter end.
And if there is a hell I hope they end up there afterward.
ornery curmudgeon
“Love the sinner but hate the sin” gets a big old pass on the American political scene, even though in practice it’s a distinction without a difference.”
Well said, MisterMix.
Xanthippas
I respect that this person feels the need to defend their beliefs, and it’s not as if the kids who abuse, tease and bully other gay kids do so because they were told to in Sunday school. But honestly, if you can’t see how your own beliefs about gay marriage might somehow be related to society’s general prejudice against gays, prejudice that is expressed against kids as bullying and teasing, then you’re a moron. And when gay kids are killing themselves, how you feel about somebody being really mad at you for your antiquated prejudice, is not something you should take the time to write a letter about.
Corner Stone
Haven’t heard anything about the sexual partner in all of this. Honestly I haven’t read much beyond the initial reporting, but does anyone know if that individual is receiving care and proper attention?
I can only assume Rutgers is providing whatever is requested.
burnspbesq
Do you not know that statements like this are profoundly offensive to people of faith, or do you know and not care, or do you know and intend the insult?
PaulW
Just remember: God Forgives, So You Don’t Have To.
It’s amazing how judgmental and vicious the uber-religious among us can get. Rather than be like Jesus and walk with everyone, they’d rather spite your existence in the firm belief that their purity of faith will wipe the slate clean when it’s their turn to be Judged by the All-One.
The Pale Scot
Yes, Yes and Yes,
This has been easy answers etc.
Personally, the only intolerance I have is toward the intolerant.
The Pale Scot
Also, Jesus saves, Gretsky Rebounds And SCORES!
YellowJournalism
I’ve been so busy these past weeks that I’ve not heard anything about this, but I’m very familiar with the “love the sinner, hate the sin” (so-called) reasoning. A friend of mine in high school had a cousin who was dying of cancer and had come out to his family not long before his death. My friend, a born-again Christian, told me that was what she felt about her cousin. Even then, I thought it was a bullshit way of not dealing with the true issues associated with her cousin coming out. She didn’t want to examine her true feelings about him coming out and the contradictions of her beliefs.
In their thinking, it doesn’t make them a hypocrite to condemn and speak out against homosexuality, even though they have a homosexual friend or relative that they freely associate with or are close to.
beltane
@burnspbesq: Just for the sake of fostering mutual understanding, I’d like to point out that “love the sinner, hate the sin” can come across as profoundly offensive to those who are not people of faith.
donquijoterocket
@burnspbesq:
If such statements are profoundly offensive why is there not more condemnation of those people who claim to speak for the faithful when they make such statements?Why is it offensive? Those “spokespeople” whom you tolerate act as though this were a fundamental principle of faith. It’s not as though liberal bloggers are the only ones using such statements as lashes. I find it equally offensive when someone states they’ll”pray” for me when I’ve made some statement with which they disagree.If I thought supplication to some big invisible sky boohoo were effective I might convert and supplicate in person.
PaulW
@burnspbesq:
Do you know what makes it offensive? Because it’s true.
Any excuse for bad behavior is still an excuse, and it’s still bad behavior.
joe from Lowell
That’s fine if we’re talking about a thief, or someone who starts bar fights, or even someone who breaks thumbs for the mob. Those are all just things people do.
Being gay is what people are. You might as well tell someone you love them, but you hate it when they commit the sin of eating.
joe from Lowell
@donquijoterocket:
“No, thanks. I don’t want you getting in the way.” – David Tengren, after a longtime nemesis wrote that he’d pray for him in a letter to the editor.
beltane
@joe from Lowell: It’s more like saying “I love you, but I hate who you are, what you are, and everything about you.” Hate doesn’t become more palatable when it is presented in a passive-aggressive package.
Don K
@burnspbesq:
So long as “hate the sin”, in its real-world translation, means “it’s open season on fags – come on and join the fun”, then yes, I don’t care how offensive it is, and yes, the offense is intended.
Dan put into words the rage I feel every day when I hear of atrocities like this happening at my alma mater, or an Assistant Attorney General in my home state is stalking a student at UM.
eemom
[link fail]
aimai
Homophobia, anti gay, all that is embedded in this horrific event. But this kind of soul murdering attack on other people has always gone on, and will always go on, until we raise our children to be humane with one another. What happened to Tyler Clementi didn’t exactly happen to him because he was gay–this kind of social rape and stripping of human dignity has happened to lots of straight people and specifically straight women for centuries. Its no different from those guys we were commenting on who posted FB pictures of themselves near the sleeping/drugged girl who had had penises and things drawn all over her. If I recall correctly there were a certain number of commenters who saw this as a “mere” “prank.”
The christian hatemongers who do this “love the sinner/hate the sin” potty dance are fooling no one but themselves. But we are also sadly mistaken if we think that Tyler Clementi’s roomate was necessarily one of them. He probably wasn’t. He probably wasn’t more than ordinarily inhumane, selfish, meanspirited, shortsighted, and cruel. That’s one of the saddest parts of this tragedy.
aimai
arguingwithsignposts
Just as an add-on to this general discussion, the Sadly, No! commenters took on one Alex Knepper a couple of days ago. The comments – especially those by Cerberus – are worth reading.
arguingwithsignposts
@Don K:
Oh, that’s not the only translation. It justifies pretty much all the holier-than-thou lifestyle condemnations the fundevangelicals can think up. Drug users, liberals, unmarried pregnant women, people who drink alcohol, etc.
eemom
http://i290.photobucket.com/albums/ll251/adg712/calvinandhobbes.gif
scav
(Yeah, that’ll get a pass as non-offensive and well within the social bounds of moral, unassailable discourse.)
geg6
@burnspbesq:
Have you ever thought about the fact that people of faith offend me every.single.day of my life with their “bless yous” and “I’m praying for yous” and their “Christian nations” and shoving their crosses and Bibles and other assorted talismans in my face constantly? Ever?
My guess would be no. Which is why I don’t give one shit about anyone’s religious fee fees being hurt when it’s pointed out that a central tenet of the faith is all about hate.
stuckinred
@geg6: I’m witcha, fuck em all.
Winston Smith
I’ve actually met one person who walked the fine line of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” so I know what it should look like.
We were in a Toastmasters’ club where the president was an out lesbian. One time, he had to evaluate a speech where she talked about her partner (she used the term “wife”). He gave a thoughtful evaluation. I mentioned to him that I was impressed, as I knew that her subject matter made him uncomfortable. He said, “Why would that matter? My [religious] belief is that homosexuality is harmful, and I think that she should turn away from it because I care about her. If I am not respectful and kind to her, why would she believe that I care for her? Why would she listen to a single thing I said? ”
I still disagreed with his opinion on homosexuality (and the theology behind it), but at least I didn’t see him as an evil fuck, like most anti-gay fundies. I think he genuinely liked and cared about our club president and he certainly behaved that way.
Another thing he said that I liked was, “Well, the scientific evidence is that the Earth is billions of years old, but I believe that as a Christian, I need to believe that God created it in seven days 6000 years ago.” Again, I thought he was completely wrong, but at least he didn’t claim that science was wrong and that his religious views were science.
I’d like to see all literalism in religion go away, but if literalists had this guy’s attitudes, then I think we could live with them.
agrippa
Consequences.
Savage was “heartbroken”? He does not know very much about consequences does he?
Tara the antisocial social worker
I’m person of faith who is also a member of the GLBT community. When someone attacks GLBT people while claiming to “love the sinner,” I tell them I’m trying very hard to love the bigot while hating the bigotry.
Joey Maloney
@burnspbesq:
You know, Savage spoke to this sentiment right in TFA:
Blockquote fail. FYWP. Begin quote:
I’m sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.
No, wait. I’m not. Gay kids are dying. So let’s try to keep things in perspective: fuck your feelings.
End quote.
You should, as they say, go read the whole thing.
Chad N Freude
The Sadly, No link has a link to a truly awful posting on Vox Popoli. The theme of the Vox piece is that Clementi killed himself out of shame for his sexual activity. But what stands out for me is this from one of the commenters:
Apparently freedom = intolerance.
I would like to see “The tyranny of tolerance” as a tag on BJ.
joe from Lowell
@geg6:
There is no central tenet of the faith that is all about hate. Several mainstream Christian churches marry gay people in church, you know. Or, you don’t know. Of, you’ve made a point not to know, because you have a stereotype you want to believe.
You sound a bit like the people ranting against the Burlington Coat Factory mosque. “Don’t you know that lying to infidels and building churches on battlefields are central tenets of Muslims’ faith?”
joe from Lowell
@stuckinred:
You know, like Martin Luther King. Fuck that guy, with his “Sky God.”
Or Gandhi. Fuck him.
How ’bout that Rabin guy? Fuck him. He had the temerity to have a different stance on religious faith than you, so really, he got what was coming to him, right?
If we all had the enlightened vision of religion shared by you, Stalin, Ayn Rand, and Mao, the world would be a better place? Is that what you’re saying?
scav
@joe from Lowell: really, all of us? Because at least some of us are ranting not necessarily about the inherent evils of all Christianity, but against the unstated perception that mocking someone’s religion is beyond the pale while mocking their sexuality is a moral obligation and to be respected as holy by all.
burnspbesq
@geg6:
You’re a bigot, and there is no hope of opening your mind, so I’m not even going to try.
MAJeff
Exactly. The “love” offered by those anti-gay folks is a worthless lie.
scav
@joe from Lowell: Seriously Joe, take this thread and magnify it day and night, day and night, day and night, year after year, in all contexts, weathers and venues, out of million texts, a million voices, including those of people that purportedly are your nearest and dearest and and the moral authorities of the culture, you might just begin to get a clue. You freak after 30 comments on a single blog, burnspbesq flamed out after 5.
evinfuilt
@burnspbesq:
I’m sure my parents meant well when they said they just didn’t want to ever see me again, but they still love me and “no, we’ve not disowned you, you’ll still get your inheritance when we die.”
Sorry, its a bullshit way of not dealing with the problem. I hear from some of my family (ie the ones who aren’t a-holes) that they still don’t get it, and just don’t want to understand. It’s even worse in my mind, since my parents don’t even the religious excuse for not wanting to see me, they’re just plain old bigots.
kindness
In the vein of people who rant about gays, the Assistant Attorney General of Michigan shocks me. I mean, here you have a fundamentalist who has targeted & harassed the student body president of Ann Arbor because he is gay. The guy has a whole blog devoted to sliming the poor kid. He’s picketed the guy’s house several times & slanders him regularly. His excuse: ‘First Amendment. I can do and say what I want on my own time.’
Guess what? As a liberal I agree with that. But it ignores the whole character issue that we expect and demand in our public officials. And aren’t they (the righties) the ones who constantly bring up character? Well sure, in their own eyes they are the only people with any, but they are a tad narrow in view. My thinking is that I don’t want haters in administrative positions, especially positions of authority.
Live your religion. Fine. Just don’t use your religion to defend your bigotry. And the Attorney General of Michigan who won’t fire this tard? He needs to get booted to. Protecting a hater in the name of freedom of speech ignores the real issue. Namely, here in America no one group should be able to proclaim themselves the only people of virtue, that any other views or attitudes won’t be tolerated. That isn’t the America I want.
Ripley
@burnspbesq:
Y’know what? I could give a fuck and a half about the delicate damned sensibilities of “people of faith” in this country and this world. I’m inherently a non-violent man, but there’s a sticky sweet little bit of me that wishes some of our “spiritual leaders” could get a taste of knuckles and boot soles so they understand what our innocent brothers and sisters in the minority experience. Scorn, derision, violence, social and legal casting out and persecution — can you imagine, in your shiny pinup version of “faith”, what people in this – the greatest nation in the world! – go through on a daily and lifelong basis?
Your faith doesn’t do fuck all to make the world a better place and, frankly, I find your falling back on “But I’m a Xian, you shouldn’t mock my beliefs!” as patently offensive and ridiculous as “You’re the racist for pointing out my racism!”
Take a god damned stand for the oppressed and make a difference. Your pretty words from the family Bible don’t feed the poor, heal the sick or comfort the afflicted. Fuck your faith – take some action.
Prospero
@burnspbesq:
Those people of faith should be hunted down like wild animals and shot. Every single one of you.
arguingwithsignposts
@kindness:
Check out the interview Anderson Cooper did with that creep.
Bubba Dave
I think it’s possible to love the sinner and hate the sin*, it’s just hard. My grandmother believes gay marriage is flat-out evil. She thinks the Bible is abundantly clear on homosexuality, period. She also spent a big chunk of the 80s volunteering at a hospice for AIDS patients; she’s great friends with a gay couple I love dearly and asks about them when she’s up in PA. Does she pray at night that those two women will find abandon their homosexuality? Maybe. I don’t know, and I don’t really give a rat’s ass.
From a Christian perspective, we’re all sinners. You, me, Marin Luther King, Mother Theresa, Saint Paul, everyone born on this planet except Jesus. So “loving the sinner” is about the same thing as loving your neighbor.
(That said, I can’t remember whose line it was: “We are called to love the sinner and hate the sin, but some of us choose to divide up the labor.” Unfortunately, hating the sin is a lot easier than loving the sinner.)
*Not that I believe being gay is a sin, I’m just trying to explain the thought process of those who do.
arguingwithsignposts
@Ripley:
Do we really need to go here with the blanket statements? This is as bad as dissing the Muslims or claiming all Californians are morons.
Rise above a little.
mcmillan
@Prospero:
Fuck you and your eliminationist bullshit.
scav
well, how bout this, we can welcome the newest officially recognized religion in the UK, with all the inherent tax– and charity– breaks to go with: Druidism — better still, it seems to have a self-described political wing.
arguingwithsignposts
@mcmillan:
co-sign.
Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
This asshole may face some consequences for his bizarre stalking behavior, after all. Consequences, bitchez.
arguingwithsignposts
@scav:
And we bitch about health care reform taking so long …
Three-nineteen
@burnspbesq: How very Christian of you.
Prospero
Lives of all you hateful fuckers put together aren’t worth as much as a life of one single innocent kid. So fucking die already and stop poisoning the world.
Kryptik
Oh, good fuck all….
Right-Wing lawmakers are using the spate of suicides by gay teens…to subsequently tar ‘Anti-Bullying Measures’ as part of the ‘Gay Agenda’, and thus something to be fought and eradicated, lest those goddamn homos get treated like human beings.
Jesus Christ would be appalled at how hateful his ‘most ardent of followers’ have become.
arguingwithsignposts
@Prospero:
Who exactly are you aiming that at, Prospero? BTW, how does one measure the “worth” of a life? And how does one determine “innocent”? And how does one compare the relative value of one life to another? Just curious.
Scattershot invective isn’t advancing the dialog, although we do tend to do it quite a bit here (myself included).
aimai
My original comment is still in moderation so I’ll try a different tack entirely. “Love the Sinner/Hate the Sin” is a frozen form in (some) versions of Christinanity. Like many another frozen formulation (such as “I was bought at a price”) it has ceased to be the focus of real reflection and become nothing more than an excuse for lazy thinking and even lazier action. For (as someone said up above) in Christian theology *everyone* is a sinner and you are enjoined to love *everyone* so its a totally besides the point remark. Loving the sinner means just loving them–not bargaining with them and offering them your “neighborliness” and love conditionally. That’s not what you are commanded to do.
But aside from that, as someone said on Slacktivist in re Satanic Panics and other forms of mass community focused christian actions the ” sin” that everyone suffers from is *internal to them* not collective, not something that pertains to other people and their actions. Everyone is a sinner (in this theology) and its everyone’s job to rise about his or her own sins, to combat their own personal, internal, weaknesses. Not to spend any time obsessing about someone else’s.
Defining someone else as a sinner for being gay and therefore releasing onself, mentally or emotionally, from being considered a sinner on this axis is itself a form of sin. It shows a prurient interest in other people’s lives, and a lack of humility, as well as an overwhelming insolent belief that you know the mind of god.
But what do I know? I’m just a jewish atheist.
aimai
joe from Lowell
@scav:
No, geg6, individually, although there are others who are guilty of the same thing here.
I appreciate that, and if you haven’t noticed, I’ve argued that same point.
And it’s a fine point.
Prospero
@arguingwithsignposts:
Mostly at burnspbesq who’s main concern in the wake of gay kid’s suicide is that his fee fees got hurt by pointing out christian bigotry.
Jay C
@burnspbesq:
Well, in those cases where “faith” is used as a backup excuse to justify hate, bigotry, bullying, harrassment, discrimination, etc. – yeah: what Dan Savage said. And your “offense”, too…
joe from Lowell
@scav: I sympathize. The emotional reactions behind the intellectual shortcoming is one I can understand, and appreciate.
Nonetheless, it’s still sub-optimal – in terms of clear thinking, in terms of liberal principles of tolerance and anti-prejudice, and in terms of political efficacy – for offense at the homophobia of some religious people to come out as prejudice and stereotyping of all religious people, and that’s a point worth keeping in mind.
You freak… No, I don’t. I object. I didn’t go off on a rant, and I certainly didn’t stereotype anyone, nor endorse a vision of collective guilt on anyone for belonging to a diverse group of people.
joe from Lowell
@Ripley:
Could someone please direct me to the Ayn Rand Memorial Homeless Shelter?
I certainly wouldn’t ever lump all atheists and agnostics in with Objectivists, though.
Lazy stereotyping like that is just plain prejudice.
scav
@joe from Lowell: Grand! Although, I’m not sure that defending a religion by pointing out a few good eggs is any different than damning one by pointing out the few bad ones. The eggs may have been more or less equally cracked no matter what they were labelled — hard to generalize. It’s like the joke about the guy with the lost keys and the lamp-post. He may be using the lamppost as illumination or support, but sometimes the religion-lamppost also gets used as a weapon against others.
You may not have meant it as a freak, it just kinda read as one especially in the context (immediately adjacent posts). Sorry.
joe from Lowell
@Prospero:
Well, just so you know, that little nuke you dropped hit a whole lot of other people, including quite a few of us who support gay equality.
Douglas
@burnspbesq:
Seeing that this is “people of faith” taking offense to the statement that saying something is evil, sinful etc. may harm the “sinner”, note me down for “I couldn’t care less”.
For my next trick, I’m going to offend “muslims” by stating that killing innocents is bad, and “atheists” by stating that we can’t exclude the possibility of a deity, or even deities, existing.
(Only a small, if quite vocal, minority of any of the abovementioned groups would find these statements controversial, nevermind take offense to them. And those who do… deserve to be offended)
joe from Lowell
@scav:
Depends on what you’re defending it from.
Against the charge, “Being religious doesn’t make you above criticism,” it’s a lousy argument.
Against the charge, “Religious people, as a class, are evil and stupid and bring only harm to the world,” it goes quite a long way.
There’s been some of the latter on this thread.
MikeJ
I like the stories above of the (rare) christians that people have known that when faced with behavior that distressed them, realised that putting people on the defensive is not the way to connect in such a way that might ever bring change.
Now if we could find an atheist or two that was as smart.
toujoursdan
There are many of us who ARE people of faith who find the “love the sinner hate the sin” statement offensive. As a gay Christian when I hear that, I know that those who say it care much more about hating my “sin” which is just a part of who I am, than loving me.
scav
@MikeJ:
Just as we were starting to calm things down . . . .
arguingwithsignposts
@MikeJ:
I don’t think these people are as rare as any of us believe. They just don’t spend all their time pestering people they disagree with. They often don’t trumpet their faith from every street corner, and they don’t hold up signs saying “God Hates Fags” at Phelps rallies.
Ditto for the atheists/agnostics who do so as well.
Ripley
@arguingwithsignposts:
Point mostly taken, AWS. But, to be honest, this BS position of American Xtian, hiding behind the cross — s’cuse me, The Cross — entitlement and exceptionalism has grown far beyond stale and moldy.
(some of) These people go socially nuclear about the sexual identity of our fellow human beings who generally don’t bother anyone, but wail and gnash their teeth when anyone tells them their thinly veiled hatred and mythologically-based rantings are offensive to intelligent, caring people.
There is no one, nor has there ever been anyone, that can know the thoughts of God — if it exists — or speak on its behalf. If they’d stop beating up on our brothers and sisters, I’d stop harshing on their “I’m special cuz I believe!” daydreams.
I don’t respect the Taliban for their beliefs or actions, and I don’t respect the moral degenerates in this country who cling to the cross and pine for the days when they could burn witches and hang the negroes in the name of God. Evil is evil, hatred is hatred, misguided beliefs are misguided — annual productions of The Passion Play don’t give anyone a pass or shield them from criticism for their bigotry.
Our neighbors are human beings with the same needs as every one of us. You can’t assault them and claim safe haven in your “faith” and cry for your Momma when someone calls you out on your assholery.
joe from Lowell
@arguingwithsignposts: Second.
If your impression of atheists, Christians, whatever, comes mainly from the media, that means you’re getting your information from an unrepresentative minority who spends his time pushing his religious agenda in the media.
Kryptik
See, here’s the problem: Sane Christianity doesn’t exist, as far as public discourse and media exposure go, because Sane Christianity tends to forbid the very thing that we see from those who ‘represent Christianity’ on the larger public scale and in politics: self-promotion.
This has had the unfortunate effect of legitimizing Political Christianity at the expense of actual Christianity.
toujoursdan
@arguingwithsignposts:
Exactly. Those of us who are mainstream Jews, Christians and Muslims are appalled that the media spends far more time on Fred Phelps, who leads a congregation of 12 people who are his family members, than on a denomination of 2 million people when the head of that denomination, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, pushes for single payer healthcare reform, the Millennium Development Goals, pro-gay equality legislation and greater environmental responsibility, as she does regularly. Our partners in the Evangelical Lutheran Church with another 5 million people, the United Church of Christ with another 1 million people, the Presbyterian Church (USA) with another 3 million and other mainstream Protestant and Reform Jewish denominations do the same thing day in and day out, but you never hear about it.
But readers of Balloon Juice should know how dysfunctional the media is nowadays.
stormhit
You automatically lose whatever well meaning argument against religion you’re trying to make when you invoke some form of the “sky fairy” trope. This is just a fact.
scav
@stormhit: why?
Amir_Khalid
My own problem with “love the sinner, hate the sin” is that it implies that the sins of others are ours to judge, that we have the right to look down on others for their faults as though we ourselves were free of them. But who among us is not himself a sinner? Who among us would thus be pure enough to judge the sins of others? And mistermix is right to say that the distinction between sin and sinner doesn’t make a real difference — after all how do you show your hatred of the sin without taking it out on the sinner?
I’m with aimai on this. Our place is not to judge the sins of others; we are not God. Our place is to love them, to have the humility — before God, if you will — to recognize that we are as imperfect as the other sinners.
Ripley
I should add:
I don’t generally disrespect or dislike people who believe in some form of deism. I find religion interesting, but I don’t believe any of the stories and find the dogma just… insulting, I guess. And I’m not burning finger calories in an attempt to insult or offend anyone.
That said… I’ve obviously offended some readers. I apologize for 1) making a derogatory blanket statement about “people of faith” (nonsarcastic quotes there); I should have been clearer and more specific about what I disagreed with, and 2) for targeting people instead of the attitude or philosophy that I disagreed with, and 3) derailing the conversation with my hot-headed babbling.
This is the part where one would normally say, “But…” No. I’ll stand with my apology and forgo the weak explanation that would dubiously excuse my comments.
(Btw, I’m the Ripley from WhiskeyFire. I think there’s another commenter named Ripley on BJ – my comments shouldn’t be confused with theirs.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Ripley:
Well put, Ripley, and thanks for engaging.
FWIW, BJ has an interesting mix of religious backgrounds/practices. I try to walk a fine line, as a former fundevangelicalist (even have half of a divinity degree, and I’m “licensed to preach,” whatever that means) who is now an agnostic/atheist (depending on the day of the week/mood). It would be easy for me to go to the extreme anti-religious corner, but that would just be me swinging to an opposite extreme from what I came out of.
People are complex. The failure of “political Christianity” (thanks, @Kryptik) is that it reduces the complexity of human experience to a black/white answer.
And fwiw, it is worthwhile to keep engaging these people (well, some of them), because there are those who come out the other side (myself as an example).
Read about Rich Mullins (evangelical singer whose last album before he died was really questioning) or Jennifer Knapp (evangelical singer who recently came out about her sexuality). The tension between the preaching and the living does sometimes end up with a positive resolution.
Zuzu's Petals
I know a man who grew up the son of a pastor in a fundamentalist church. When he came out of the closet he experienced the worst sort of judgment and rejection, to the point of contemplating suicide. It is only because of HIS loving efforts that his family has a relationship with him at all.
Fortunately, he has found a church home that welcomes diversity, where he can practice his deep commitment to his Christian faith without denying his very core identity. He still continues to reach out to old church mates, ever hopeful that they will come around. He is a better person than I.
Mnemosyne
@joe from Lowell:
The Bill Donohues and Fred Phelpses of the media are about as representative of the majority of religious people as tea partiers are representative of the majority of Americans. But the media loves people who yell on TV.
Not to mention that the people most likely to loudly and ostentatiously proclaim themselves “Christians” are the least likely to act like it. IIRC, there’s a little something in the Bible about people like that …
John Bird
Y’know, I really have to come down with Savage on this one; you can’t promote an ideology and then bemoan its predictable consequences.
BUT.
BUT.
I was reading the story they had up over at Fox Nation. Fox Nation, for those of you with lives, is the dark side Fox News page that the company puts up as an aggregator.
And, well, they were being their normal blowhard selves, but the tone of the grand majority of the messages was:
The kids who did this to Tyler Clementi should be kicked out of school; this kind of stalker-bullying happens because no one raises their kids right anymore; it’s sad what happened to him and heads should roll because of it.
And I have to say, I was surprised. Sure, there were a couple of comments with wonderful idiocy like “WELL IF BEING GAY IS ALL NORMAL AND STUFF WHY WAS HE HIDING IT??” (Gee, I wonder?)
But in general, even the readership of Fox Nation thinks it’s disgusting what these kids did to Clementi, even indefensible.
And between that and Savage’s reader, I think we should take some limited (LIMITED!) comfort in how drastically the viewpoint on the right has changed within just the last ten years or so.
Not that I think a lot of them planned on kids dying in the first place, but more that ten years ago, I think we would’ve gotten a lot more “well it’s too bad his gayness made him commit suicide, gay people need to see a psychiatrist,” etc.
@Mnemosyne:
And it should be noted every time: Donohue is not representative of American Catholics OR of Rome. I’m not either, mercy me no, but Donohue, O’Donnell, Douthat, these people are all partying with the fundamentalists and evangelicals.
MAJeff
Not to mention that the people most likely to loudly and ostentatiously proclaim themselves “Christians” are the least likely to act like it. IIRC, there’s a little something in the Bible about people like that …
My problem with the quotation marks around Christians is that it holds some up as more Christian than others. Christianity is what Christians do, and there are multiple ways of doing Christianity. Fred Phelps is just as Christian as Gene Robinson.
aimai
Hey Ripley, nice to see you here, and nice apology.
But I’m not so sure that anyone has the right to be offended when the imaginary group “people of faith” is called out. People of faith? What is that? Its the “Hispanic” of religious census taking. Christians can see themselves as belonging to a larger group “people of faith” but that doesn’t entitle them to determine what the composition of that group is. Its not even as clear cut as the old “people of the book” or the equally enraging “judeo christian.” Its just a rhetorical dodge.
Because its empty of content I don’t think any person, even a believer, has the right to take offense when other people don’t treat this euphemism with the respect they might potentially accord an actual specific belief, practice, or g-d. Hey “people of faith” what have you done for the world lately? Answer: nothing. Some people who believe some things, some of them even religious, have done some specific things that might be considered good. We judge the goodness of those things on their real world effect and not on the intent behind them btw. So, yeah, orphanages and hospitals? Great! orphanages and hospitals that means test, religious test, or torture their members? less great.
My own take on this as a sometime student of right wing christianist sect beliefs is that its sad, but true, that mainline christians have to either take control of their message, or take the hit for not controlling their own lunatic fringe. If you think someone is getting Jesus Christ’s message wrong you might want to take it up with them instead of looking to unbelievers for support.
For me, ethnically and religiously, its like the difference between someone attacking “the jews” and someone attacking the State of Israel for particular policies. The first is truly scary to me, the second is merely fair game.
aimai
Winston Smith
@scav:
Because the “sky fairy” trope is deliberately demeaning, even if it is technically true in some sense.
For example, when homophobes refer to the “gay lifestyle choice,” it is insulting and demeaning to gays. Technically, they’re right: just because you are attracted to people of the same gender doesn’t mean you have to have sexual or romantic relationships. If who you have sex with isn’t your choice, then it’s not sex, it’s rape.
Despite this technicality, the term “gay lifestyle choice,” is offensive because it belittles sexual orientation and assaults the dignity of people whose orientation might be frowned upon. The subtext is “gays are just selfish people who refuse to control their perversion in the name of decency.”
The “sky fairy” characterization depicts people who believe in a personal god to be morons with childish mentalities. Anyone who uses it is not worthy of engaging in a meaningful debate on the subject of faith or spirituality.
hilzoy
I think that a lot of people who say this concentrate more on hating the sin than on loving the sinner. I have no wish to defend them, and I hope it goes without saying that I don’t want to defend anyone who in any way minimizes what was done to the student at Rutgers. That said:
I think it’s quite possible to hate the sin and love the sinner. Imagine being Dick Cheney’s child. Alternately, imagine being yourself, and convinced (as any Christian should be) that you are yourself sinful. CS Lewis:
It’s even easier in the case of the various sexual practices that Christianity calls sinful. I know: I spent my adolescence being Christian, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to read the Bible with a straight face without concluding that according to it, sex outside marriage was contrary to God’s will. This seemed to me, at the time, to be a very compelling reason to allow gay marriage, but it also left me thinking that God’s will was that no one, of whatever sexual orientation, should have sex outside marriage.
I had no idea why God should have willed this. There was nothing wrong with sex that I could see (not that I had any experience with it, at the time.) That said, God was omniscient and I was plainly not, so I thought I should take His word for it. So I thought that sex outside marriage was wrong, a sin.
But that was plainly because I was Christian. And if I couldn’t see any reason for God to disapprove of sex outside marriage, why on earth should I expect my friends who were not Christian to do so? As far as I could tell, I couldn’t, any more than I could expect them to understand the need for communion or baptism. My views on sex, like my views on communion, were entirely dependent on my religious beliefs, and there was no earthly reason that I could see why anyone who did not share those beliefs should accept them. So there was not even the ghost of a conflict between my view that sex outside marriage was a sin and my loving those of my friends who engaged in it.
(For the same reason, the very idea of writing those views into law would have horrified me, just as the idea of requiring that everyone take communion would have. I mean, I like the first amendment. I like the knowledge that if everyone in the US were suddenly to convert to, oh, Confucianism, I would still have the right to live according to my beliefs. I like it in large part because I remember what it was like to take religion very seriously; my support for religious freedom comes from taking it that seriously, not from thinking it’s not that important.)
All that said, the fact that there is such a thing as hating the sin but loving the sinner does not mean that everyone who says that that’s what they’re doing is right, or that that phrase is not used to cover up bigotry and intolerance and self-righteousness. But those are sins of their own, sins which received a lot more of Christ’s attention than any sins involving sex.
arguingwithsignposts
@MAJeff:
Well, not quite, at least depending on whose version of Christianity you’re using. Or which red letters in the New Testament you’re looking at. If you were to be following this faith stream, you’d note the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25.
to wit:
So I’m going to go out on a limb here and venture that Fred Phelps =/= Gene Robinson.
MAJeff
I didn’t say they were the same as each other, just that they are equally Christian. That’s because there is no such thing as true pr pure Christianity. It’s simply a set of cultural systems created by humans, and different groups humans have shaped it and molded it and constructed it differently. They do Christianity differently, but they all do Christianity.
Winston Smith
@MAJeff:
Not at all.
Christianity is what Jesus said it is. There is certainly plenty of room to debate what Jesus said versus what Jesus meant, but there are most certainly things which cannot legitimately be considered Christian without grossly distorting certain passages, taking things out of context, and ignoring some rather prominent sections (frequently the entire book of James — seriously, try to find a James citation on a fundie site).
KSinMA
@aimai: Well said.
Omnes Omnibus
@MAJeff: Maybe we need a term like CINO (Christian In Name Only) to go with the DINOs and RINOs.
Winston Smith
@Prospero:
Fuck you and your eliminationist bullshit.
Mnemosyne
@MAJeff:
By that rationale, Osama bin Laden is just as Muslim as Feisal Abdul Rauf, so the people screaming about the “9/11 Mosque” were totally right to oppose it. I’m assuming you were out there demonstrating against the mosque with them since Feisal Abdul Rauf = Osama bin Laden just like Gene Robinson = Fred Phelps?
Triassic Sands
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
On a more practical level, I hope they are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and do some serious jail time.
Hoping for eternal damnation is a bit like hoping the Easter Bunny is going to refuse to hide any eggs for the hateful person(s)* who did this — forever; Santa will restrict them to lumps of coal — forever; and Republicans will condemn this despicable act because homosexuals are good people too.
They (if the two people involved are equally culpable) need to pay for this in the here and now. Personally, I’m not willing to count on their ability to feel guilty and be haunted by what they’ve done. There are people who have no ability to regret what they’ve done except to the extent it causes a disruption in their own lives. In this case, the way to guarantee regret (and send a message) is to give them time in jail to ponder what they’ve done. Then, they can spend the rest of their lives explaining to others why they did this.
aimai
Well, I have to agree with MAJeff on this one (hi MAJeff! I used to see you a lot on Pandagon). Christianity is most certainly what Christians do. Its definitely not for outsiders to tell believers what they can or can not do or believe in order to qualify. That’s a pastime specifically for people within a given faith tradition. My christian sister in law has absolutely no problem asserting “that’s not christian” or “he’s not really christian” about anything that she doesn’t like. On the other hand, if she’s in favor of it, she’s quite ecumenical about who is included in the tribe and has a bible study group that includes lots of different kinds of christian sects.
As for referencing Jesus’s actual statements, well, wouldn’t that be nice? But its a privilige that was historically extended only to Jesus’s own contemporaries. Everyone else has to rely on second hand sources and second hand interpretations. There’s no way around that. And once you acknowledge that its turtles all the way down.
aimai
aimai
@Mnemosyne:
That’s really unfair. MAJeff is making a perfectly ordinary point: which is that the decision about who is or is not a “real” member of a given religious tradition isn’t up to outsiders to determine. This has nothing to do with some form of collective punishment, which is what the generic opposition to the imaginary NY mosque is. That is an entirely different topic. You can certainly oppose the actions of an individual (OBL) and support the actions of another (Imam Rauf) or vice versa without any regard at all for their religious affiliation and that is what any sane person would do. Arguing that they are both Muslims is, well, inarguable.
aimai
Winston Smith
@Ripley:
Jesus asked His followers to “love everyone” — how, exactly, is that even remotely comparable to racism?
You know, if you need a place where you can say completely retarded things and be taken seriously, the enthusiastic denizens of Democratic Underground and Free Republic are waiting to reinforce your prejudices.
I’m not suggesting that you leave here, but you should become comfortable with being called an imbecile, If that’s an example of critical thought on your part, you’re going to be called that a lot.
arguingwithsignposts
@Winston Smith:
You might want to read a little farther down for the apology.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: A religion or other belief system is more than what its adherents do. It also includes beliefs about what its adherents should do. This is especially true of a belief system that is predicated on the idea that all people fail to live up to its standards in some way.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I agree that it’s weird for, say, a Jewish or Hindu person to tell a Christian what a “real Christian” should be (although Gandhi did it quite well, IIRC). I’m not sure why you think it’s strange for the people on this thread who claim to be Christians to be criticizing other Christians since, as you said, that’s kind of what people do within a sect.
I’m not going to criticize the beliefs of a Lubavitcher because I’m not Jewish, but I might ask you for your opinion if I know that you’re Jewish.
aimai
Winston,
Are mormons Christian? Are they followers of Jesus Christ? They say they are. Many other Christians say they aren’t. If they are, are they followers because they “love everyone?” or because they follow some other set of sayings which they identify with Jesus? Are they wrong? How do you know?
You don’t get to tell everyone else in the world who, exactly, is a Christian and what real christianity is. You can only talk about what you think it is, and how you chose to practice it. Getting angry at other people for not acknowledging the primacy of your interpretation is pretty silly and somewhat at odds with your insistence that Jesus told his followers to love everyone. Which part of the Gospel according to Jesus followed up “love thy neighbor as thyself” with “fuck you, Ripley, you imbecile your apology is not accepted?”**
aimai
**This whole discussion reminds me of the paradox of thrift. Lets call it the paradox of Christian love. They will know we are christians by our love, love, love except the ones we really hate for not respecting us enough, in public, all the time, for our good intentions.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
That is true.
That is not true. Phelps is a convenient example for people who want to spotlight the worst of self-identified Christians, just as OBL is a convenient poster-child for the worst of self-identified Muslims.
When you ask most Muslims, they will tell you that OBL is not representative of their group. Similarly, I’ve never seen a Christian of any stripe (even on Free Republic) who considers WBC a legitimate Christian organization. In both cases, the in-group has declared these individuals out-group.
So yes, out-group people can’t say who is in-group, but that goes in either direction. Non-Christians don’t have the authority to say that Phelps isn’t a Christian, but they also don’t have the authority to insist that he is.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Thanks to people like Savage. Seriously. You have people who are coming out and standing up and putting themselves in danger, physically and socially. Every time something like this happens, and christians are shown how damaging their views can be, the conversation shifts.
LongHairedWeirdo
I remember reading one person’s rant about how the sin of sodomy disgusted him beyond all other sins, and how he wished all sins disgusted him like this.
This was in an article in which he was angrily denouncing the practice of using “homophobia” to refer to anti-gay sentiment. He wasn’t *homophobic*, he was just opposed to gays because, hey, it’s sinful.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I should say first that MAJeff and I have a bit of a history on this subject at Pandagon, so based on that I don’t think that your interpretation of what he meant is correct. I’ll let him respond and clarify if he so desires.
I don’t see what makes it different. If Gene Robinson believes the same thing that Fred Phelps does, then the protesters were right and Imam Rauf is the same as Osama bin Laden.
aimai
@Mnemosyne:
I must not have understood your comment, then. Because that is precisely the point MAJeff was making, to which you responded extremely hostilely that he must be some kind of knuckle dragging anti muslim racist. That was so totally off point as to make zero sense. However, its what you said so I responded to it.
Here’s the thing, though, not only are Muslims, Jews and Buddhists not entitled to tell some Christian dude affirmatively “hey, u r not doin’ it rite” but neither are other Christians. Christianity, like every other religion and then some, has a long history of splitterism which has put each Christian sect at odds with every other Christian sect at some point. Christians have been telling each other they are going to hell for turning their back on the altar, or hanging the cross wrong, or any number of other theological disputes since the birth of the religion out of Judaism. By some readings Christianity, like Islam, is just a sect of Judaism anyway. In fact you can’t understand Christian practice or theory without grasping that uncomfortable fact.
Christianity is also a converting religion–it puts itself out there for people who are non christian to study, to learn from, and to convert to. That carries with it a certain requirement that its basic tenets are up for comment from outside. I alluded above to the statement “they will know we are Christians by our love,” I believe that is from Paul though I could be wrong. The basic issue is that Christianity is always aiming for converts and if you are doing that you are implicitly and explicitly leaving yourself open for comment, approbation, and (potentially) condemnation. What are the principle acts? What are the principle beliefs? How well do individuals and groups live up to them?
Evangelical Christians treat me and all outsiders as though we are potential converts–and as though when we don’t convert we will be punished for it. That gives me, and every other potential convert in the world, the same right of criticism and consideration that you would assign only to cradle christians, or baptised christians, or however you are choosing to define christian.
aimai
futzinfarb
@Mnemosyne:
Actually, it might be very appropriate for an atheist to tell a Christian what a “real Christian” should be.
aimai
Winston,
I take your point about Fred Phelps in a way. You want to argue that because other Christians don’t recognize him as a good person they also choose not to see him as representative of the kind of Christianity they prefer/espouse. Fair enough. But there’s a difference between being a “representative” of a category and being a member of that category. Fred Phelps and his church are certainly no more representative of Christianity than any other small, breakaway, sect such as the Plymouth Bretheren or, indeed, the Mormons when they started. But he is certainly right inside the tradition. Fred Phelps doesn’t even make any sense except as an offshoot of the Christian Tradition. In other words: he’s recognizably Christian, and American White Christian and not just some spontaneously crazy, sui generis, thing or an offshoot of Islam, or Hinduism, or Judaism.
American Christianity has a long history of patriarchs splitting off and starting their own churches–they borrow the language and the ideology of their former communities and they just start up. Its entreprenurial and culturally American–hell, it goes all the way back to the Pilgrims. To say Phelps isn’t representative is to argue that some of what he does is fringey, or disliked by the majority of his co-religionists. But that doesn’ t make him any the less Christian for all that and it doesn’t make it impossible for him and his family/followers to achieve respectability one hundred to two hundred years down the line. See, e.g. the Quakers, the Shakers before they died off, the Christian Scientists and the Mormons.
aimai
300baud
As an ardent atheist, I wanted to say that I have actually met some people who manage the “love the sinner, hate the sin” line. So it’s not total bullshit. They really are very loving people, and treat sin as “understandable but dangerous major error” rather than “cause for ostracism”. They take that “judge not lest ye be judged” stuff to heart. I applaud them.
That said, I agree that the people using that as a weak cover for their very unChristian anti-gay bigotry are giant assholes. It makes me look forward to Jesus’s return, where he rises from his grave to rend the flesh and eat the brains of those followers who have been dragging his name through the mud all these centuries.
That’s how it’s going to work, right?
Chris Grrr
@Ripley: Props for “burning finger calories”.
I am a person of faith and I really liked most of your original post here (excepting that one blanket statement).
“Help, help, I’m being persecuted!” from the mouths of well-fed Americans belonging to no minority is ludicrous. Painful adversity and danger, such as most other humans have known, would be a potent awakening.
Action is supposed to be the measure and proof of “faith.” It’s so inconvenient, though.
I really appreciate Kryptik’s comment – the Christians big on self-promotion are almost always an enormous embarrassment.
aimai
@Mnemosyne:
We cross posted but this needs a response:
That statement is extremely offensive and also really quite stupid. I’ve been reluctant to say that to your face, as it were, because I have fond memories of interesting things you’ve said at Pandagon but really, this is so dumb its inexcusable. Its a false syllogism and its off point.
Both Osama bin Laden and Imam Rauf are both Muslims. That’s a fact they would both agree to. To the extent that the protestors believe that fact to be true the protestors are, in fact, “right.” But knowing that two men are both muslims doesn’t make *the protest* right since what is being protested is the notion that muslims-who-are-terrorists-are-building-a-mosque-on-the-site-of-ground-zero. For the protestors to be “right” to do this would require that the entirety of this statement also be factually correct. Since Imam Rauf is well known not to be a terrorist, it isn’t a mosque, and its not on the site of ground zero the protestors can’t be right.
The whole point of your observation is to smear MAJeff, for some reason, with a drive by remark somehow linking a discussion about religious identity/membership with bigotry against Muslims qua muslims. It had zero to do with the point he was making. And it was, in addition, as I’ve just pointed out, just a really stupid point.
aimai
Winston Smith
@aimai:
Mormons are not Christian in the sense that they are not part of the Church Jesus started. They are Christian in the sense that their religion is centered on Jesus. Which sense you use depends on context. From the standpoint of religious anthropology, they are not Christian and from the standpoint of Orthodox Christianity — which traces its origins to Jesus’ apostles — they are not Christian. The Vatican position is that they are “misguided” Christians.
Colloquially, and in the realm of American culture, they are Christian. Mormons have more dogma that is compatible with the Southern Baptists than Quakers do, so outside an academic realm, it seems silly not to grant that this Christ-centered religion is not Christian.
Questions like this seem more complicated than they are because of the lack of distinction between “Christian in a technical context” and “Christian in a colloquial context.”
Have you ever had a debate with someone who said, “Evolution is just a theory”? In science, a theory is comprehensive description of a complex system; in colloquial terms, it’s a hypothetical. Many, many terabytes of Internet flamage have been predicated on confusing those two senses.
The issue with the Mormons is that they have an additional, non-canonical set of scriptures about Jesus. So do the Muslims. The Muslims, however, don’t consider Jesus the Son of God, but rather just a prophet. The best analogy I can make is that Mormonism is to Christianity what Christianity is to Judaism.
I could go on. This is a difficult question to answer in a forum post.
No one can know if they’re wrong. That’s what makes it a faith. If they make a scientific claims, such as “the earth is 6000 years old,” we can say they’re wrong, but is Jesus a Redeemer rather than a Savior? Maybe He is. I have to go on my intuition, as does everyone else.
aimai
@Winston Smith:
Precisely. You might want to look up the meaning of the phrase “rhetorical question.” I didn’t ask you about Mormons because I thought you were a Mormon/Christian expert but because they are an interestingly limnal question in the American Christian context. Asking the Pope for his opinion on the Mormons is, of course, quite problematic in this context because plenty of American protestant believers deny the authority of the Pope despite the whole “laying on of hands” thing while the Syrian Church has a better claim to direct transmission.
Look, this stuff is complicated. No one is saying its not. That’s precisely why I don’t acknowledge your authority, or anyone else’s, to tell me how I have to think about Christianity. It is neither only a set of practices, or a set of beliefs, or a true knowledge of reality–its a historically contingent set of both practices and beliefs that are transmitted in a variety of complex, cultural ways. Like everything else its as much social and political as it is purely theological and the sects and communities most able to police their boundaries (theologically and socially speaking) and also convert/convince the largest number of people “win.” That has nothing to do with Jesus and his various messages, it has to do with religion in practice in the world.
aimai
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Okay, now I’m really confused. So people who consider themselves Christians aren’t allowed to criticize other Christians, but people who are not Christians are allowed to criticize them?
Personally, I think everyone is up for critique since, as you said, religions are an open book these days. If I want to read the Torah or the Bhagavad Gita and say, “Hey, you guys don’t seem to be following what’s in this book, what gives?” and open a dialogue, then I can do that. But that didn’t seem to be what you were saying, so I was trying to go along with what you seemed to be saying.
Can you please clarify, because right now you seem to be saying that only people outside of a particular broad sect (ie Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, etc.) can criticize it but the people who are inside and belong to different denominations are not allowed to criticize it. That seems like a really, really weird thing to say.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
Which is why it’s equally stupid to say that Gene Robinson and Fred Phelps are equivalent to each other — because the two men don’t act the same way. They may roughly share the same religion in some ways, but in most ways, they are very, very far apart and to claim that they’re the same because they both use the label “Christian” is as silly as claiming that the Park51 is a “9/11 victory mosque” just because Osama bin Laden and Imam Rauf are both labeled “Muslims.”
That was my point.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
As I pointed out above, the Mormons are a bad example because they have their own holy writings and theology which is not shared by any other self-identified Christian denomination.
The Book of Mormon is the “Further Adventures of Jesus in the New World.” It tells a history of the region that we know for a fact is not historically accurate. Whether it reveals spiritual truths is a matter of faith. The Reformed Mormon church views the Book of Mormon as a statement of inspired faith, much like how Catholics see the Epistles of Paul. (Reformed Mormons also have no problems with gay or women clergy.)
Some of the New Testament is historically accurate and some of it isn’t. Nevertheless, it was authored by people who either knew Jesus or studied under people who did, so regardless of the literal truth of the documents, we can be confident that they represent the best effort on behalf of early Christians to document what Jesus was about.
The Mormons accept most of these writings as canon, so they can be considered people who, for the most part, follow the teachings of Jesus with some updates. There are definitely controversial aspects to Mormon theology, but there’s not really anything that is so misaligned that it makes Mormonism incompatible with orthodox Christianity.
Phelps claims to be an adherent of the traditional Christian canon. It’s just not possible to have a coherent interpretation of these documents that justifies his behavior.
scav
@Winston Smith: But then, shouldn’t the religious also automatically lose when they characterize others as “damned” which is at the very least demeaning? I don’t know if we can get out of this one. Delicate feelings are going to get hurt in this sort of debate.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I don’t think anyone’s trying to tell you how you have to think about Christianity per se, but there is a strain of atheism that’s been going around lately that insists that all religions are the same, Catholics and Mormons and Southern Baptists and Unitarian Universalists all believe the same thing, so therefore there’s no reason to differentiate between them because that’s just giving credence to their silly dogma that they insist is so important.
That seems dangerous to me because, again, it seems like declaring that Shi’a are Sunni are Wahhabists and there’s no reason for us to even try to understand that Islam is not monolithic and not all Muslims believe the same thing.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
Well, you should. Not only am I really smart, I am also good-looking. Ask anyone.
Mnemosyne
@scav:
I agree with you there, actually. Once you stop having a polite discussion and start talking about punishment, that’s where the polite discussion ends. “Sky fairy” is not polite, but when the other party is actively insulting you by telling you that you’re going to hell, politeness has gone out the window anyway.
That’s why it often seems that people who start off the discussion by talking about “sky fairies” are trying to shut it down by immediately insulting their opponents in the same way that Christians who start the discussion by telling you that you’re going to hell are trying to shut it down.
Winston Smith
@Mnemosyne:
This is ironic, because one of the main claims of the “all religions are the same” crowd is that “religion is based on ignorance.” They they buttress this with arguments that are based on ignorance.
Self-righteousness and self-awareness rarely occur in tandem.
aimai
@Winston Smith:
Coherence is really in the eye of the beholder. I’m not one of Mnemosyne’s mysterious rigid atheists, I presume she’s thinking about PZ Meyers et al. I’m an anthropologist and I’m quite well aware of the (all internet traditions) and specifically issues in theological interpretation for several religious traditions. The mormons and phelps are different in timing, historical authenticity (what is near to us is more easily criticized than what is far from us) and in interpretation from some previously seen as authoritative Christian sources and believers. But so what? That’s a difference in degree, not in kind. Phelps makes a darned good case for his beliefs. I myself prefer Bishop Gene in every way but that doesn’t mean that I, or anyone else, can rule Phelps entirely out of order. I can argue with him from within the tradition, I can argue with him from outside the tradition, but ever since we fell into heterodoxy and even when we were merely struggling to enforce the first Catholic Orthodoxy Christianity has suffered from an inability to enforce strict doxa on its own membership.
aimai
Winston Smith
@scav:
Absolutely. First of all, it’s an asshole thing to say, but theologically it’s an unsupportable claim because only God knows who is or isn’t “damned,” (if such a state even exists).
I immediately lose all respect for anyone who introduces “damnation” into a debate.
MAJeff
I said they were equally Christian. I did not say their Christianities were the same thing. I would say the same thing about Islam. There are different ways of doing Islam, and none of them are pure or true because they are all human constructions. You radically misinterpreted what I said, and based on you saying “we have a history” (which I have no recollection of) I’d wager to say it’s intentional.
Just because they’re all bullshit doesn’t mean each of them have the same bullshit.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: One can argue that someone like Phelps is so far out of the accepted mainstream of Christian views as to be irrelevant. In statistical terms, he is an outlier, and, as such, his views should not be ascribed to other Christians. Gene Robinson and his views, on the other hand, would probably fit easily within the mainstream (center-left perhaps) if one did a regression.
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
May I direct your attention to The Wordy Shipmates, if you haven’t already read it? This stuff is deeply embedded in our history and our political system. Entire colonies were founded for specific religions — not just the Puritans in Massachusetts and other parts of the coast, but Pennsylvania for Quakers and Maryland for Roman Catholics.
People on the left right now love to talk about the Know-Nothing movement but elide over the fact that it was based in religious prejudice and was specifically anti-Catholic. The Mormons literally fought religious wars across the West as they made their way to Utah.
It’s tough to talk about the history of America and current events without talking about religion, and to understand the players, you need to get into a few specifics.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
So, I might be wrong to say that Michele Bachmann’s body of statements is disordered gibberish? After all, a lot of people think she makes sense.
Post-modernism: because every statement deserves the chance to be true.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
I wasn’t responding to an apology. I was responding to an analogy that was so utterly ridiculous, it deserved to be characterized as the product of an imbecile.
The apology was downstream, and I hadn’t read it yet. Of course apology accepted, but that doesn’t make the analogy any less ridiculous.
Mnemosyne
@MAJeff:
Not so much intentional as based on things you’ve said in the past. I don’t know, maybe you’ve softened your anti-religion stance a bit since it’s been a couple of years, but I recall you as falling firmly into the “all religions are the same, and Wiccans are the enemy just as much as Southern Baptists are” camp at Pandagon.
That was not how it came across to me. At all. It came across as, “Oh, who cares if they believe different things, all those crazy religious people are the same.” It felt like you were trying to shut down the discussion. If that’s not what you meant by it, then I apologize.
I do get passionate about this topic because the history of religion is often the history of the United States, as I said above to aimai, and it drives me nuts when people elide everything together as “Christianity” without recognizing things like the fact that Christianity was at the root of both our greatest achievement as a society, civil rights, and our greatest evil, slavery. It’s no more monolithic than Islam is, though our media often makes it feel that way.
John Bird
@Winston Smith:
The main problem I have with ‘sky fairy’ is that when you use it you just look stupid as hell, even if you’re Dan Savage.
You look like a freshman in college wearing a VOTE RON PAUL T-shirt who is just itching to lay his favorite Monty Python quotes on me for the next half hour. You seem like the guy who I really, really hope never sits down next to me at the bar.
Please note this includes ‘Flying Spaghetti Monster’, ‘pink unicorns’ and all the other appropriations of examples from thought experiments to characterize actual religious beliefs.
Those things are funny to exactly one group of people: a shrinking subset of atheists. As an atheist myself, well, I’m saying, get a life. If you got jokes use ’em, if you don’t then think ’em up, if you can’t, then just leave ’em out. You’re not Mark goddamn Twain of the Internet.
If people are going to mock religion, they need to be clever about it. If people are going to actually criticize religion in a serious fashion, they need to be MUCH more clever about it.
MAJeff
No, I’m still anti-religious. However, I’ve never been in the “they’re all the same thing” camp. What I was doing was calling you on the “no true scotsman” approach in using quotation marks. And, if you’d read my comment after that, I talk about different christianities–all of which are christianity. I simply reject the notion that there’s some core truth or ideal type which makes one sect more or less christian than another.
scav
@John Bird: Yes, but that’s also just getting into questions of rhetorical style and then insisting that there is only one single way of going about it. Appropriate rhetoric depends on the venue and company. Sometimes mockery is about all that’s left, even cheap mockery. It may or may not be always effective, it may or may not always be to your taste. My personal favorite is GSD, Global Standard Deity, from Japser Fforde, but that’s usually obscure enough to be unintelligible which rather defeats the purpose so FSM it usually is.
Ruckus
I want to comment here as I feel strongly about this subject. But I really don’t want to beat a still living horse.
I’m sure that there are many people with religious beliefs who do not care if I have any or what they are. But the one’s who do seem to care are exactly the reason that discussions of religion, no matter the stripe, cause so many extreme reactions. Some days I agree, definitely not in degree, but in spirit, with the poster who wants all religious people to die, because I am just tired of hearing what I consider to be bullshit, and what feels like hatred for those that don’t agree. I can not practice any form of religion, and I have looked hard at a lot of them, trying to see if any of them was in any way palatable. I don’t care if you believe in any religion, why do you care if someone else doesn’t? And why do people constantly have to try to seemingly shove it down my throat? Isn’t your belief of it in itself enough? Why do you need the conformity of the group to feel fulfilled by religion? Is it that you are not sure that without the group endorsement the faith has less value? If that is so then I contend that you are not really religious, you are just going through the motions on the chance that it may have some value.
Just as sure that I am that there are good religious people, I am sure that there are conservatives that are not homophobes nor racists. But they are not the ones making all the noise and demanding that I agree with them.
joe from Lowell
@Kryptik:
You know where else you see this? Economics.
Economists aren’t nearly as politically conservative as a lot of people think; it’s just that a minority of political activists in the profession, which is much more conservative than the average economist, is also a great deal more interested in working the media.
geg6
Just love how when someone gives the religious a fraction of a taste of the disdain they fling at people like me with abandon I’m a bigot. Sorry if you can’t take criticism of your beliefs, but a bigot I am not. I’ll refrain from ever saying another word about how childish and destructive I find religious beliefs are just as soon as all believers refrain from foisting their fantasies upon us and the rest of the world. Because it would then not be an issue for me and we could all live and let live. This will happen exactly when purple unicorns fly out of my butt and piss endless rivers of Dom Perignon for the pleasure of all mankind.
Ruckus
@John Bird:
So now the litmus test is how clever a person is? If I don’t have a first class mind for sarcasm or wit, religion or a lack thereof is off my radar? What level of cleverness is required? Is there a degree that I can aspire to?
Ruckus
@geg6:
I like to see people living up to the title of a post.
joe from Lowell
@futzinfarb:
1. Doctrine is only a portion of religion.
2. A Christian with an encyclopedic knowledge of Christianity and the Bible, who knows nothing about Islam or Hinuism, would have been outscored on that test by an atheist with a passing knowledge of many religions’ doctrines.
So, no.
Mnemosyne
@MAJeff:
Fair enough. I apologize for blowing up at you. I wasn’t trying to go No True Scotsman with the quotes. It was meant to point out that the people most likely to stand up in public and shout, “Look at me, I’m a Real True Christian, unlike all of you other losers!” are the least likely to actually follow the teachings of Jesus about humility, caring for the poor, giving away your possessions, etc. as laid out in the New Testament. Not only that, but they’re deliberately violating a specific and very clear instruction in the book that they claim to follow “literally.”
Sort of like the way the guys at the VFW post who talk the biggest about how great war is are the ones who are least likely to have actually seen combat. Or, to bring it back to religion, the way that my best friend is called a “cafeteria Catholic” for using birth control against the teachings of the Church but cheerleading the war in Iraq against the teachings of the Church somehow makes you an even better Catholic than most.
joe from Lowell
@geg6:
So, you acknowledge that such speech is bigotry, hate it when it’s aimed at you, but you insist on doing it other people. Oh, and you’ve come up with an excuse why it’s ok for you to do so.
Congratulations. You’re still, by your own admission, hurling bigotry at people. Stop that, if you don’t want to be called a bigot.
LIke I said, you sound just like the assholes attacking the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque. “I’ll stop calling Islam a gutter religion when a monkey god when Muslims stop blah blah blabbity blah.”
Again, congratulations.
Hey, here’s an idea: how about you make an effort not to be a flaming, bigoted asshole, regardless of what other people do?
futzinfarb
@joe from Lowell:
Depends on the christian and the atheist. See, that’s why I used the word “might”.
So, yeah.
aimai
@Winston Smith:
That’s silly. Theological interpretation takes place within a larger context that makes some interpretations authoritative and others not authoritative–so? Michelle Bachmann’s statements about the world take place in a different context. To the extent she submits them to some kind of truth test we can evaluate them: for instance statements about science. Can we do the same about anyone’s statements about religion or belief in god? Certainly not. One man’s proven fact is another man’s absurdity. This is still more true when we are talking about interpretations of texts, acts, speeches, and the meaning of long ago events such as the crucifixion. You have made statements about Jesus’s message which are perfectly well grounded, theologically and historically which are largely rejected in practice by other Christian groups in this country. Love itself is not a “fact” nor a word whose meaning is exact.
I continue to agree with MAJeff’s point which is that there is that we are falling in to the “one true scotsman” fallacy when we say that some christians are “not christian” when what we mean is that we don’t like what they say or do, or we prefer a different interpretation of the scriptures, or even (in the Mormon case) that we don’t recognize the authenticity of their scriptures.
I just don’t see the problem that Mnemosyne sees with anti Christian or anti religious sentiment in this country. To this day atheists an agnostics are perceived as less electable than the religious. It was a shocking thing that Obama gave a shout out to “people of no faith” even if it was a step forward.
As for Mnemosyne’s confusion about my stance on criticism from within/without a given religion well, perhaps it is confusing but that is perhaps because we aren’t defining our terms well. Criticism of? Denial of? Attack on? STudy of? These are all different things.
In my capacity as an anthropologist and a student of history generally speaking I’m well versed in lots of issues in Christian theology and history. So I’m perfectly able to critique a particular stance as “not in keeping with” a given tradition or “very typical of” a given tradition. As an outsider and a non believer I wouldn’t presume to tell another person that he’s “not a good Christian” or “not practicing the right version” of his faith. However, in my capacity as a citizen in a polity in which (some) Christians insist that my jewishness, or my atheism, ought to make me less of a citizen–and in my capacity as a person who has been evangelized–I certainly take to myself the right to speak back to the totalizing versions of Christianity and tweak them on their lack of internal coherence, honesty, and love. That’s just for fun, of course. But I draw the line between offering my opinion of a religion that is not asking me to join/threatening me with hell/trying to strip my citizenship (Shinto, say?) –that I wouldn’t do. What I would do is feel free to offer my opinion of a religion that is actively trying to recruit me. If someone comes up to me and says “my way is the only true way for these reasons” I’m not obliged just to avert my eyes, as though its a crazy panhandler on the subway asking for tinfoil. I’m entitled to engage in the conversation about truth, and reason, and authority. In other words we are all entitled to be in dialogue with Christianity because Christianity is in dialogue with us.
aimai
eemom
It is true that atheists are politically marginalized in this country, but I don’t think that is the point here.
If I understand correctly, the point Mnemosyne and Joe fL are making is that it is useless, counter-productive, and arguably bigoted for atheists to collectively demonize religious people in general or “Christians” in particular.
I think Mnemosyne was also saying that whether you’re an atheist or not, you can’t ignore the role that religion and religious differences have played in our history.
I agree with both of those points, if I’m got them right.
eemom
and it is also true that, unlike with most other faiths, proselytizing IS a central tenet of Christianity. The New Testament specifically instructs believers to go forth and spread the word.
That, IMO, is what makes Christianity particularly irritating to atheists, and to that extent the antipathy is understandable.
glen hubbell
@PaulW: @PaulW: Ha! Well put!
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I think MAJeff and I got our thing straightened out : my quote use was not sufficiently clear and he thought I was making a No True Scotsman argument when I was making a slightly different argument, ie that people who posture like that in public are the least likely to have actually done anything to support their claim, and yet they’re the ones who get all of the public attention as representatives of what they claim to be.
Actually, I’m seeing a different problem that drives me nuts because it feels like another case where there are people on the left picking up right-wing memes and running with them. I’ll try not to make this too long, but here’s what I was thinking:
Conservatives have a vested interest in eliding the differences between our vast spectrum of religions and claiming that the US is a “Christian nation” because, hey, look how many people belong to a Christian religion! They want to smush Catholics and Mormons and Foursquare Baptists and Quakers and even Jews into one big ball so they can claim a majority and run things as Christian Dominionists. It’s also in their interest to smush non-Judeo-Christian religions into a big ball of Other and convince all of the different Christian sects that they have more in common with each other than, say, the racial equality beliefs of Baha’i because Jesus. Otherwise, more liberal Christians like Quakers or UCC might decide that the Baha’i are more natural allies than the Catholic Church and the SBC are because their actions and agendas are more aligned with one another.
When people on the left play the “they’re all the same” game, it feels like they’re falling for that right-wing meme and helping conservatives further their agenda to make “religious” synonymous with “Republican.” Conservatives have succeeded pretty well at that so far, at least in the media, so I hate to see anyone on the left pushing that “no difference” meme along on the right wing’s behalf.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
First of all, very, very little of what Michele Bachmann says is about science.
For example, Bachmann described her March 2004 rally against same-sex marriage as, “the most loving, warm-spirited, most beautiful rally that I have ever seen at the Capitol.” I would disagree strongly, but how would you scientifically prove that statement wrong? You can’t. It’s subjective. Science doesn’t deal in the subjective.
Can you make objective statements about religion? Yes.
For example, the claim that “Jesus is the Son of God,” has many possible interpretations, but if you say that “Christians do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” then you are just plain wrong. That statement is objectively inaccurate in light of the faith documents that consistently claim that Jesus is the Son of God (whatever that means). If you say that “Muslims do not believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” then you are correct. I can’t believe that anyone would even try to argue with these claims.
This isn’t voodoo. We see the same dynamic in law. Our Constitution is subject to interpretation, but there are some things that are simply unconstitutional regardless of how hard you try to twist the words and precedents.
That isn’t evident in what you’ve been writing.
Winston Smith
@eemom:
That’s true — and it’s not just irritating to atheists. Proselytizing is a duty of Christians, although there are different depictions of what that entails. Some people make it into an obsession bordering on performance art.
Turkey and Israel (and other countries, I imagine) have anti-proselytizing laws, and it isn’t because of the Buddhists.
Mnemosyne
@Winston Smith:
The Giant Evil Corporation I work for here in California shows a little video during orientation about harassment and I’ve always found it fascinating that one of the forms of actionable harassment that they dramatize is religious harassment, with a woman who keeps nagging one of her co-workers to go to church with her. That made me feel a little better about working for a company that’s so giant and so evil.
(Okay, it’s not like we make nuclear weapons or something, but we do warp the minds of little children from birth, and that’s pretty evil. But the benefits are good.)
aimai
@Winston Smith:
I’m sorry, what makes you think I don’t get Christian Theology and the specific histories of various Christianities? Because I brought up the Mormons? I brought them up because they are a liminal test case for certain issues. I don’t even really grasp what your argument is, at this point. Are you trying to say that a given religion is “true” and can be demonstrated to be true in some way that Michelle Bachmann’s statements can’t?** That is, that its not subjective and beyond proof? Because the examples you give are merely examples of statements of fact on matters of practice, or fact on matters of enjoined belief, not true statements of reality that we can all accept on the basis of shared experience. I mean, sure, its trivially true that modern Christianity shares, or temporarily claims to share in an ecumenical way, certain basic beliefs and beliefs about statements of belief.
Here’s an example of where we part company:
First of all, historically, this is not even exactly true. I mean, its true *today* that Christians are people who believe that Jesus Christ was the son of (their) god and that that god is and always was the only one. But it wasn’t always true that this was the only way that Jesus was understood. There was a ton of debate in the early judeo-christian church over exactly what was meant by the argument that Jesus was the “son of god,” also what he meant by “son of man” and also whether he actually died on the cross. Certainly some of that was “settled” as a matter of custom and law in the early church and by now is largely orthodox belief for everyone who claims to be Christian. And you are perfectly right that the belief that/statement that Jesus is the son of God is now considered foundational for Christians. But so what? Is it *enough* to determine whether a person is or is not a Christian? Ask a Baptist, a Catholic, a Lutheran, an Episcopalian or a Plymouth Brethern or any one of a number of smaller sects and you might get a different answer even now. One problem I’m having is the elision of “A Christian” with “A Good Christian” since different sects within christianity see “being a christian” in different ways: sometimes as an all or nothing on/off status, sometimes as a journey (we are all sinners), sometimes as something that once started can’t be ended (you are a lapsed Catholic, not a pagan), etc…etc…etc…
In addition different Christian communities arrogate to themselves the right to determine in what way we are to understand each component part of that statement from what “belief” is to what “confession” is to what happens in the central rituals in which that “body and blood” stuff is celebrated/memorialized. There are groups like the Bereans and other small groups where every time the preacher leaves, or is forced out, the new preacher makes everyone get rebaptized because the single act isn’t sufficient for creating/marking the individual as Christian. And hey, they killed off the albigensians specifically because they shifted the time of baptism and confession to the end of life rather than the beginning.
If you want to talk Christian theology I’m more than ready–as the recent Pew Poll reminded us its the atheists, agnostics, jews and mormons who know the most about religion in this country. Hell, 48 percent of Catholics apparently didn’t know that they are supposed to believe in the transubstantiation of the host and the wine.
aimai
**In re Michelle Bachmann I wasn’t thinking of science at all but I was thinking of things like “its a very large crowd” or “the sun rose today.” You brought her up and accused her of word salad, I didn’t.
Lysana
Side notes from the polytheistic angle here:
1) The phrase “people of faith” is patently offensive. It is used in such a way that it claims only Christians have faith and the rest of us are faithless and shiftless boobs. I have faith in multiple gods and lesser beings. So I consider myself a person of faith as opposed to an atheist, who lives a life that doesn’t involve faith in something supernatural.
2) “Sky fairy” is really hysterical to those of us who practice animism. Think about it.
3) And we don’t proselytize. We also admit when someone’s acting like an asshole that they really are pagans. Just that they’re acting like assholes. Saying “he’s not a real Christian” is nonsensical.
toujoursdan
@eemom:
Yeah, but most observant mainline Protestants/progressive Christians adopt St. Francis of Assisi’s interpretation of this command when he said:
“Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words.”
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
I think he’s saying that the stated beliefs of a specific sect are objective, not subjective. It’s one thing to say, “Catholics believe that communion literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus” and it’s something else to say “communion literally becomes the body and blood of Jesus.” The first one is an objective fact because you’re simply stating that the church teaches this. The second one is a statement of faith. Stating what someone else believes doesn’t mean you share that belief — you’re just making a factual statement.
To take it into a different field, “Patient believes that he is Superman” is a statement of fact even though the patient is not, in fact, Superman.
Winston Smith
@aimai:
That much is clear. I’m not sure you can because you’re talking like a deconstructionist, a viewpoint I don’t consider valid to begin with. I’m not saying you’re stupid — because you obviously aren’t — just that you’re looking at this in such a different way than I do that it would take a great deal of effort to get on the same page.
In my view, you’re over-complicating this. The debate you reference is still going on today. What isn’t going on, and what never occurred is any serious debate over whether the statement “Jesus is the Son of God,” was true or not, particularly because Jesus makes this claim Himself. The furious debate, the one that still rages, is what in blazes that means.
That’s what I said, and that statement is a statement of fact.
Mnemosyne
@Winston Smith:
For more precision, I think you mean “Jesus said he was the Son of God.” Saying that he “is” the son of God starts running you into that whole faith vs. fact thing. There’s no way to objectively prove that Jesus is, in fact, the son of God, because there’s no proof that Jesus himself existed.
It’s indisputable that the New Testament repeatedly says that Jesus is the son of God. But, as you said, the debatable part is what that actually means (if anything).
Winston Smith
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, thank you.
And if the patient does not have super strength and X-ray vision, then that conclusively proves that he is not Superman. You can’t argue that you can be Superman without possessing these qualities.
Similarly, you can’t argue that Phelps is a Christian just because he said so. I’m still waiting to hear the “darned good case for his beliefs,” that Phelps allegedly makes. I guess I’ll jut have to Google for it.
Winston Smith
@Mnemosyne:
Although written documents didn’t appear for decades after His death, those that did are remarkably consistent and geographically disperse. In order to support the claim that Jesus did not exist, you would have to posit a unprecedented conspiracy theory or, at least, a radical revision of what we know about the world at that time.
Given the archeological evidence, and our understanding of that society, there’s no other reasonable conclusion than Jesus was a real person. We may not know a whole lot about His actual historical life, but he had to be a real guy.
Winston Smith
@Mnemosyne:
That seems like a lack of commitment. If you’re going to be evil, why be a little evil?
Mnemosyne
@Winston Smith:
But even if you can point to a historical person called Jesus, that’s still not proof that he was the son of God. It’s just proof that a guy who claimed to be the son of God existed. And at this late date, there’s no way to prove that claim one way or the other. That’s what makes it a claim of faith, not fact.
Mohammed existed and founded the religion of Islam. Buddha existed, too, and Buddhism is based on his teachings. Those two things are facts. That doesn’t necessarily mean that their documented claims were all true. The fact that Buddha was a real person doesn’t automatically mean that reincarnation is a fact.
Do you see what I mean?
Winston Smith
@aimai:
Let me get this straight. You now consider yourself an expert in religion because a Pew Poll said that, on average, atheists and Jews know more about religion than the average Christian, and you are both. Do you understand statistics at all?
What an arrogant statement. Also, since you have no idea what my background is, so it’s also pretty insulting.
Nevertheless, I’m in the mood for some light comedy, so:
What would early (3rd-5th Century) Christians have said about Jesus’ meeting with Moses and Elijah? (I’m not sure the Pew study covered that question.)
Winston Smith
@Mnemosyne:
Yes, definitely. I was responding to your claim that “there’s no proof that Jesus himself existed.” We certainly have no way of knowing if He was the Son of God even if we did have definitive proof — beyond the related claim that we are all sons and daughters of God.
There is however, sufficient evidence to conclude that there’s a real man behind the myth.
Winston Smith
@Lysana:
Hmmm… I always thought it was a phrase that attempted to be inclusive of polytheists and non-theists. I thought it was meant specifically to group anyone who wasn’t an atheist.
arguingwithsignposts
@Winston Smith:
Not to step into the fray here, but I don’t think that’s what aimai was implying with the statement.
Winston Smith
@arguingwithsignposts:
Maybe not, but I can’t figure out another interpretation. What do you think it meant?
Barb (formerly Gex)
I’m just going to point out that 40 states banned SSM via direct vote, 30 of those by amending their constitutions, two of those in the last two years.
So the idea that there are hoards of Christians that aren’t anti-gay is laughable, particularly if you take Dan’s critique seriously. It’s easy to see how the people who say gays should be killed are anti-gay. But what of Christians who are gay-friendly but still believe we are deliberately sinning and without repenting will burn in hell for eternity? That belief more or less implies that gays deliberately sin and that to be good with God gays should try not to be gay and should repent when they fall. And that is just as hostile to gays as the more blatant anti-gay rhetoric.
I consider any Christian who believes gay sex is a sin to be anti-gay. This is where the love the sin, hate the sinner argument blows up. They can’t love and forgive us unless we repent – and that would require not being gay anymore. So I view any Christian who believes being gay is a sin to be somewhere on the eliminationist spectrum. And right now, politically and culturally, a majority of Americans are on that spectrum.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@Mnemosyne: The religious screamers have way more influence on policy than the tea party. Trying to minimize the impact of the crazy religious by citing their numbers doesn’t work when the guys you cite are extremely powerful and influence policy. The Bob Jones’ and Pat Robertson’s of the world make or break Republican presidential candidates – note how playing to them makes McCain defend DADT.
Pointing out how this is a minority of Christians screaming this does not explain why majorities of Christians go along with them on all anti-gay policies. Again, supermajorities in 40 states. Direct vote against gays on a single issue vote. So it seems like there are plenty who aren’t screamers but agree with the screamers to some extent.
Barb (formerly Gex)
@MAJeff: It’s funny when people think that what they take from Christianity is obviously the good and proper version, but that what others take from Christianity is *obviously* wrong. Also funny? The homophobes think the same exact thing!
Phoebe
@burnspbesq: I actually thought that was snark, and extremely funny, and a reference to Dan Savage’s “fuck your feelings” message to the person who wrote the letter about how his or her feelings were hurt because of what Dan said about religions that demonize homosexuality. Heh.
In fact, if anyone thinks homosexuality is such a sin that it needs to be railed against despite the fact that it contributes to an atmosphere that causes gay teens to kill themselves, then those people should be telling the gay teens, “fuck your feelings”. For consistency and all.
Winston Smith
@Barb (formerly Gex):
You have a point, but you have to separate the religion from the culture, and that can be really difficult. For example, the separation of the sexes and the modest dress for women is not an artifact of Islam, but of the cultures where Islam flourished.
Japan has a culture with no taboos on homosexual behavior; in fact there are some traditions in which it was expected, including monasticism and the Samurai class. Still, Japanese gays are closeted. In a culture where conformity and protocol are paramount, it is difficult to express an identity that doesn’t have a well-defined role. The social constructs for being an ordinary gay person in modern Japan are still emerging. If you were to address the barriers to being out in Japan, you would have to understand that they have nothing to do with hatred or fear of gays or homosexuality. You also need to understand that trying to remove those barriers by promoting individualism in Japanese culture isn’t going to end well.
I America, homophobia has become deeply entwined with religion, due to America’s unique history as an incubator for extreme religion. Understanding the reality of this is key to excising homophobia from religious practice in this country. A lot of people think that the cure is to push back on religion. That’s a fool’s errand and will just make enemies out of allies. The religion itself isn’t the problem, it’s the culture. You can’t win a culture war in America by trying to eliminate religion or religious conviction. You can only win that battle by decoupling the culture from the religion.
If you believe that a majority of Christians will always oppose gay marriage, then we might as well give up, because there will eventually be a backlash that will end it. The fact is that even if a majority holds that position now, there is nothing external stopping them from changing their minds — being anti-gay due to Christian beliefs is just an excuse.
There are plenty of examples showing that homophobia is not intrinsic to Christianity. Probably the most vivid illustration is Mexico. Mexico is a deeply Roman Catholic country and yet it has legalized gay marriage — despite the official Vatican position.
Mnemosyne
@Barb (formerly Gex):
Not only majorities of Christians, though. As you probably know, church attendance and religious affiliation figures keep sinking, but people still aren’t voting for pro-gay propositions.
My stepmom is a lifelong atheist who never sets foot inside a church, but she still watches Fox News and will happily tell you horror stories about the “war on Christmas” because even though she thinks all religion is bullshit, she still thinks that the US is a culturally Christian nation and Christians should be given priority over everyone else. And, yes, she’s anti-gay and voted against the gay rights propositions in Arizona.
For a lot of white people, “Christian” has become a tribal identity that people who have never attended church use to show that they’re one of the in-group, not because they actually think that Jesus was the son of God. So when the Mormons buy millions of dollars worth of TV time in California to tell everyone that gay marriage is bad and wrong, people vote for Prop 8, not because it’s against the religion that they don’t actually belong to, but because they identify with that in-group.
geckodancing
Do you not know that statements like this are profoundly offensive to people of faith
I don’t know why people would find it offensive. It’s not like it’s from the Bible or anything – though it’s often misquoted as being Biblical.