-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger
Author and journalist Dan Savage is known for supporting LGBT political issues and founding the It Gets Better project that helps LGBT adults improve their lives after being bullied as kids. More recently, he’s known for a talk he gave as the keynote speaker to a Seattle-area high-school journalism convention.
During the speech Savage said that “We can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people.” Numerous future Fox News journalists got up and walked out rather than listen to something they didn’t want to hear.
From the department of false equivalences, Savage is now being accused of bullying Christians. Savage responds that he doesn’t hate Christians, he just hates their sin (or words to that effect).
Christian pundits are claiming that Savage’s words violate their “religious freedom from offense.” They also accuse Savage of blasphemy and cherry-picking those portions of the Bible that support his claim of “bullshit.”
Christian groups are citing Savage as just another in the long line of anti-Christian persecutions. They are calling for laws against anti-Christian bullying while atheists are lobbying for an exemption on religious grounds.
Let’s clear up any issues regarding Leviticus 18:22. It’s only about men. The Bible nowhere condemns girl-on-girl action. God is cool with girl-on-girl action. House: “maybe there is a god.”
H/T: Amanda Marcotte, Jen McCreight, Ed Brayton, Jay Michaelson, Dan Savage.
I am proud to be insane but ashamed of the many persecutions our religions’ separate insanities have caused all over the world.
I am proud to be an American, but ashamed of the many wars that my country has pursued since the given purposes were obvious lies., to which I assented.
I am proud to be a world citizen, of whatever nation, but ashamed that I, craven as the rest, have not forced the powerful, by our simple numbers, to cease and desist their evils.
I am proud to stand alone, “strong” although fearful of the man standing next to me, for he will certainly SYG-kill me in his wisdom.
I am proud to let my govenment in its wisdom, deprive me slowly of my socialization so that I dare not in solidarity communicate as man has done since before mindcontrol was discovered.
Lastly, I am proud to persecute those weaker and nearest me while affecting real or feigned disgust at the useless creatures who hunger for jobs as the Republican cohort draw down all job creating investment so as to defeat Obama—–and then enslave us all.
Most especially I am proud of the eternal leaders, who confirm my god-given male dominace rights and their use since creation to chattelize and debase the female animals who serve us, and to ignore the animals’ claim to being also god’s children.
I am proud of many more things, but the labors of my listeners should be spared to other needed issues., as they are many. My leaders tell me so.
Lastly, I am proud to be at JT’s as here even insanity, hypocrisy, moral turpitude and diverse other infirmaties are permitted even those of such high quality as myself. I will now reconfirm my oath of allegiance.
“Our insanity, which is eternal, grant me a continuing power to be inspired by the weaknesses of my next, and use them to create more inequity and misery in our world, so as to bring a rapid demise of all life, as our leaders and God says we should, and to bring out a joint halleluja in praise of the golden “Baal of progress” in returning to a proto-human state. Acchooo!!!………………Sorry, I meant Amen.
I think my next “Think of the Children” thanks to God who guides us both.
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“I’m proud to be a Christian, but ashamed of the hate-mongering that passed for religion in so much of the world.” by “Think of the Children”..
@GeneH – In the spirit of Christian charity, I WOULD piss on “Reverend” Phelps, if he were on fire. 😉
@ Idealist 707 – My yardstick goes from one to thirty-six and starts all over again.
@ Metrocowboy – Groovy. It’s a deal. See, it’s the live and let live Christians like yourself and Oro Lee that give the religion a good name. It’s those pesky zealots trying to convert everyone they meet and force their values upon others that give your lot PR problems. There are some atheists that go too far too, but by in large, they don’t care what you believe as long as you don’t force your beliefs and practices upon them.
Trigger reflex – “AYE-MENN!”
Junctionshamus,
The truly pious people that I’ve met in my lifetime were hesitant to judge others through the lens of their belief. This to me is what differentiates those who deeply believe in and understand the tenets of their religion, from those who are publicly pious but lack understanding of what their faith is truly about. Both you and Oro Lee have shown yourselves both to be people of strong faith and true religious values.
oops supports gay marriage
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/07/arne-duncan-gay-marriage_n_1495224.html?ref=college&ir=College Secretary of Education Arne Duncan suppoorts gay marrieage.
No Choice? No Chance.
Posted by Melissa McEwan at Monday, July 17, 2006
http://www.shakesville.com/2006/07/no-choice-no-chance.html
Yesterday there was an article in the WaPo about health workers who can’t reconcile their job duties with their religious beliefs. Profiled are an ambulance driver who was fired after refusing to transport a patient for an abortion, an anesthesiologist who refuses to participate in sterilizations, an ultrasound technician who was fired for praying with a patient “to try to persuade her not to get an abortion,” a pharmacist who refused to fill a rape victim’s prescription for emergency contraception, a fertility specialist who will only treat married couples using their own sperm and eggs, and a neurologist who will not work with stem cells and refuses to withhold brain-dead patients’ food and fluids. The aforementioned ambulance driver has sued her employer, charging religious discrimination.
The title of the article is For Some, There Is No Choice.
This does not refer to the patients left without treatment by healthcare providers, but to the healthcare providers themselves, who “describe what amounts to a sense of siege, with the secular world increasingly demanding they capitulate to doing procedures, prescribing pills or performing tasks that they find morally reprehensible.”
Only in an environment where “freedom of religion” is deliberately misconstrued to mean “the right of a particular strand of conservative Christianity to not have to follow the rules everyone else does” could an expectation to provide legal healthcare services constitute religious discrimination. Only in this atmosphere could not being able to pick and choose which patients you want to serve, thusly redefining your entire profession on your own terms, be considered tantamount to having no choice at all.
Here’s your choice: Do what you were hired to do or get another fucking job.
This culture of victimhood among conservative Christians is ridiculous in the extreme. It is—yet again—predicated on the flawed assertions that their version of Christianity is the only version, and that it is the exclusive source from which morality can be derived. The morality of all the other Christians, all the people of other religions, and all the non-religious people who don’t have these personal issues on the job don’t figure a whit. Of course they don’t—because if they did, the barking lunatics who equate oppression with a requirement of compliance with one’s basic job description might have to face the reality that there’s not some insidious siege upon religious freedom, but instead just a minority group whose religious beliefs make them intrinsically unfit to hold positions as healthcare providers.
They want to have their cake (opposition to certain healthcare procedures) and eat it, too (be healthcare providers free to decline patients of their choosing). It just doesn’t work that way. A regional salesman for Budweiser who’s 12-stepped his way to a belief that selling alcohol is “morally reprehensible” doesn’t get paid to sit in his office doing nothing. A marketing exec for Phillip Morris who’s lost her mum to lung cancer and has a eureka moment that hawking smokes is “morally reprehensible” doesn’t get paid to sit in her office doing nothing. If you sign up to be a science teacher, you teach evolution. If you sign up to be McDonald’s manager, you sell hamburgers and fries; you don’t use your counter pulpit to recommend going home and making a salad. And if you sign up to be a healthcare provider, you bloody well provide healthcare. When your morality is inconsistent with your employer’s expectations, so long as those expectations are legal, it’s your problem and no one else’s—and it’s no one else’s responsibility to indulge your conscience.
Asking for on-the-job exemptions from primary duties based on religious beliefs is nothing less than the “special rights” conservatives are incessantly accusing the LGBT community, women, and minorities of seeking. Those groups just want baseline equality. Christians who want to use their interpretation of the Bible to rewrite their job descriptions want an inequality that caters to their personal whims. Particularly in the field of medicine, where lives depend on people who don’t hesitate, who put patients’ needs before their own desires, such a willful dereliction of duty is contemptible.
Can churches the actually FOLLOW the teachings of Jesus sue the homophobia groups for defamation of “Christians”. I’m proud to be a Christian, but ashamed of the hate-mongering that passed for religion in so much of the world.
JS,
Nice plea. One thing: “but as individuals, let a Christian’s character be judged independently by their own actions.””
OK of course, but just as long as the measuring tape does not have a Christian icon (measures to be specific).
Isn’t that what the USA is supposed to have with separation of state and religion??? As it really is, we have separation of church and religion; and too much church and state working together.
It’s those who want plead for a Christian Sharia, that I find disturbing, ie the Dominionists and alliies.
**in comparison to that of the instigators.**
junctionshamus,
“Today’s Christians get blamed for the ills of the world, much the same way as today’s White men get blamed for the sins of slavery in America.”
True enough for certain kinds of Christians – namely fundamentalists and the blatant hate groups like Phelps and their ilk, but in truth there is more than enough blame to go around for stupid things done in the name of religion. Jesus would be appalled at much of what has been done “in His name”. He would have plenty of company to bitch about that too at the next Spring Time Picnic and Volleyball Tournament for the Divine and Semi-divine.
“Of course, the argument gets extended even closer through Nazi socialism, and Jim Crow laws, but if evil triumphed where good men did nothing, the objectively, Atheists have to share in responsibility for those and other anhiliation programs by non-religious types, as well.”
I have to disagree slightly. Point to a war throughout history that was started for atheistic reasons? I don’t mean economic either. I mean where someone got up one day and said, “I’m going to force Country X to be Atheists because I am.” Do people of conscience irrespective of their choice of belief or non-belief share part of the burden for not speaking up when they should have at various times throughout history past and present? Certainly, but comparatively speaking to starting wars or genocide, the culpability is small in comparison to the that of the instigators.
“I guess we’re the whipping boys (and girls) of the new millennium, much the same way so-called Christians blamed others for their ills throughout history. It’s probably time for our comeuppance as a group, but as individuals, let a Christian’s character be judged independently by their own actions.”
I wouldn’t exactly call them whipping boys yet, but that a critical eye is being cast about current and past activity is certainly karmic. In truth, I think the mass media/mass communication age is causing all religions to be examined more critically than in the past – especially by younger generations.
“I don’t believe I’ve forced my Christian faith on you,”
No, you haven’t and I dig that about you.
“and I would ask you to not force any lack of faith you have on me.”
I don’t think anyone has. Have they?
“You can accept it or reject it.”
Groovy. It’s a deal. See, it’s the live and let live Christians like yourself and Oro Lee that give the religion a good name. It’s those pesky zealots trying to convert everyone they meet and force their values upon others that give your lot PR problems. There are some atheists that go too far too, but by in large, they don’t care what you believe as long as you don’t force your beliefs and practices upon them.
I think they made a miscalculation with Dan Savage…unlike most liberal democrats who start crying and apologizing for every thing they do, we must not hurt the rights feelings. Savage is one tough cookie and is no weiner for sure…
Dan’s a big boy and doing just fine with this situation. The Christian Right makes these allegations about various people all the time.