Religious Gays at War With Themselves

As pundits everywhere struggle to understand what motivated Omar Mateen to shoot scores of people in an Orlando gay nightclub, we see an ideological split among folks of different political persuasions.  Was it Islamic radicalism?  Was it hatred of gays?  The left wing tends to want to pin it on homophobia, while the right wants to pin it on Islamism, each according to their own political agenda.  Blogger and Christian culture warrior crude, naturally, is in the latter category.  In a recent post, he manages to make a slam against gay culture while at the same time ridiculing the notion that the attack was the product of anything but Islamism.

It seems reasonable to me that the real picture is more nuanced than either side may be willing to admit.  There is good reason to think that Mateen was homophobic - after all, he chose to target gay people in his attack.  At the same time evidence indicates that he was gay.  Also, Mateen publicly declared that he conducted this attack in support of ISIS, in retaliation for the people killed by US air attacks.  But he was a US citizen, born and raised in America.  And by the way, America, with its predominantly Christian culture, is where he learned to be homophobic.  So there seems to be at least some merit to the claim that our Christian culture might have had something to do with it.

The Political Correctness of the Right

A favorite target of right-wing wrath is political correctness (PC), and and its supposed practitioners, who are referred to as social justice warriors (SJW).  Political correctness is a pejorative term that denotes the tendency to limit speech so as not to offend any particular group of people, such as minorities, nationalities, or disadvantaged people.  It is often embraced by young, liberal-minded people, especially college students.  In many cases, they have taken it to extremes by instituting overbearing campus speech codes and stifling free expression.  In the worst cases, people have lost their careers for saying things that fall afoul of the SJWs.  These extreme cases give conservatives some legitimate reason to heap scorn upon liberal PC and the SJWs, and I agree with them, up to a point.

However, many on the right tend to see things as black or white.  PC is viewed as a phenomenon of the strictly left-wing, atheist, anti-moral, low-intelligence freedom haters.  It stands in opposition to all that is good and moral.  It's us against conservative ideals.  I've always felt that one of the biggest reasons they have such scorn for PC is that their own (typically religiously motivated) hateful or bigoted sentiments are often held up by the SJWs as being politically incorrect.  In response, many right-wingers will take the very worst examples of PC, and claim that these views are representative of anyone who is liberal or irreligious.

The Harm of Same-Sex Marriage

I have often claimed that same-sex marriage does no harm to anyone, and shouldn't be prohibited.  In this video, Jennifer Roback Morse, a Catholic, presents her religious-based views describing the supposed harms of same-sex marriage.

This is yet another case of piety as a cover for bigotry.  There is absolutely no factual, objective information in this presentation.  For the most part, it just appeals to the emotions of fellow bigots.  She makes plenty of assertions about what's right, but doesn't support those assertions with facts and data.  I'll examine her claims and show that it's nothing more than hot air from someone with a religious-based anti-gay agenda.

The Politics of Religious Freedom

Recently, three Republican presidential candidates took the stage at a rally is Des Moines called the National Religious Liberties Conference, targeted toward conservative evangelical voters in advance of the Iowa caucuses.  It was organized and hosted by firebrand pastor Kevin Swanson.  One of the major topics of this conference was the recent Supreme Court Ruling for marriage equality.  But listening to Swanson speak, it was obvious that this was a platform for fear mongering and to spew hatred and stir up sentiment against gays.  The web site for this conference asks these questions:

Victor's Argument for Bigotry

I have to hand it to Victor.  He has a littany of justifications for his anti-gay bigotry.  And it all boils down to religious justification.  This is piety as a cover for bigotry, as I have discussed before.  By his logic, all Christians should have the same anti-gay "principles" that he has.  But they don't.  There are many Christians who don't see this kind of bigotry as a principle of their Christian belief.  And I know that Victor objects strongly to using the term 'bigot' to describe people like him.  My use of the term here has a very specific meaning: someone who practices or advocates the practice of discrimination against some group of people, particularly when that discrimination would deny the equal rights of the victims of that discrimination.  Perhaps he's sensitive about this terminology because he thinks it is used in the much same manner that he uses the term 'atheist'.

I'm not going to argue that atheism always leads to totalitarianism, but ... - Reppert

And then he proceeds to argue that atheism leads to totalitarianism.  And what does this have to do with bigotry?  He seems to be making the case on this basis that atheists (who are the bad guys in favor of SSM) are wrong, and Christians (who are the good guys opposed SSM) are right.

Establishment of Religion, Again

Kim Davis, the elected county clerk of Rowan County, Kentucky, refuses to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, in defiance of court orders going all the way up to the US Supreme Court.  She has been jailed for contempt of court.

In her absence, several gay couples have received marriage licenses issued by her deputies, which Davis claims are null and void because they don't bear her signature.  When offered a chance to be released from confinement on the condition that she not interfere with the issuance of licenses, she refused.

Kim Davis calls herself a born-again Christian, and believes that marriage should be between one man and one woman.  She is currently in her fourth marriage.  If Davis' reasoning is correct, perhaps the clerk who issued her fourth marriage license should have refused, on the same grounds used by Davis.

Let Freedom Ring

This 4th of July, Christians are moaning and groaning.  "Our freedom is lost", they cry.  "The constitution has been trampled upon."  As they predict the end of the United States as we know it, and liken the current situation to the fall of Rome, they bellow out the most ominous of warnings:  "Those who are ignorant of history are doomed to repeat it."  How dire their predictions are.  How dismal the future they foresee.

Get a grip, guys.  There is a class of people who now have the right to get married in all states, and the federal government will give full recognition to those marriages.  That's it.  I defy any of you to tell me what right has been taken away from you.  What freedom have you lost, aside from telling these people that they're not allowed to marry?  Please tell me.  I'd really like to know what all this infantile whining is about.

Can Someone Please Explain?

Now that the right to marry is shared equally by all under the constitution, conservatives and religious zealots are tying themselves into knots, furious that such a horrific thing should ever come to pass.

"We're heading down the slippery slope", they say.  "Polygamy will be next.  And then marriages based on incest and bestiality."  This is the end of traditional marriage.  What would the God of Abraham say about the abomination of polygamy?  Well, perhaps they shouldn't use that one as an argument for "traditional" marriage.  It seems that Christians abandoned the traditional Jewish practice of polygamy, and adopted monogamy from Roman culture (you know, the evil empire they so despised).  But they didn't abandon the tradition of slavery until more recent times.

Maybe There Is a God

The Supreme Court has ruled that marriage equality is the rule of the land in all fifty states.  This ruling was not a big surprise, because most constitutional scholars have predicted this outcome for some time.  But theists across the country are suffering from great distress because they no longer get to impose their ridiculous beliefs about who is allowed to marry upon the rest of us.  Mike Huckabee says this is "an out-of-control act of unconstitutional, judicial tyranny".

Stupid Theist Tricks:  Piety as a Cover for Bigotry

We've talked about this before (here and here).  But there is no end to the bigotry of some Christians (particularly against gays), and no end to the creative ways they try to rationalize their bigotry and make it sound as if they are the ones who have been wronged when the rest of the world pushes back against their hateful discriminatory practices.  Let's examine some of the seriously flawed logic they employ.

Religious Bigotry Revisited

The discussions about religious-based bigotry against gays never end.  I recently posted about religious bigotry against gay people.

In the latest round at Victor Reppert's blog, he thinks it's wrong that Vanderbilt University should disallow discrimination based on religious "creed" in its school-sponsored clubs and organizations.  In this case, a non-denominational Christian organization called InterVarsity had ousted one of its leaders who was homosexual on the basis that he didn't adhere to the "basic Christian doctrines".  There was no explicit mention of homosexuality, but because of that homosexuality, it was presumed that the person didn't meet the ideological requirements of the group.  The university rightly recognizes this as unjust discrimination.  I call them bigots.  Victor thinks I would do the same in a similar situation (for example, if the Campus Freethought Alliance were infiltrated by the Campus Crusade for Christ), and therefore, I am being intellectually dishonest.

Public Accommodation vs. Religious Freedom

As a response to the federal court's overturning a ban on gay marriages in Indiana, lobbyists (particularly from the American Family Association) began working with the state legislature to advance a law that would allow businesses to openly discriminate against gays.  Since the bill was signed into law, Governor Mike Pence has been fending off questions about the effect of the new law, but the lobbyists who pushed for it have not been completely silent.  They understand that any attempt to clarify the law would in effect destroy its real intent.  The law treats public accommodation businesses as if they were humans with religious beliefs, and explicitly allows them to refuse services to anyone who is not a member of any protected class, on the pretense that rendering these services would be a violation of the religious beliefs of the business.  Of course, Indiana does not define the LGBT community as a protected class for discrimination purposes.