What would you think if you went to a website and saw that someone had posted a negative comment about Hispanics in response to a post referring to violence done by Hispanics with no information about their ethnic background and then saw that the owner of the blog posted “Since we had some dumbass comment about Hispanics, here’s what the blacks were up to this morning…” would you say the blog owner is showing intolerance toward blacks by assuming the post had to be made by a black person?
What if the comment was about Buddhists and the blog owner’s response was “Since we had some dumbass comment about Buddhists, here’s what the Jews were up to this morning…”? Would you think this person had some kind of intolerance toward Jews because they assumed the post had to be made by a Jew?
Would you just sit by and let them be so openly intolerant or challenge them on their fallacy?
I had that happen today in regards to a very left wing blog site who responded to someone making a comment about Islam by posting “Since we had some dumbass comment about Islam, here’s what the Christians were up to this morning” followed by a derogatory story involving some Christians. (The original post that drew the response was blaming Islamic extremists for the horrific, cowardly assassination of Benazir Bhutto.)
What was the comment that set off the anti-Christian comments? “Gotta love Islam…the “religion of peace.”" That’s it. Nothing to identify the author beyond a name. You can’t tell if they were being serious or being snarky. No way to tell if the author was linking it to the same feelings toward extremists that the main blog’s writer posted when she called them “Islamist-extremist bastards” or being sarcastic by using that reference like Sean Hannity would in discussing the matter. Certainly no way to know the personal faith of the person who posted it. They could very well be Christian…but the blog owner had no way to know that before their response.
The blog owner’s response? Attack Christians.
It’s not that what they posted was anything that unusual. There are more than enough dumb things done by Christians to be put out for people to see. However, this wasn’t posted because they wanted to just point that out alone…it was posted because the blog owner either A) wanted to attack the presumed Christian faith of the comment maker or B) has a general hatred for Christians. It wasn’t that they responded by saying to this original comment that you know full well the actions of extremists don’t represent the whole of Islam or simply that you have mad men or women in all faiths. They made an assumption about someone’s faith without foreknowledge and tried to ridicule that faith. If someone hadn’t made a negative comment about Islam in a thread that talked of “Islamist-extremist bastards” killing a world political leader the thread wouldn’t have been posted. That is what takes it to a level that appears to show intolerance toward Christians.
What really makes it funny is that this site posts this photo…
…and the blog’s owner posted that she is intolerant of all religions. Kind of goes against the spirit of co-existence if you’re intolerant toward religion, wouldn’t you say? (By the way, the blog owner’s response to my challenging them was to ban me from their site…not exactly co-existing either.)
Now, you’re probably wondering why I’d bother to bring it up. Over the last month we’ve seen the posts on the “war on Christmas” and the requisite responses that no such thing is happening and it’s Christians making things up. I’ve been in debates where I’ve been told that intolerance toward Christians is perfectly acceptable because the majority of the country is Christian…but that there’s really no intolerance toward Christians anyway. I have one friend who often says “well, Christians in the US aren’t persecuted nearly as much as other places around the world so they should just shut up until they’re persecuted some more.”
I also have some liberal friends who often wonder how a Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh or other right-wing talk show hosts can get such traction with the average American on many issues related to politics and why the “religious right” can have such a pull on elections. It’s because of the comments of people like on this blog I read today. When you get someone who expounds hard liberal politics who openly admits intolerance toward religions (and targets Christianity) it provides easy fodder for those who follow the political plans of Karl Rove to say “Look at what the liberals REALLY believe! They hate Christians! They mock your faith! They want to destroy you!”
It doesn’t matter that it’s not true for the overwhelming majority of liberals. You just need to hold one up and expose them to get a lot of political capital. It doesn’t matter that many of these talk hosts practice intolerance of other groups or people…they just point out the intolerance of someone toward the Christian faith and they’re golden.
Intolerance toward Christians is no different than intolerance toward Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, Blacks, Hispanics, Women or Martians. It should be held up for condemnation just as you would someone who is sitting around saying all Muslims have bomb vests just waiting in the closet for use in our elementary schools.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not always easy to see intolerance unless someone’s channeling their inner Archie Bunker. Many times people want to take a disagreement on something and try to pin intolerance because the term “intolerance” has become a sort of socio-political nuclear bomb. Just drop it on someone and you’ll have people automatically believe it regardless of whether or not it’s true. It muddies the water so that when someone is being subtly intolerant it’s hard to pin them down on it.
To me, it comes down to the motivation as to why you’re posting something or saying something. If the point is aimed only to try and degrade a group of people then it’s probably that you have a level of intolerance toward that group of people. (Note: disagreement with their actions is not degrading them…it’s when you mock them or try to hold them up for embarrassment or scorn solely because of their faith/skin color/etc. that it becomes intolerance.) Your definition may be different but I’ll bet we can almost all agree that intolerance of people is not going to make our country any stronger or solve any of the problems that are facing our society.
Both sides of the political debate…from the Sean Hannity side to the moveon.org side…need to take the steps to quell intolerance within our own ranks if we hope to elevate political debate. As long as someone can look across the political fence and see someone being openly intolerant it’s going to be harder to get across the message that everyone has something to bring to the table for consideration. (While, of course, remembering that just because you consider it doesn’t mean they’re right! But those who consider just listening to someone who might disagree with them as a waste of time is a subject for another blog…)
What is the website?
I’d like to read it to see if my take is the same.
I’ll send it to you, Jim. I don’t want people to think what’s on that site represents liberals as a whole.
“(Note: disagreement with their actions is not degrading them…it’s when you mock them or try to hold them up for embarrassment or scorn solely because of their faith/skin color/etc. that it becomes intolerance.)”
You forgot to mention that intolerance also comes in the form of making laws against those persons just because you disagree with them.
Otherwise I agree. Like Jim, I too would like to check out the site myself. Extremists make all us moderates look bad. Send me the website too, if you please.
I recognized the blog in question from your description and headed over there to see what you are talking about. Interesting read.
“you forgot to mention that intolerance also comes in the form of making laws against those persons just because you disagree with them.”
So true, Jack. For some reason people who would say that making laws against people due to skin color are alright, while making laws against people due to sexual orientation is ok. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
If the law is against people, I agree with you Jim. If it’s against a behavior or action, then it’s a whole different ballgame. That’s where it can get tricky…some people want to try and take a behavior or action and meld it into the actual people so you can try and claim intolerance if you disagree with that person’s actions or behavior.
Could you please specify what “behavior” you are talking about? We have tons of laws against behaviors. In fact, that’s what most laws are against.
Didn’t mean to hit “enter.”
Was going to add that if you are talking about a biological quality of a human being and labeling it as a “behavior” so that you can feel alright about making laws against a group of people, that’s wrong.
“Biological quality of a human being”? That sounds like a term just to meld someone’s behavior into the person so you can then claim false intolerance. For example, saying someone who might have a genetic disposition toward alcoholism is a drunk so to pass laws against public drunkenness is being intolerant of drunks.
Ah, the old urge argument. Whenever someone who opposes homosexuality cannot defend their position that it’s a behavior rather than a biologically based physiological orientation, they tend to go to the urge argument. Alcoholics need to avoid the urge to drink alcohol, and homosexuals need to avoid the urge to have sex.
If the argument is made for religious reasons by a person who is also a creationist (and I’m not saying you are; I don’t know you well enough to know), it is patently absurd. Like God was sitting around going, “Gee, I want this one group of people to be celibate and lonely so I’m going to create them like this.” I just don’t buy it.
Well, I don’t choose to narrowly define the arguments but if you want to speak of homosexual activity and only homosexual activity we can do so.
If you want to say it’s biologically based, let’s talk biology. The purpose of sex biologically is procreation. The only “normal” method for that is a man and woman. Therefore, any other kind of activity…such as homosexual activity…is abnormal in the pure biological sense. (Now, I know this is where most proponents of homosexual sex bring up the “sterile man or woman” straw man argument but it doesn’t explain away that if all the parts are working for two men or two women they still cannot reproduce.)
So if it’s not the normal brain activity, then is it any different from any other mental issue? If you’re speaking purely biologically then it’s not. It’s intellectually dishonest to call it “normal” behavior.
That’s doesn’t mean they should face discrimination because of it. However, proponents of homosexual activity aren’t going to be satisfied with that…they want to force people to call it “normal” behavior when there isn’t valid scientific proof to back that up because two men and two women can’t reproduce on their own.
If you want to talk on religious grounds, then you can look at a wide variety of behaviors that are not acceptable behaviors. You may want to focus on homosexual activity but in terms of the Christian religion it’s no worse than gluttony or stealing or any other sin. Christians are called to avoid all of them even if they have the temptation to do it.
Your comment about “Gee, I want this one group of people to be celibate and lonely” is a little too narrowly defined to really look at the whole issue. All Christians who are not married are called to abstain from sex of all kinds. So if someone doesn’t get married they are in the exact same situation. You’re trying to narrowly define things to try and make it look like the temptation to someone regarding homosexual activity is so different than any other sexual temptation. It’s not.
In a purely Christian sense, everyone has something they’re tempted by and have to resist in their daily lives. Why should someone tempted by homosexual activity be given a free pass for their sin and told it’s not sinful when no one else gets the same thing?
We’re not talking about those who are on the Fred Phelps fringe and clearly hate. Fred’s intolerance is shocking and clearly not in line with Biblical teachings. He takes the sin and defines the person by it when that’s not what is supposed to happen according to God’s word.
You can find many times in the Bible where someone had a mental or physical deformity and God did not heal it but rather said His grace was sufficient for them. None of us know the plans He has for us let alone the plans for other people and all of us have something in our lives sinful that tempts us. It’s not a huge leap to think that while you’re not tempted to sin in the area of sex that someone else could be open to that temptation.
By the way, did you get the e-mails I sent you? You’ve posted here but haven’t answered those so I wanted to make sure they got through to you.
Haven’t checked my email in awhile. Probably will tomorrow.