christians sue for right not to tolerate

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deep said:
Should we/ would we tolerate these same people telling Jews they are damned and will not be saved
unless they reject their faith and accept Jesus Christ as their Savior?
lol, well we were told that tons of times where I grew up, though it was usually a straightforward gleeful "All you Christ-killers are gonna burn in hell!" minus the polite offer of conversion. I can't remember a teacher ever intervening either, that was just the way it was.

In general though, I think most schools and workplaces would find themselves de facto needing to reintroduce bans on open and unprovoked defamation of gays, religious sects, racial minorities etc. even if they tried to lift them, if only because this would put their free-speech commitments on a collision course with with their need to maintain a civil/professional enough atmosphere to get their regular business done.

When I managed a bookstore back in college, I had an employee who was a neo-Nazi. There was no company ban on this (actually I've never heard of a company that bans it) and I didn't myself have a problem with her, honestly; she just seemed like a messed-up young woman with drug and domestic abuse problems to me. However, I did ultimately have to speak with both her and several other employees about not getting into confrontations over neo-Nazism while at work, and in the end two people--one of them her--wound up getting fired because of their inability to cooperate with my request. I suspect many workplaces and schools would wind up having similar fallout from the choice to be "tolerant" of chronically libelous groups. Probably colleges could afford to let more slide, but on the other hand, a student center is not a town hall and colleges have traditionally had a fair amount of leeway to define and regulate what they consider vulgar or defamatory (banning sales of porn on campus, etc.)--balanced out by an equally strong traditional commitment to permitting constructive expression of opposing points of view.

I'm not sure how applicable extending this to housing or hiring discrimination is though since those are not free speech issues, which is what the campaigns cited seem to be focusing on.
Irvine511 said:
if we are going to argue that homosexuality is "behavior" and "choice," and therefore exempt from anti-discrimination laws, well then i'm damn well going to defend my right to discriminate on the basis of religion since religion is far, far, far more of a "behavior" and a "choice" than sexual orientation.
I had pretty much the same incredulous reaction to her suggestion that gays need to "knock off the political propaganda" if they want to be tolerated...knock off, knock knock.

But then I've never really understood why the right to practice one's own faith, and to lead an observant lifestyle, would necessitate seeing people who don't as some kind of intrinsic threat to that.
 
melon said:
Christians are sounding more like a hate group everyday.

Melon

I know this would be next to impossible, but it would be interesting to see a poll as to where churches really stood on the issue. Where individuals within the umbrella of Christianity stood on the issue.

I mean I'm pretty sure I'm part of the minority, but I wonder really by how much? If there were some outspoken influential members of the minority, truly educated in scripture would it really effect the middle?

I've been distancing myself from Christianity more and more over the past 5 years or so, and I'd really like to not have to do that, but the more and more quacks like this come out I run a little further and get closer to this concept that "Christianity" is sounding like a hate group.
 
yolland said:

But then I've never really understood why the right to practice one's own faith, and to lead an observant lifestyle, would necessitate seeing people who don't as some kind of intrinsic threat to that.

Same here, so I found this article. If any Christians here feel the ideas in the article are out of line, please clarify why.

http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2004/07/the_abominable_.html

The Abominable Shellfish

Why some Christians hate gays but love bacon

The third book of the Bible, Leviticus, has some wonderful passages. The Jubilee laws outlined in chapter 25, for example, provide an inspiring vision of liberty and justice for all. The 10th verse of this chapter even supplied the inscription for the Liberty Bell: "proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

The Jubilee laws and the ideals they embody, unfortunately, are nearly wholly neglected and forgotten. Most of the book of Leviticus is similarly neglected.

Yet some passages live on, their teachings still regarded as unwavering and binding.

One such passage is Lev. 20:13, which says (in the King James Version), "If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination."

That passage is frequently cited by the spokesmen of the religious right to explain why they're so adamantly opposed to allowing homosexuals to enjoy full civil rights here in America.

The thing is, though, that the book of Leviticus condemns a lot of things as "abominations." The 11th chapter is overflowing with abominations. For example, from verses 10-12:

And all that have not fins and scales in the seas, and in the rivers, of all that move in the waters, and of any living thing which is in the waters, they shall be an abomination unto you: They shall be even an abomination unto you; ye shall not eat of their flesh, but ye shall have their carcases in abomination. Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.

The folks over on the religious right cite Leviticus as evidence that homosexuals are an unclean "abomination," yet they have no problem eating at Red Lobster. What gives?

Since many observers have noted this apparent inconsistency (see, for example, godhatesshrimp.com) I figured I would wade in to try to explain why it is that so many contemporary Christians reject gays while embracing shellfish.

To understand why God is no longer considered a hater of shrimp you have to flip ahead to the Acts of the Apostles, the good doctor's account of the early days of the Christian church.

Acts chapter 10 finds the apostle Peter on a rooftop in Joppa, praying at noon before heading down to lunch.

The impulsive former fisherman has grown into a genuine leader in the early church. At Pentecost, he preached the gospel to people from every corner of the Roman Empire and he is slowly appreciating that this new community is supposed to transcend any ethnic or cultural boundaries. But the goyim still seem to bug him a bit. Especially the Romans.

So God gives him a vision. Peter falls into a trance and sees a vision of a giant tablecloth descending from heaven. The tablecloth is covered with honeybaked hams, cheesesteaks, crab cakes, calamari and lobster.

"Eat up, Peter," a voice tells him

"Surely not, Lord!" Peter says. "I have never eaten anything impure or unclean."

"Don't call anything unclean that God has made clean," the voice says. "And try the angels on horseback, they're like butter."

This happens three times.

This is generally regarded as an instance in which a New Testament passage seems to set aside a prohibition from the Old Testament. And that's why our friends on the religious right do not feel compelled to eat kosher and do not consider shellfish to be "an abomination."

Fair enough, but there's something else going on in this story. The main point of Peter's rooftop epiphany has nothing to do with diet. The main point of this vision had to do with the people who were about to knock on Peter's door.

Peter is about to meet Cornelius. Cornelius is a gentile. Worse than that, he is a Roman. Worse than that, he is a Roman centurion. Cornelius is about as kosher as a bacon double cheeseburger.

But give Peter credit -- he understood the vision. "Don't call anything unclean that God has made clean." Don't call anyone unclean that God has made clean.

Peter does not treat Cornelius as an unclean outsider. He travels to the centurion's house, where he says, "You are well aware that it is against our law for a Jew to associate with a Gentile or visit him. But God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean."

Peter gets it. In this new community that God is building, this church, there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free. No one is excluded as unclean.

This is the unsubtle point that Luke is hammering home for his gentile friend Theophilus. The surrounding chapters of Acts read like a hyper-P.C. after-school special on celebrating diversity. The church embraces Jews and gentiles, Roman soldiers and slaves, men and women, Africans, Greeks and even a token white European.

In our fondness for Easter ham, we Christians have fervently clung to the surface-level meaning of Peter's vision. But we haven't been as enthusiastic about embracing the larger, more important lesson God was teaching him there on the rooftop. When the "unclean" outsiders knock on our doors, we don't like inviting them in.

That, in a nutshell, is why some Christians happily dismiss one "abomination" while still behaving abominably out of allegiance to another.

(Oh, and what about Leviticus' Jubilee laws? Those were never set aside by anything in the New Testament, but Christians no longer treat them as authoritative because, um ... well, because money is pretty and shiny and let's us buy nice things.)
 
I don't think we have a right to harrass gays either verbally or physically. Gays are getting killed due to all the homophobia that's going on now. It's scary. I don't like this stuff. To me it's just an excuse for homophobia.

I totally agree!!
 
I could toss the cheap "so conservative Christians are the same as the KKK?" question, but that type of discussion has been beaten to death.

I think elsewhere we've discussed an answer of yes, you allow people to speak so you can counter their speech. It is both the price and the benefit of a free society.

Perhaps we can draw the analogy to Islamic societies that ban expressions of other religious beliefs.
 
nbcrusader said:
Perhaps we can draw the analogy to Islamic societies that ban expressions of other religious beliefs.

Or back in the good old days when Protestants were sawed in half by the Papal Inquisition. But no...some stupid hippies came in and made that illegal.

Melon
 
nbcrusader said:
I could toss the cheap "so conservative Christians are the same as the KKK?" question, but that type of discussion has been beaten to death.

I think elsewhere we've discussed an answer of yes, you allow people to speak so you can counter their speech. It is both the price and the benefit of a free society.

Perhaps we can draw the analogy to Islamic societies that ban expressions of other religious beliefs.

Of course I wasn't trying to make the analogy that CCs are the same as the KKK, but their speach does have similar consequences.

If they would focus on the teachings of Christ and not using misinterpreted or out of context scripture we wouldn't have this problem.

But your example of Islamic societies comparing to college campuses is a much different animal. College campuses have always maintained a different set of free speech laws than free society.
 
And goddamn it. I want my right to protest during church services. What kind of society is it when I cannot exercise my right to free speech by making a direct counterargument against a minister's sermon to the congregation? What is this? North fucking Korea? Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas, guys?

Melon
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:


Of course I wasn't trying to make the analogy that CCs are the same as the KKK, but their speach does have similar consequences.

Similar consequences?

BonoVoxSupastar said:
If they would focus on the teachings of Christ and not using misinterpreted or out of context scripture we wouldn't have this problem.

We've been around the block too many times on the interpretation issues. A solid argument could be made that the speaker referenced in the original article is not using misinterpreted or out of context Scripture.

BonoVoxSupastar said:
But your example of Islamic societies comparing to college campuses is a much different animal. College campuses have always maintained a different set of free speech laws than free society.

This raises the most interesting issue here - should colleges become unique islands of limited free speech? Does your answer to this question depend n the list of approved and disapproved speech?
 
melon said:
And goddamn it. I want my right to protest during church services. What kind of society is it when I cannot exercise my right to free speech by making a direct counterargument against a minister's sermon to the congregation? What is this? North fucking Korea? Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas, guys?

Melon

:rolleyes:

As soon as you let Fred Phelps march through your living room.
 
Let's stop playing on the merry-go-round here.

1) Christians hate gays so much that they'll look for any excuse to demean, belittle, and deny their existence. And if someone tells them they can't, they're going to cry "discrimination."

2) Substitute "gays" for "blacks" or "Jews," then substitute "Christians" for "neo-Nazis." The sentence still makes sense.

3) On top of everything, if someone started insisting on demeaning and firing Christians in the workplace, along with suing for the right to bash Christians at their own worship services (marketplace of ideas, guys!), they'd then cite their own non-discrimination laws as protection.

It's Hypocrisy 101.

Melon
 
nbcrusader said:
:rolleyes:

As soon as you let Fred Phelps march through your living room.

No one lives in churches just as no one has worship services in their living room.

If Christians want the right to hate people, then non-Christians should have the right to hate right back. Let the marketplace decide or do Christians hate freedom?

Melon
 
nbcrusader said:
Unfortunately, your first point is so far off the chart that the rest of your statements are meaningless.

If Christians can't take the heat, then don't start the fires.

It makes me utterly disgusted the pedestal we put religion on in society, considering the kind of shit it shoves down our throats on a regular basis.

If people can't fucking keep their hatred of others to themselves, then they don't deserve to mingle in society. It's as simple as that. Christians' right to hate does not trump the right of homosexuals to live their lives in peace and dignity.

And if Christians don't understand that, they might as well burn their Bibles.

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Unless Christians want others to be intolerant of them and harrass them, then they'd better fucking back off.

Melon
 
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nbcrusader said:
:confused: I thought Irvine started this thread.

:shrug:

KRUGER: (getting up to leave) Thank you George, you've been great. That's it for me.
GEORGE: Oh no, you're not going out on a high note with me Mr. Kruger!
KRUGER: It's K-uger!
GEORGE: No! No!
KRUGER: Goodnight everybody!

Melon
 
nbcrusader said:


Similar consequences?
Anytime you have a group that preaches against another, you will have consequences such as eliminating certain minority from leadership positions, memberships, etc. Now CCs have a much stronger impact than the KKK, but the KKK are much more extreme.

BUT, when you start calling certain groups an abomination, certain people will take things into their own hands.


nbcrusader said:

We've been around the block too many times on the interpretation issues. A solid argument could be made that the speaker referenced in the original article is not using misinterpreted or out of context Scripture.

I have yet meet one person to date, that has shown me otherwise and I've had this conversation with a theology major who couldn't come up with anything after almost an hour except, "I have faith that God wouldn't allow his word to be misinterpreted.":|


nbcrusader said:

This raises the most interesting issue here - should colleges become unique islands of limited free speech? Does your answer to this question depend n the list of approved and disapproved speech?

Should they? I don't know. Have they been? Yes.

Does my answer depend, no.

I'm actually torn on the subject. Where as one hand I think anything should go, but on the other hand, similar to the idea of dress codes in lower education, allowing certain extreme language of either side may distract from the education.

I don't know.
 
Hrm, interesting discussion here. I in no way agree with this girls views, and believe this is just another frivilous law suit taking up time in a court for no reason what so ever, especially when suing something doesn't make you automatically right regardless of the outcome, i do believ ein free speech.

Let her hate. She is NEVER going to change her mind, like every other stubborn person on earth. Let her hand out pamphlets, have her little rah rah republican rallies. If i can sit around with my friends and question them on their religious choices. To tell them 'you are MAD for believing in something so OUT there, you sure your not a scientoligst?' then so can she.

I guess the fine line is, if she is saying 'god hates gays' or 'its a sin against god' well according to their bible it is. So she's saying what she believes in, and even though i and im sure a lot fo you totally disagree with it (me on a whole bunch of levels) why right do we have to enforce OUR opinons on her?

Now if she was saying 'go bash some gays they deserve to die' then she is breaking the law and should be fined/arrested whater. Inciting hate and violence based on someones orientation/appearance/intelligance etc, its monsterous and disgusting and these are the people we need to watch.

If someone hears 'god hates gays' and decided to kick the hell out of a gay guy, or targets a black guy or some other minority, then HE should be the one getting the full extent of the law, not the orginal comment and commentator.

I just think we need to all take responsibility for our actions. If we don't like what someone is saying walk away, ignoring it whatever. If they HARRASS you, it goes into a whole different field and they need an ass kicking in return. hahaha but no seriously, that is when it gets into breaking the law area.
 
Re: Re: Re: christians sue for right not to tolerate

Irvine511 said:

so i'm putting my foot down: i will never, ever hire a Zororastrian. how dare you infringe on my right to do so!
If it is your property then that should be your right. I think that would be better than "positive discrimination".

If you are recieving taxpayer subsidies then you have to accept anyone and cannot discriminate.
 
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melon said:
And goddamn it. I want my right to protest during church services. What kind of society is it when I cannot exercise my right to free speech by making a direct counterargument against a minister's sermon to the congregation? What is this? North fucking Korea? Whatever happened to the marketplace of ideas, guys?

Melon
:up:

Although since your probably not going to be a paying member of that club they may well kick you out.

I would be more than happy to teach the fundamentals of Gideon Soccer or Quran frisbee.
 
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melon said:

If people can't fucking keep their hatred of others to themselves, then they don't deserve to mingle in society. It's as simple as that. Christians' right to hate does not trump the right of homosexuals to live their lives in peace and dignity.
What they deserve is a matter of debate, hatred is always going to be a component of society ~ the question becomes how do the most of men react to the haters?

What is a definition of peace and dignity? In terms of equal rights under law and legal recognition of union that is fair ~ but in terms of having to have believers stow their vitriol - there is no right to not be offended; but there is of course a right to live a life without having property damaged, threats made or as has been seen too many times violence inflicted.
 
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A_Wanderer said:
What they deserve is a matter of debate, hatred is always going to be a component of society ~ the question becomes how do the most of men react to the haters?

What is a definition of peace and dignity? In terms of equal rights under law and legal recognition of union that is fair ~ but in terms of having to have believers stow their vitriol - there is no right to not be offended; but there is of course a right to live a life without having property damaged, threats made or as has been seen too many times violence inflicted.

"Speech," in the most literal sense, is one thing. And "speech" in public and in the media, of course, is one thing. But when we're talking about the "right to hate" at work or in housing, etc., then I would say that there is no right.

It's common sense, I would think. But it appears that religious indoctrination has gone a long way of eroding common sense in this country.

Melon
 
BonoVoxSupastar said:
I have yet meet one person to date, that has shown me otherwise and I've had this conversation with a theology major who couldn't come up with anything after almost an hour except, "I have faith that God wouldn't allow his word to be misinterpreted.":|

I always chuckle over that argument. "God's word" has been interpreted differently over the centuries and by different cultures. In fact, we've had three or four "Great Awakenings" in the U.S., and it's noted that with each "Great Awakening," there's a huge dose of romanticism to a remote fictionalized past each time.

I'd say this theology major has wasted his education, if that's the argument he's coming up with after all that.

Melon
 
i gotta chip in here and say that yes God would allow his work to be 'misinterpreted'... we do have free will, contrary to some of this nonsense. The idea that God would/will/does step in to stop things going awry is dangerous, as He clearly does no such thing.
 
Re: Re: Re: Re: christians sue for right not to tolerate

A_Wanderer said:
If you are recieving taxpayer subsidies then you have to accept anyone and cannot discriminate.



unfortunately, this is not true.

it is perfectly legal to fire someone in many states for being gay, whether one is working for a private company or for the government at any level.

the Boy Scouts receive tons of federal handouts, yet they discriminate against both gays and atheists.

as do some universities:

[q]Reaction grows to gay student's expulsion
By Jamie Gumbrecht
HERALD-LEADER CULTURE WRITER

The news that his boyfriend, Jason Johnson, was expelled from University of the Cumberlands was still sinking in when Zac Dreyer sat at a computer to spread the news.

"He is being asked to leave the university because he is gay," Dreyer wrote Thursday on the Web site MySpace.com, the same site school officials used to confront Johnson. "Help get the story out there so that all the gays and lesbians at the university will no longer have to live in secrecy, in fear of having their dreams crushed in front of them."

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/14313621.htm

[/q]

and this university receives federal funds:

[q]Legislator says school shouldn't get funds
By John Stamper

FRANKFORT - State funding for a new pharmacy school building at the University of the Cumberlands should not be included in the budget if the private school doesn't stop discriminating against gay students, a legislator warned last night.

"We should not be budgeting bigotry," Sen. Ernesto Scorsone, D-Lexington, told colleagues before voting on the $18.1 billion, two-year budget. Scorsone is the only openly gay member of the General Assembly.

http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/14313631.htm

[/q]
 
nbcrusader said:
This raises the most interesting issue here - should colleges become unique islands of limited free speech? Does your answer to this question depend n the list of approved and disapproved speech?



while i don't think this is exactly the issue i was getting at here, i do think it's important to note that colleges have always had unique islands of limited free speech.

since many students board at college, there does seem to be limits on what can be said in, say, a dorm or at a campus party because this is where the student lives, and there is a perceived right not to be harassed in someone's living space. i don't think this extends to the classroom, nor do i think it should, but having been something of an RA for a group of first-year students when i was a junior, we made it very clear that the dorm was a home, and that everyone had a right to feel comfortable and safe.

yes, we were saying that we would not tolerate intolerance, and i saw nothing wrong what that.
 
nbcrusader said:
Amazing how many are intollerant of what they call intollerance :huh:



now this is getting at what i hoped to discuss.

when does someone's expression of a certain right (in this case, religious expression) become someone else's harassment?

i think we can agree that in a public space, there is little that can, or should be done.

but in settings like a workplace and a university, where do we draw the line between anti-harassment ethics and the freedome to express one's religious beliefs?

is intolerance of intolerance simply another form of intolerance? or is that being too relativist and meta about it? is this just a common sense thing?
 
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