I’ve just read a breakdown of Michigan’s utter failure to pass anti-bullying legislation – in which Christian Republicans turned the law around and made it a blanket protection for bullies who commit their actions because of a “…strong moral or religious…” reason for committing it.
This isn’t unique to Michigan, of course – objections to hate-crime and anti-bullying legislation always meets opposition by Christians. Have you noticed that? That Christians seem to cherish as a core tenet of their religion, the option to insult and attack people whom they feel aren’t up to snuff?
Allow me to point something out to the Christians in the audience: your freedom of religion ends where it becomes assault, or battery. The rest of us passing a law telling you that you aren’t allowed to beat up people isn’t an infringement on your freedom of religion. If that were the case, I’d immediately start a religion in which I made it a core tenet that all Christians would be required to be shot repeatedly in the head with a high-caliber rifle. How about that for religious freedom? Murder laws? Oh, they oppress my religious beliefs. (/snark).
See the analogy here, folks? Beating up some kid because she doesn’t believe in your fantasyland magic sky fairy isn’t a right you possess. Killing some gay kid because she’s gay isn’t a right you possess. It isn’t a right that anyone possesses, but we do have a term for it:
Religious terrorism.
Hate-crime and bullying laws are introduced because there is something peculiar about those offenses. They are generally committed by people who seem to think it’s perfectly okay to commit them, and they have a group of people who support them. The laws are designed to punish violators specifically and differently in order to not only exact appropriate punishment for the crime, but to educate the support system behind them that it isn’t okay to do these things.
But what is amazingly shameful is the – in this case, successful – attempt by Christians to enshrine their hatred of others and protect the kids who act it out. And there’s a term for that, too:
Loathesome.