{"id":451,"date":"2011-11-07T15:50:03","date_gmt":"2011-11-07T13:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/borkedcode.com\/wp\/?p=451"},"modified":"2011-11-07T15:50:03","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T13:50:03","slug":"the-cowardice-of-the-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/2011\/11\/07\/the-cowardice-of-the-religious\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cowardice of the Religious"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve just read a breakdown of <a href=\"http:\/\/swampland.time.com\/2011\/11\/04\/why-does-michigans-anti-bullying-bill-protect-religious-tormenters\/#ixzz1ckbYsPaG\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michigan\u2019s utter failure to pass anti-bullying legislation<\/a> \u2013 in which <em>Christian Republicans <\/em>turned the law around and made it a blanket <em>protection for bullies who commit their actions because of a \u201c\u2026strong moral or religious\u2026\u201d reason for committing it. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t unique to Michigan, of course \u2013 objections to hate-crime and anti-bullying legislation <em>always<\/em> meets opposition by Christians.\u00a0 Have you noticed that?\u00a0 That Christians seem to cherish as a core tenet of their religion, the option to insult and attack people whom they feel aren\u2019t up to snuff?<\/p>\n<p>Allow me to point something out to the Christians in the audience:\u00a0 your freedom of religion ends where it becomes assault, or battery.\u00a0 The rest of us passing a law telling you that you aren\u2019t allowed to beat up people isn\u2019t an infringement on your freedom of religion.\u00a0 If that were the case, I\u2019d 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.\u00a0 How about that for religious freedom?\u00a0 Murder laws?\u00a0 Oh, they oppress my religious beliefs.\u00a0 (\/snark).<\/p>\n<p>See the analogy here, folks?\u00a0 Beating up some kid because she doesn\u2019t believe in your fantasyland magic sky fairy <em>isn\u2019t a right you possess<\/em>.\u00a0 Killing some gay kid because she\u2019s gay <em>isn\u2019t a right you possess.<\/em>\u00a0 It isn\u2019t a right that anyone possesses, but we do have a term for it:<\/p>\n<p>Religious terrorism.<\/p>\n<p>Hate-crime and bullying laws are introduced because there is something peculiar about those offenses.\u00a0 They are generally committed by people <em>who seem to think it\u2019s perfectly okay to commit them<\/em>, and they have a group of people who support them.\u00a0 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\u2019t okay to do these things.<\/p>\n<p>But what is amazingly shameful is the \u2013 in this case, successful \u2013 attempt by Christians to enshrine their hatred of others and protect the kids who act it out.\u00a0 And there\u2019s a term for that, too:<\/p>\n<p>Loathesome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve just read a breakdown of Michigan\u2019s utter failure to pass anti-bullying legislation \u2013 in which Christian Republicans turned the law around and made it a blanket protection for bullies who commit their actions because of a \u201c\u2026strong moral or &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/2011\/11\/07\/the-cowardice-of-the-religious\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.borkedcode.com\/wp2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}