Sunday, April 09, 2006

You've got to fight for your right to be a bigot

The LA Times reports:


Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.

Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she's a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.

Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she's demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.

With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.

The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. "Christians," he said, "are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian."
...
"What if a person felt their religious view was that African Americans shouldn't mingle with Caucasians, or that women shouldn't work?" asked Jon Davidson, legal director of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal.

Christian activist Gregory S. Baylor responds to such criticism angrily. He says he supports policies that protect people from discrimination based on race and gender. But he draws a distinction that infuriates gay-rights activists when he argues that sexual orientation is different — a lifestyle choice, not an inborn trait.


I guess Ruth Malhotra hasn't read Timothy 2:11-12. Or if she has, she seems to be pretty choosy about which bits of her Christian faith are worth fighting for.

3 comments:

rps said...

They're all selective about which parts of the faith they choose to follow. Natural selection has guaranteed that, because think what would happen to those who took Mark 16:16-18too seriously:

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well."

Bernardo said...

Hey rsheridan6: Then I guess you don't know about the churches where, once a year, churchgoers handle poisonous snakes as a display/proof/test of their faith. You'd think natural selection (and common sense) would have caused this practice to end, but, well, not yet.

Ron: While I agree that the fundamentalist Christians' take on homosexuality is wrong, stupid, sad, annoying, ignorant, frustrating, and an obstacle to progress, I do place the freedom of speech highly enough to think that Christians should be allowed to say whatever crazy things they want. I explain and illustrate this point better at

http://atheistspy.blogspot.com/2006/04/christianity-intolerance-and-free.html

Michael Shermer makes a similar point about Holocaust deniers:

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/06-03-02.html

I love your blog. Keep it up.

Ron said...

Christians should be allowed to say whatever crazy things they want.

Yes, I completely agree. I was just trying to point out that anyone who says that gays should be discriminated against based on Christian theology, but that women should not, is being a hypocrite. I never meant to suggest that they should be silenced. The title of my post was meant to be taken quite seriously.