American Taliban?
by Kevin
Speaking of leftist overreactions to cultural conservatives, Jeff Jarvis is comparing Presbyterians to the Taliban. He starts out lashing Rick Santorum for his comments (see below) but soon picks up speed:
And before I get to my point, also consider this story today out of Sinsinnati:
A Mount Auburn Presbyterian minister was found guilty Monday of marrying gays and lesbians in the denomination’s first ecclesiastical trial dealing with the church constitutional issue.
As I’ve said here before, this is just why I left the Presbyterian Church: because it has become an institution of hate and bigotry that thinks it should judge God’s creations, because it is no place to raise my children. But that, too, is not my point . . . Now here’s my point: Religious fanatics scare me — and not just Muslim religious fanatics who try to kill me. We have religious fanatics in our country, too. We have them in our Senate. We have them leading one of our largest allegedly mainline denominations. They have the religious freedom to do as they please; that is their sacred right — their only sacred right — in our country. But they do not have the freedom to impose their religion on others. That is the protection all are afforded. And that is the protection we must afford the Iraqis.
Don’t you just love that transition? Senator Santorum belives that government should be able to ban certain consensual acts. The Presbyterian Church doesn’t support gay marriage. Voila, they are just like the Taliban, the Ayatollah, and Iraqi fundamentalists who want to impose a theocracy! Based on his work and past writing I have to assume Jeff is an intelligent person but this stretches the definition of fanatic to the point of meaninglessness. As if a indpendent and democratically organized religious organization passing and enforcing its own docrtinal statements, bylaws, and code of conduct is equal to a tryanical theocracy imposed by violence and control! It is amazing how quickly liberals jump from disagreement to bigotry and hate. If you don’t accept certain ideas then you are automatically hateful and bigoted. What Jeff and others really want is a soft, non-threatening, and meaningless relgion. Anything with hard edges scares them to them there is no difference between mainline protestants and the Ayatollah because they both want to tell you what to do. Jeff, if the Presbyterians scare you, you better stick to the Unitarians; anything more conservative than that might push you off the edge.
Maybe the Presbyterians don’t want to keep hemoraging membership like the Methodists.
Actually, Buzzmachine’s topic sentence that Santorum was an idiot for equating homosexuality to, inter alia, polygamy was interesting. Why shouldn’t they be equated? Don’t they both involve putative consensual private activity? Couldn’t some people be genetically programmed to have multiple mates? Isn’t it simply a value judgment for society to dictate that people who love people who love people who love more people shouldn’t be married?
The answer is probably yes and society does have a right to say that it wants to be shaped by people who consider monogamous companionate marriages to be the ideal of human relationships.
Gotta go, the Chief of Staff is invoking section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
Kevin,
I read it a little different. I thought Jeff was saying that religious fanatics are allowed to be such until they choose to impose their will on others. Specifically, his disappointment seemed to be with Senators that choose to impose their religion on others through legislation.
I personally agree. I am Catholic, but I don’t want Catholic views pressed upon me through legislation, if only because it opens the door for the views of any other religion—or non-religion for that matter—to be imposed upon me.
As for the matter of homosexual marriages and, for that matter, polygamous marriages, I fail to see the difference between those and secular marriages. Ultimately, any of those are godless, legal contracts, not true “marriages”. As such, I don’t feel like I have the authority to say they’re wrong any more than I would like them to have the authority to tell me that my Catholic marriage is wrong.
Just wanted to say I’m enjoying the site…
“As I’ve said here before, this is just why I left the Presbyterian Church: because it has become an institution of hate and bigotry that thinks it should judge God’s creations, because it is no place to raise my children.”
It seems to me that you join a church because you agree with its teachings not because the church agrees with you. Actually I am proud of the Cincinnati Presbyterian Church.
b
Unlike the Lott issue, this one seems to be cracking up the Right side of the Blogosphere. While we all can agree on bombing threats to the U.S. the libertarian and traditional conservative factions may never see eye-to-eye on social issues.
No, if the Presbiterians were religious extremists they’d be murdering gays, not just setting rules for their sect to follow regarding the marriage of gays.
This is exactly why Christianity is dead. It has because utterly meaningless and void of moral fiber.