Ah, now this is one of my favourite examples of that the human brain is capable of.
If it can find a palatable excuse for the most despicable acts it will grab hold of it and milk it for all the comfort it’s worth.
Example: the SS used to just shoot Jewish people. However, it was soon Discovered that doing so had a devastating effect on the soldiers mental health.
So the nazi high command - in the most twisted act of logic- came up with more and more elaborate and industrial ways to carry out the worst possible acts to help mitigate the mental health issues of its own soldiers.
I’m sorry, I must press you on this. Can you think of a religious text that preaches a great deal of intolerance against gays, that you feel should have legal protection from criticism?
I think anyone who holds homophobic views to be homophobes. Whether its religious opinion or not.
I dobt think it has anything to do with immigration though. I can dislike homophobes whether they live here or dont.
Absolutely not. I think every religion and every book should be fair game for scrutiny. I’m sorry if I’m misjudging you, but I suspect you hold a double standard on the matter.
I wouldn’t say it’s an elaborate gotcha - just batting around the difficulties of living in a pluralistic society. Under pressure from activists, the working group has tempered its original definition because it would have rendered scrutiny of Islam and its holy texts nigh on impossible. But here’s the rub: the activists that have worked tirelessly on this are the sort of people you consider beyond the pale. As I said, I’m not trying to catch you out, just broaden some perspectives.
I do not think any religion should be protected from critique or criticism, my view is that if you believe then there is nothing I can say that will sway you from that belief therefore there is no need for legal protections. I do respect everyone’s right to worship the sky-fairy of their choice, but they have no right to push those views on others.
However, where that religion is used either as a short hand for racial discrimination or profiling then the law needs to step in to deal with the underlying racism. Likewise the law should be able to see through a religion being used as a smokescreen to hide or even justify acts that would otherwise fall foul of the law & act accordingly.
FWIW. I’m an atheist. One of 4 siblings and the only one not Christened because, and I quote, “Children are punished for the sins of there fathers” was said to my dad at, or close to the Christening of my older sister that had Celebal palsy. I say had, because she suffered her entire life not able to walk, talk, toilet or to anything for herself until her death. Which happened to coincide with my 30th birthday.
So I’m guessing that that Christian leader thought my father was so awful he deserved his child to live decades in pain but also to die on the 30th anniversary of his youngest child’s birth.
As you can imagine, this taints my view of not just Christian leaders, but to leaders of all religions that’s seem to claim their book is the true book and that “He” has a plan for everything.
And then of course you have countless examples of the extremists we all know about - from the Timothy McVeys of this world, to the 9/11 bombers. To the Hamas “freedom fighters” to the Israeli defence forces that not only kill people, but worse, demonise babies as the future evil that deserve death before there first words. To those that “only” throw gay people off of buildings to those that claim to be friends with gay people but can’t bear to attend their civil wedding because either they or there text has taught them it’s wrong (cough Ann Widdecomb cough). They don’t claim to be extremist but to me that’s an extreme way to treat someone that they regard as a friend.
I am, however, also an atheist that believe that religion isn’t the REASON they do the things. It is the EXCUSE. I don’t believe there is a god, but I do believe gods were created to be the excuse for us humans to do fucking awful things to each other - see my example above about the mental gymnastics the Nazis went through to justify killing millions. We (humans) will, if we want, come up with any reason to justify to ourselves or others that what we do is for good.
If a magic wand was waved, and religion disappeared, we humans will find other reasons to put ourselves into tribal groups and hate on each other.
My big belief, if I were to profess to have one (and I guess I am) is that we can do better than what we are doing right now.