"What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous . . . it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! This is the Land of Lincoln where people believe in God. Get out of that seat . . . You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon."
This reminder that theists getting shit from atheists happens sometimes in UU churches, but it's usually the reverse is brought to you by Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago), who is
bitching out Rob Sherman for daring to testify that the government giving $1 million to a church was not Constitutional.
CC
Ps. Another tidbit on this subject.
7 comments:
What she says is not shocking. It's just that she said it in public. I've heard that kind of thing my whole life - but mostly from Muslims. So many people believe that atheism is dangerous, nihilistic, and will lead to chaos, moral ruin, and the collapse of civilization. And let's not forget: the wrath of God Himself.
Davis just goes to show that you can be a Democrat, a religious liberal (she's United Church of Christ), a woman, and a person of color, and still harbor bigotry.
And I don't understand what "The Land of Lincoln" has to do with believing in God. Clearly, she was feeling passionate.
My point had nothing to do with the demographics of the speaker and was entirely that one often hears how it's just so HARD to be a theist in Unitarian Universalism and those atheists are SO MEAN and SO INTOLERANT.
IMHO, we need the occaisional reminder that theists do have the rest of the world to be comfortable in and that it is usually atheists who get stomped and get told that they are crazy and their opinions don't matter.
And I think H sofia's point was that people SHOULDN'T profile.
CC
I don't agree that Davis was being a bigot. She was simply trying to protect and conserve the status quo.
Since when are bigotry and preservation of the status quo mutually exclusive?
CC
CC asked: Since when are bigotry and preservation of the status quo mutually exclusive?
Good question CC. Up here in Montreal, to say nothing of 25 Beacon Street in Boston and elsewhere in the U*U World. . . preservation of the status quo and anti-religious bigotry are anything but mutually exclusive. N'est-ce pas?
Dear Chaliceblog
Please delete my previous post (a few minutes ago) - I was being very crabby.
Sorry
Dudley M. Jones
jonesdudley@hotmail.com
One of my friends was surprised by the poll that showed more people would elect a homosexual as president than an atheist. I pointed out that the number of straight people who assume all homosexuals are inherently immoral is dwindling, whereas the number of religious people who assume that you cannot be moral without believing in deity isn't budging as much. The only encouraging growth area is that there are more people who don't identify as religious themselves, but that doesn't help much for increasing tolerance of differences because of the fashion of intolerance toward religion among atheists these days. It'd be like having an increase in the number of gays, but those gays' being just as nasty about heterosexuality as the heteros have been about homosexuality -- balkanization rather than tolerance.
As for "profiling" Davis, there usually is a lot more tolerance for religious differences among Democrats and religious liberals, and particularly more tolerance for non-believers. It's not normally the party in favor of prayer in schools, etc.
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