Christianity spent the better part of two thousand years persecuting and destroying all alternatives to itself. It never really willingly gave up its imagined right to do so.
In lamenting the failure of Indiana Republicans to pull off their legalized persecution of the LGBT community, Dr. Richard Land, president of Southern Evangelical Seminary, told OneNewsNow that,
This is where the analogy to the lunch counter and to segregation is completely and utterly disanalogous and disingenuous, because there is no community in America where a gay couple is not going to be able to find somebody who will be more than happy to provide that service for the fee. So why pick on a conservative Christian proprietor and under penalty of law weaponize the government and say, ‘You’ve got to do this, or we’re going to fine you, or we’re going to put you in jail, or we’re going to run you out of business’?
“And that, according to Dr. Land,” says OneNewsNow, “is the real discrimination that is taking place.”
“It’s ugly; it’s thuggish; it’s brutish. It’s the totalitarian left in all of its ugly face.”
Right. It’s the prevention of persecution that’s the real persecution.
When you hear things like this, you always wonder, did he say this out loud to himself before he said it to everybody else? Just to see if it makes sense?
Because it doesn’t.
This is an old story with Christianity, feeling persecuted just by having to co-exist with non-Christians. It was ridiculous two thousand years ago and it’s no less ridiculous today.
People saying, “No, I don’t feel like I’m going to accept your persecution of me today,” is not persecution. It never has been.
The United States Constitution says that all religions are equal before the law. Christians and others can feel they are special, but the law of the land is the Constitution, not the Bible (or the Qur’an or any other text) and the Constitution says “NO” to establishment of any religion.
Which means Dr. Land and his fascist cronies are not allowed to legalize religious-based persecution.
It’s really very simple. It should not be all that difficult for Land to grasp. He is an educated man, apparently. He should be able to understand that as well as I do. Even if, as Tom DeLay has insisted, God wrote the Constitution, he wrote a Constitution that guarantees religious freedom for ALL Americans – not just for any of his real or imagined Chosen People.
If you want ugly, thuggish, and brutish, you have only to look back through Christian history – at the genocide of Pagans in Europe and elsewhere, at the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Witch Burnings. Or Hobby Lobby refusing to sell Hanukah merchandise, or attacks on women’s reproductive rights all across the nation, or the so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s failure to launch which Land is lamenting.
Persecution is not only telling other people they have fewer rights as you, aren’t as good as you, all because you say your religion says so, but then, in violation of the Constitution, legislating your beliefs into law.
That is persecution.
Gays and lesbians, women and Muslims, atheists and secularists – even children – those are the victims of persecution in this country.
Not Christians.
The persecutors are, as they have been through most of Western history, conservative Christians (and call them fake Christians if you will) doing what they has always done: embracing lies and hypocrisy while persecuting everyone they don’t approve of.
Richard Land is not a victim. He is one of those persecutors.
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