They just don’t get it


Listen to this Catholic priest who argues on Fox that opponents of gay marriage are now the victimized ones, the oppressed ones. What is amazing is that he thinks it is unfair and outside the bounds of civilized debate to characterize certain views as bigotry while at the same time he thinks nothing of referring to people as sinners. And even though many religious people believe that sinners go to hell where they face everlasting torment, that is supposed to perfectly acceptable to say.

No one is suppressing the right of people to express opposition to same sex marriage or whatever views they want. What has changed is that they no longer can say things like that without pushback. The days are gone when wearing a collar backwards gave you the privilege of saying the most absurd things without fear of challenge, as if some theological training gave you deep expertise on how people should live their lives, and whose verdicts should be accepted unquestioningly.

Now they have to be ready to deal with the rough and tumble of political discourse and they just can’t handle it.

homophobe-bar

Comments

  1. Anthony K says

    Tell ya what, Catholics: we’ll eschew referring to same-sex marriage as ‘marriage’ if you stop referring to stale hunks of flatbread as the ‘body and flesh of Christ’.

    Fundamental definitions indeed.

  2. smhll says

    Talking to people who quote God as their authority is not much more effective than just banging one’s head against the wall.

  3. slc1 says

    And, of course, the moderator at the fascist news channel didn’t bring up the child rape scandal at the Raping Children Church to point out to the priest that he was throwing rocks from a very leaky boat.

  4. AsqJames says

    Oh my gosh! They’re sooo right. Criticism of the opinions someone voluntarily holds (while making no attempt to enact laws regarding the holding or expressing of those opinions) is exactly like making separate rules for whole classes of people based on a fundamental aspect of their identity.

  5. Acolyte of Sagan says

    …The days are gone when wearing a collar backwards gave you the privilege….

    TThat’s something I can’t quite figure out. Wear your collar backwards and people show you un-earned respect and deference; wear a baseball cap backwards and you’re most likely to be stopped and searched.

    But of course the priest is right. He -- and his ilk -- can demonise gays as much as they wish, but they’re not bigots for doing so because….well….. God.
    Apparently.

  6. says

    After listening to the video of the Catholic priest I think what he was driving at was that the attacks against him for his pro-traditional marriage position are bigoted. That right away the proponents of “gay marriage” resort to name calling and impugning his character and vilifying him rather than treating his moral point of view in a respectful way. I think he’s making this point as a kind of counter-attack against the charge of “bigotry” being thrown at him. It is interesting that the Catholic priest complained that because he’s against “gay marriage” people accuse him of being equivalent to a racist or an anti-feminist. He seemed to acknowledge that anti-feminism is bad and something to be ashamed of in how he phrased it as if being anti “gay marriage” was legitimate but that being anti-feminist was not legitimate and that it was unfair to make a moral equivalence between the two views. I must say I find this rather shocking and depressing because one would think a conservative pro-family Catholic priest would be anti-feminist and proud of it. For a man in his position to concede the legitimacy of feminism but to still try to “hold the line” against “gay marriage” is not an encouraging state of affairs. At the opening of the video the Catholic priest said “I certainly represent traditional Catholic teaching, absolutely.” Well, traditional Catholic teaching is most certainly anti-feminist.

    On to the question of “bigotry” and who is “bigoted” and who is not; it really comes down to what the truth is and who is right and who is wrong. It is “bigoted” to be anti-gay but only under the assumption that heterosexuality and homosexuality are morally equivalent to each other. If in fact homosexuality is inherently problematic or dysfunctional then it is not “bigoted” to say that homosexuality is inherently problematic or dysfunctional; it is simply stating the truth of the matter. Likewise attacking a religious figure who is opposed to “gay marriage” as being “bigoted” is in itself bigoted if the motivation for the accusation is hatred and prejudice against the religious. On the other hand if the religious figure actually is bigoted then calling him bigoted is merely describing him accurately. So the question of who is bigoted and who is not depends upon the underlying objective reality of the situation which is the real issue under debate anyways.

  7. Matt G says

    It’s the ol’ get-out-of-being-an-asshole free card. How far would we have to dig in this guy’s personal life to find a boyfriend?

  8. smrnda says

    If he doesn’t like being called a bigot, then he should explain some objective, non-religious basis for why homosexuality is wrong, and this doesn’t mean religious concepts dressed up in obfuscating language of ‘teleology’ or some other rubbish -- explain it’s wrong or bad in the way that it’s wrong or bad for people to shoot at pet dogs with bb guns. If he can’t then his only case is it’s wrong because his god or gods told someone it was wrong thousands of years ago.

    If religions are bigoted (express prejudice against people for which there can be no rational justification) then they should be called as such, since nobody is required to take the claim of divine transmission seriously. If the argument is that the religious view represents objective reality, get some god down here to clearly state the case. Otherwise, it’s just either justification, rationalization, or holding up adhering to tradition as thinking (which it isn’t.)

  9. lanir says

    While it may sound superficially reasonable to talk about objective reality, it doesn’t work as well when you’re acting confused about whether treating someone poorly is actually treating them poorly. Doing something and then claiming fake existentialism about whether you’re actually doing it or not isn’t a very compelling trick.

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