[Jack.Kerr]

Originally Posted by jthig32

...the issue I have with tying bigotry to belief and not to attitude and actions is that you leave no room for disagreement. Where is the room for one's personal belief system? ....Having a belief system doesn't make someone a bigot. How you express those opinions and what actions those opinions cause are what determine whether you have hate in your heart towards those that you disagree with.....But I cringe just as much when people who are simply trying to live the life they have chosen and express the views they believe in are accused of being hateful and bigoted for daring to have an opinion that doesn't match the majority of society.

However, with homosexuality (as with all other actions that some consider sins), you have what some view as a choice. And even with the evidence of biology, many Christians would argue that many people are biologically disposed to other "harmful lifestyles" such as drug addiction or alcoholism. So some Christians, based on their chosen faith, will take the opportunity to express their desire for change without attaching hate or prejudice with it. And those that would peacefully do so should be allowed without being accused of being bigoted.

You covered a lot of ground thoughtfully in your post, and I am thinking about several things that you said. I'm not addressing all of the points that you made here, but I may later. Excerpted above (for space) are the ideas I wanted to respond to.

I think we agree that bigotry doesn’t always manifest in actions, let alone violence. But you seem to want to separate belief from action by saying that if a belief doesn’t result in an overt expression, that the belief itself isn’t bigoted. Having a belief system doesn't make a person a bigot; having a bigoted belief system is what makes a person a bigot.

A person can just as easily be bigoted against a specific racial or ethnic group by considering them as ‘inferior’ (or ‘undeserving’ or ‘sinful’). A bigoted belief can just as easily manifest itself in a condescension toward groups (e.g., the tag line of Dubya’s NCLB “…soft bigotry of lowered expectations…” alludes to that); or in an unwilllingness to act (e.g., unwillingness to fund social, educational or healthcare programs, unwillingness to recognize equal legal rights). These are beliefs that don’t necessarily always get translated into actions. But even if people who hold these beliefs don’t act overtly on the belief, isn’t the belief itself still bigoted? So what’s the difference in a person who commits bigoted acts and a person who holds bigoted beliefs? (Opportunity? Time?)

I suppose it becomes easier to see the bigotry when people articulate those opinions socially, and easier still when they act in a hostile or condescending manner to the people they consider inferior (or sinful). But does being patronizingly polite to someone whom you consider inferior because of their race (or culture, or sexual identity) mean you aren’t a bigot? “Some of my best friends are….!” (Or Broussard: “But I’m not bigoted! I even play basketball with a sinful gay-sinning sinner!”) It may be bigotry of lesser degree, but it’s still rooted in bigoted belief. Call it what you will.

So I don’t really agree that you need to see overt expressions of negativity or hostility in order to recognize the bigotedness of a belief. Bigotry at its core is about holding on to irrationally negative beliefs about a specific group; and about judging similar actions of two groups differently based on those beliefs; beliefs which may or may not result in overt acts. It’s not just the motivation of the believer, it’s the rationality of the belief. This is where religiously motivated people (fundamentalist evangelicals, for example) fool themselves into believing that they are acting out of love sometimes, when in fact, they’re acting out of irrational disapproval.

I think that you are discussing these questions in good faith, without trying to be offensive, and I respect that. But I’ll give you a case in point: “….even with the evidence of biology, many Christians would argue that many people are biologically disposed to other "harmful lifestyles" such as drug addiction or alcoholism.” Why compare homosexuality to drug addiction or alcoholism; why compare sexuality to a disease or a disorder? Same-sex attraction is not a disorder like sexual compulsion or sexual addiction. Even if the biological evidence is only strongly compelling and not conclusive, for a long time now, mainstream psychiatry and mental health experts have characterized homosexuality as a normal (if numerically distinctive minority) expression of sexuality. What’s more, with all of the highly visible gays and lesbians living productive, successful lives as contributing members of society, living happily and successfully in long-term, stable relationships, raising happy, well-adjusted children, why make a comparison like that? It flies in the face of reality and rationality.

Maybe there was a time, maybe 50 or even as recently as 30 years ago, when gays and lesbians were forced to live more out of sight, that it would be more understandable (not excusable) for a person who didn’t know any gays or lesbians (or didn’t KNOW that they knew them) to continue to hold negative views about them, particularly if the person holding the views were religious and had been exposed to religious teachings characterizing homosexuality as ‘sinful’. But today? In 2013? With so many examples of gays and lesbians openly living normal lives? The negative prejudice is a lot harder to justify, and even harder to overlook.

I know that there are some Christians, some Christian denominations even, (and even some fundamentalist evangelicals as individuals) who have been able to change their view on this, and who regard same sex attraction not as a sinful choice, but as the natural expression of an individual’s sexuality. I can sympathize to a degree that this isn’t necessarily a quick or easy transition, in the same way that it can take an individual many years to come to grips with his/her sexual identity. But there comes a point where it becomes a sort of willful blindness or irrational ignorance of the reality that gays and lesbians have always existed, have always been contributing members of society, and are due the same respect and rights as anyone else.

Holding on to archaic, unjustified, irrational religiously-based tropes in the face of so much evidence about the normalcy and decency of homosexuals is, at best, holding onto a bigoted belief. Publicly condemning homosexuals as sinners; falsely equating them to criminals, psychopaths, and people with diseases or mental disorders; and acting to trying to criminalize homosexuality, or deny legal rights and recognition to gays and lesbians really can’t be called anything other than bigotry.

I think the day will eventually come when condemning homosexuals as sinners will carry about as much social weight/stigma as condemning people who divorce as sinners, or condemning single parents as sinners, or condemning people who consume alcohol as sinners. The condemnation will say more about the person doing the condemning than it will about the target. But as things currently stand, the fact that gays and lesbians still have a lot of legal rights in play in this country, and the fact that homosexuals in other parts of the world are subjected to violence and death makes bigoted comments like Broussard’s too dangerous to ignore, and bigoted beliefs manifested in public language too dangerous to be left unengaged.