[Jack.Kerr]

Originally Posted by DirkFTW

Tolerance is simply a flawed foundation for harmony. You either have to tolerate intolerance (and thus never reach harmony), or you fall short of pure tolerance. And trying to force harmony (even under the guise of tolerance) will inevitably risk authoritarianism; if you want everyone singing the same song, you have to mandate the music sheet or silence the ones who differ.

I’m not sure to what extent I agree with this, but it’s kind of an interesting way to look at things, at least. True at least in the sense that silence isn’t the same thing as harmony. From an LGBT perspective, until the last 40 years or so, gays & lesbians have had to live (when they weren't busy being actively persecuted) in a sort of suffocatingly authoritarian, morally-disapproved “silent (and invisible) harmony” with society in general, and religious zealots in particular. Part of the dissonance you now hear is gays & lesbians gaining their voice, deciding NOT to live in a second-class, invisible silence; asserting their right to equal protection and equal treatment; and more and more fair-minded people agreeing with them. It’s the dissonance of “SINNER!” being shouted at gays & lesbians, and “BIGOT!” being shouted in reply.

The other part of the dissonance you're hearing is the cognitive dissoance that fundamentalist evangelicals experience when they attempt to assert that they should be able to attack and condemn individuals/groups without response, challenge or repercussion, like in the good ol' days.

Originally Posted by DirkFTW

Do you propose rewriting the Bible or censoring the Church? Does the government get to dictate what religious teachings are now acceptable and which are forbidden? Or are you hoping everyone outgrows the need for Christ entirely? (There is also the extension into other religions, but I won't speculate on their texts.)

Is this an either/or choice, or can it be both? Or 'All of the above'? (Joking! …Really!)

Rewriting the Bible? Apart from the obvious fact that religious texts and canons have been re-writtten, added to, deleted from, translated, re-translated, revised, interpreted and re-interpreted by an unknowable number of people, in different eras, subject to different political influences and social traditions, infinitely many times already; and that the context in which they were originally written and the context in which we currently live has changed dramatically (Analogy: The 'I'm sitting in a room" video-file project)……

No. I don’t think that re-rewriting a religious text again is necessary. Or meaningful. The more that I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to think that the inconsistencies, contradictions, and anachronisms in religious texts should actually serve to show and remind people that these texts are merely imperfect historical documents, that provide a glimpse into the way people lived in ancient times, but definitely not a literal mandate/blueprint for living in a modern world. The problem of course comes when textual literalists insist that every word came from God’s lips (and in Shakespearean English, no less), that every word is correct, and that every principle continues to correlated perfectly to modern life; ignoring the possibility/inevitability of misinterpretation, misappropriation, and contemporary irrelevance. The problem comes in fetishizing religious texts and creating false idols out of them, and asserting that EVERYONE, adherents and non-adherents alike, bow down before them, and live in slavish obedience to a particular set of (mis)interpretations of archaic texts.

Censoring the churches? Again, unnecessary for the most part, not to mention untenable with the U.S.Constitution, (although you DO have to account for the Mormons’ government-forced abandonment of polygamy, the undercover government informants in mosques, the recent and ongoing attempts by the State of Texas to seize YFZ’s El Dorado temple and property, those ever-pesky IRS regulations about requirements for non-profit status for religious institutions, and the sporadic interference of state wildlife authorities in the interstate transport of reptiles used for religious observances, just to name a few specific instances).

More generally, churches that aspire to remain in the mainstream, churches that aspire to remain relevant, tend to self-censor; that is, they modulate and moderate their message to what will sell to a sustainable level of membership. You hear fundamentalist evangelicals acknowledging this reality bitterly and lamentingly when they denounce the mega-churches and their damnable prosperity gospel, with its lesser emphasis on hellfire, brimstone and condemnation, and more up-with-people-you-too-can-drive-a-Cadilliac/Lexus/BMW/Mercedes/Lear Jet-just-like-your-televangelist-pastor-can! theology.

That’s also why you hear so much less condemnation of divorce, or alcohol consumption, or single parenthood among more mainstream denominations today. And even in fundamentalist evangelical congregations, while you still may get some stone-faced stares, titters, and barely suppressed tut-&-clucks about mixed-race marriages, people rarely come out and out-and-out condemn them from the pulpit anymore. Or in public. At least in mixed company. Usually.

The more a denomination (or a specific church) condemns, the more they limit their potential 'market'. When you get a group who really equally condemns everybody for everything all the time...well..you get Westboro Baptist Church. Would you argue that they are censored? Were they being persecuted when the father of the soldier sued them for demonstrating at his son’s funeral? Were they being mocked when the Supreme Court took their appeal and found in their favor? Are the Westboro Baptists undeserving of public ridicule and condemnation? Can we really contend that they are treated unfairly?

Originally Posted by DirkFTW

It seems like you pine for a world in which pretty much everyone agrees with your viewpoint. Yet you also acknowledge that, not too long ago, pretty much everyone disagreed with your viewpoint. The past world you view as bigoted and needing to be abandoned; yet, your proposed future is portrayed as somehow idyllic.

Not really. Not at all, actually. Though I will confess to kind of enjoying seeing the LGBT movement and their supporters turn the tables, and throw the arguments of religious zealots (some of whom are undeniably out-and-out bigots, others cynical political maneuverers) right back into their faces.

France. Rhode Island. Delaware. Minnesota. Brazil. The just-released Gallup results showing 53% support in the United States for allowing gays & lesbians to marry, the third consecutive poll reading with more than 50% acceptance, and the same poll showing that a majority of Americans believe that people (some, at least) are born homosexual. Another poll showing 56% support in Virginia for allowing gays & lesbians to marry, up from 46% in 2006. Or another poll showing 57% support for marriage equality in Michigan, up 12.5 points from a year ago. Or another poll showing 55% support for marriage equality in Arizona. The upcoming SCOTUS decisions in Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor. While far from idyllic, I think that things are more equal now, and that we are headed toward being a better society for it. But I harbor no illusion that the world will ever be in a “perfect” state of agreement on anything. In the same way that the poor will always be with us, so too will the ignorant, and the over-zealous, and the bigoted.

Originally Posted by DirkFTW

True Christians believe that the choices we make in life affect our immortal souls. If we love our neighbors as Christ loves us, we can't silently let them ruin their immortal souls out of what we see as a short-sighted desire to enjoy life;…Now the proper language isn't Westboro-ish; that is not loving and likely risks the speaker's soul just as much. But it is also not silence or acceptance of the choice.

So what about the fundamentalist evangelicals? Do the “True Christians” (the “True” revealing so much) want to force gays & lesbians back into a state of ‘harmonious’ silence and inoffensive invisibility? (I think that genie may already be out of the bottle.) Will True Christians continue to try to condemn and shame gays & lesbians for what True Christians see as the ‘short-sighted desire of gays and lesbians to enjoy their lives’. Or are the True Christians willing to live with the dissonance.

Judging from your perspective, DirkFTW, and from the anguished yelps from bigots like Michele Bachmann for “spiritual warfare” in response to Minnesota's recently-passed legislation in favor of equality for gays and lesbians, I’m guessing not. But the longer that “True Christians” continue to refuse to moderate their message, the more they will move on the relevance spectrum, precisely in the direction of the snakehandlers and the Westboro Baptists. It’s the curse of the fundamentalist evangelicals to forever misinterpret and mis-apply the Great Commission mandate, to perversely wield it as an all-purpose excuse to try to manipulate and coerce others (other believers, alternative believers, and non-believers alike) to see the world THEIR way, and to live according to THEIR values, all in the name of “…loving our neighbors as Christ loves us…”

It’s a shame (but a reality) that people can’t just shut up already and stop condemning one another, and stop calling one another names. In the same way that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind, screaming “SINNER!” and “BIGOT!” in one another’s ear makes us all deaf to reason, numb to fairness, insensate to compassion, ambivalent about tolerance, and ultimately, averse to acceptance. And that's hardly idyllic.