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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (13775)	5/19/2001 8:54:25 PM
From: epicure	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

I think the real problem is that faith doesn't have to be fair. You can apply logic to sexism (when it isn't based in religion). You can say "it isn't fair to keep women from voting in a country that claims to be for the freedom of all people." And even if people don't want to believe it, at some level it will sink in if it is obvious. But fairness and logic have nothing to do with religion. You say something about fairness and you get "We don't understand God's fairness, since we humans can't judge it. Sure it LOOKS unfair, but we are human, so we can't know." blah blah blah When you are arguing with people who take big chunks of reality off the table and give those pieces to their invisible (and perhaps imaginary) friend, you do not have the tools you need for consensus building. No how, no way.

To: Lane3 who wrote (13775)	5/19/2001 9:38:08 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 82486

Christian (dominant group) activists want to claim the victim role. It's not merely a claim. Christians may, in this country, be numerically dominant. But they are also widely victimized in numerous ways. First, in many countries, men and women are still being killed and jailed simply for professing to be Christians. I'm not aware of any nation which kills and jails people simply and solely for professing to be black, or female, or even disabled (the other groups you named). Second, in this country, Christians can be and are said of and done to Christians that if said of or done to any other minority (and practicing fundamentalists, of which, BTW, I am not one, are a minority) would bring outrage. Look at some of the hostility which has been openly expressed on this thread. If the term Christian in many of the posts here were replaced by black, or female, or Irish, the thread would, rightly, explode in outrage. My own personal involvement here is twofold. First, I consider myself a civil libertarian and classical liberal, and in both positions I believe on individual liberty and the right to do what you want to do and be left alone. Second, as a member of a historically very small quite liberal religion, I feel threatened when any religious minority -- be it fundamentalist Christian, Muslim (minority in this country, at least), Buddhist, Taoist, Wiccan, you name it -- is persecuted. I am very mindful of the quote attributed to Bonhoeffer which I expect we are all familiar with. I am very mindful that the protection of any minority demands the protection of all. So I find myself protecting a group I have little if anything in common with because a threat to them is a threat to me, and, if only we could all recognize it, a threat to all of us here.