We don’t care about your dead guy

CNN contributor Dana Loesch recently provided a textbook example of how ready and willing religious conservatives are to leap into a shameless, disgustingly self-righteous defense of their narrow and exclusive version of faith, utilizing every fallacy at their disposal to pretend this is the One True Religion, while not even respecting it enough to bother trying to make a valid argument. They demonstrate no real concern for whether they’re actually right – sheer loudness and repetition will suffice to convince themselves of this.

This five-minute excerpt from the July 24 episode of Loesch’s radio show is a display of rapid-fire ignorance so packed with intellectual dishonesty that it’s a challenge just to keep up with it. When a caller says she refuses to go to Chick-fil-A because of the upper management’s homophobic beliefs and funding of anti-gay causes, Loesch responds with a string of claims so ridiculous, it’s difficult to accept that she even believes what she’s saying.

She first tells the caller:  “I don’t understand how you can claim to practice the Christian faith while saying that someone else’s Christian viewpoint is hate.” Apparently nothing can possibly be hateful as long as it’s part of someone’s “Christian viewpoint”. It doesn’t matter what their viewpoint is, or how obviously hateful it would otherwise be – claiming it’s covered by some kind of Christianity is enough to legitimize it. But Loesch takes this even further, telling the caller, “you consider aspects of the Christian faith to be hate” – as if criticizing Chick-fil-A is the same as criticizing Christianity as a whole. Is the anti-gay stance of a chicken company now a defining feature of the Christian religion, delineating what is and is not Christianity?

And then comes the most hollow accusation I’ve ever heard: “You only subscribe to certain aspects of Christianity.” You know, unlike all of the other Christians who somehow follow every mutually contradictory belief that’s ever been endorsed by thousands of different Christian sects. When the caller rightly points this out, Loesch objects: “That’s not how the gospels are presented!” Well, you’d better go tell that to every Christian who’s ever existed. Congratulations to Dana Loesch, the one person who, out of billions of Christians throughout history, has finally established what Christianity truly is.

Finally, Loesch claims that if she thinks so-called “traditional marriage” is “hateful”, then she’s “literally calling Christ hateful”. It’s not unexpected to see conservative Christians twist any criticism of their openly prejudiced beliefs into some kind of personal attack against their head honcho in heaven, but the sheer arrogance of treating disagreement with their views as a direct assault on the almighty creator of the universe is always staggering. Of course, Loesch wasn’t finished taking offense on behalf of her imaginary savior, concluding: “I know you hate Christ.”

That’s just how immersed some people are in their religious worldview. They can’t conceive of any kind of difference of opinion without it being forced into the framework of either loving or hating their preferred deity. If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t follow their personal interpretation of religion,  if you don’t patronize a business whose president declares that support for marriage equality means shaking our fist at God, that means you are literally hating some guy who died 2,000 years ago. This is nonsense. We don’t need to hate or love your Jesus – he’s just not that important. Try to understand that just because he matters to you, that doesn’t mean he matters to us. This is about what you said, and we simply don’t care about some unaccountable corpse to whom you attribute your beliefs.

We don’t care about your dead guy
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We don't care about your dead guy

CNN contributor Dana Loesch recently provided a textbook example of how ready and willing religious conservatives are to leap into a shameless, disgustingly self-righteous defense of their narrow and exclusive version of faith, utilizing every fallacy at their disposal to pretend this is the One True Religion, while not even respecting it enough to bother trying to make a valid argument. They demonstrate no real concern for whether they’re actually right – sheer loudness and repetition will suffice to convince themselves of this.

This five-minute excerpt from the July 24 episode of Loesch’s radio show is a display of rapid-fire ignorance so packed with intellectual dishonesty that it’s a challenge just to keep up with it. When a caller says she refuses to go to Chick-fil-A because of the upper management’s homophobic beliefs and funding of anti-gay causes, Loesch responds with a string of claims so ridiculous, it’s difficult to accept that she even believes what she’s saying.

She first tells the caller:  “I don’t understand how you can claim to practice the Christian faith while saying that someone else’s Christian viewpoint is hate.” Apparently nothing can possibly be hateful as long as it’s part of someone’s “Christian viewpoint”. It doesn’t matter what their viewpoint is, or how obviously hateful it would otherwise be – claiming it’s covered by some kind of Christianity is enough to legitimize it. But Loesch takes this even further, telling the caller, “you consider aspects of the Christian faith to be hate” – as if criticizing Chick-fil-A is the same as criticizing Christianity as a whole. Is the anti-gay stance of a chicken company now a defining feature of the Christian religion, delineating what is and is not Christianity?

And then comes the most hollow accusation I’ve ever heard: “You only subscribe to certain aspects of Christianity.” You know, unlike all of the other Christians who somehow follow every mutually contradictory belief that’s ever been endorsed by thousands of different Christian sects. When the caller rightly points this out, Loesch objects: “That’s not how the gospels are presented!” Well, you’d better go tell that to every Christian who’s ever existed. Congratulations to Dana Loesch, the one person who, out of billions of Christians throughout history, has finally established what Christianity truly is.

Finally, Loesch claims that if she thinks so-called “traditional marriage” is “hateful”, then she’s “literally calling Christ hateful”. It’s not unexpected to see conservative Christians twist any criticism of their openly prejudiced beliefs into some kind of personal attack against their head honcho in heaven, but the sheer arrogance of treating disagreement with their views as a direct assault on the almighty creator of the universe is always staggering. Of course, Loesch wasn’t finished taking offense on behalf of her imaginary savior, concluding: “I know you hate Christ.”

That’s just how immersed some people are in their religious worldview. They can’t conceive of any kind of difference of opinion without it being forced into the framework of either loving or hating their preferred deity. If you don’t agree with them, if you don’t follow their personal interpretation of religion,  if you don’t patronize a business whose president declares that support for marriage equality means shaking our fist at God, that means you are literally hating some guy who died 2,000 years ago. This is nonsense. We don’t need to hate or love your Jesus – he’s just not that important. Try to understand that just because he matters to you, that doesn’t mean he matters to us. This is about what you said, and we simply don’t care about some unaccountable corpse to whom you attribute your beliefs.

We don't care about your dead guy

20 years of perspective on Chick-fil-A

…which Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber clearly lacks:

Sure, massive public displays of prejudice are always disappointing. But let’s look at the bigger picture. Set gay rights back 20 years? Really, what did Chickenpalooza ’12 actually accomplish?

– Showed us how many people don’t prioritize LGBT equality at all, fail to comprehend what “freedom of speech” means, and will probably never understand or accept people like us.

Yeah, that’s pretty harsh. But how about everything the chicken controversy didn’t do? For instance, it didn’t…

– Revoke same-sex marriage in Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Canada, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, the Netherlands, Mexico City, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., Iowa, Vermont and Connecticut.

– Revoke civil unions in Ireland, Lichtenstein, Hungary, Austria, Colombia, Ecuador, Switzerland, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom*, Luxembourg, Finland, Germany, France, California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Rhode Island, Nevada, Washington, New Jersey and Maine.

– Re-criminalize homosexuality in Mozambique, Fiji, India, Nicaragua, Panama, Nepal, Tokelau, Puerto Rico, Cape Verde, Marshall Islands, San Marino, Iraq, China, Mongolia, Romania, Costa Rica, Armenia, the United States, Azerbaijan, Gabon, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Chile, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Africa, Southern Cyprus, Tajikistan, Ecuador, Tasmania, Macedonia, Macau, Albania, Moldova, Bermuda, Germany, Serbia, Belarus, Gibraltar, Ireland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Russia.

– Re-ban gay people from the military in the United States, Serbia, Argentina, the Philippines, Uruguay, Russia, Britain, Romania, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

– Revoke the Matthew Shepard Act.

– Make Barack Obama un-endorse same-sex marriage.

As far as I’m concerned, they can go ahead and wallow in their greasy “victory” if it makes them happy. Let them think they’re actually doing something with any real impact, and meanwhile, we’ll keep progressing toward full equality for everyone.

* Thanks to David Hart for the correction.

20 years of perspective on Chick-fil-A

You think shuffling some words around changes anything?

I’m continually baffled by all the people who try to defend Chick-fil-A’s financial support of anti-gay causes by designating them as instead being “pro-family”. Oh no, they’re not opposing gay rights – they’re just “protecting families”. What exactly made them think this would be the slightest bit persuasive? Just because you’ve personally decided to label the actions of groups such as Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, Exodus International and the Eagle Forum as being “pro-family”, that doesn’t change the fact of their anti-gay activities.

Have they become any less dedicated to ensuring the continued social stigma and legal inequality of LGBT people, our relationships and our families now that you’ve called them “pro-family”? Does that mean they’re now just fine with us getting married, or being protected by nondiscrimination laws, or adopting children? Hell no. We still have to face the reality that they’re working every day to keep us from being accepted in society. I don’t care how “pro-family” they are. However you describe their intent, it has no bearing on the results.

And if you really thought we’d be okay with being told that your families need to be “protected” by making our families less than equal, just how disconnected from humanity are you? Did you expect we’d be happy to be thrown under the bus for the sake of some wholly unsupported notion that this would make your family stronger? That’s a disgustingly vampiric idea that has no basis in reality. You don’t need to be protected from us. We need to be protected from you.

So I really don’t give a damn about the comforting lies you have to tell yourself to excuse your support of a business that’s actively making our lives harder. If you need to hide the reality of it from yourself, that tells me you already know it’s wrong.

You think shuffling some words around changes anything?