Fischer: “Discriminate against homosexual behaviour, or you’re discriminating against Christianity”

Bryan Fischer believes that it is discrimination to tell Christians to stop discriminating. And yet gay-friendly Christians wonder where we get the idea that Christianity is opposed to homosexuality, or that they “teach hate”. Maybe it’s because their biggest advocates say nonsense like this.

I’ve never heard a more compelling argument for discrimination.

Waitaminute. Strike that. Reverse it. Thank you.

It’s not like this is new for Fischer, but it’s certainly nice for him to just come out and say unequivocally that gay rights and his religion are diametrically opposed. It sounds like a false dichotomy, but in his mind, telling him to stop discriminating is really, truly, discrimination. This guy has a long and storied past of saying bullshit exactly like this, but this is the first time in my memory that he’s phrased it quite so bluntly.

At least he finally agrees that all this anti-gay nonsense is discrimination! That’s… LIKE progress, right?

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Fischer: “Discriminate against homosexual behaviour, or you’re discriminating against Christianity”
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8 thoughts on “Fischer: “Discriminate against homosexual behaviour, or you’re discriminating against Christianity”

  1. 1

    The sad thing is that there’s some truth to this, or at least they’re trying to make it true. If they keep on going the way they’re going (which to be honest I fully expect..trapped animals and all that) as Christianity becomes less of a dominant position (and homosexuality more normalized), if someone introduces themselves as a Christian, for more and more people it’ll be a huge red flag. WARNING WARNING POTENTIAL BIGOT WARNING WARNING. (Then the boss ship comes out and it’s bullet hell time)

    The more they double down on this the more they’re fighting what is an increasingly existential threat to Christianity. I know as it stands right now, I have that reaction personally. If someone tells me they’re Christian, I’m wondering WHY they’re telling me and as such they probably have some sort of agenda behind it.

    Is that discrimination? Possibly? But more to the point it’s my REACTION to their ACTION. If someone DOESN’T tell me that they’re religious, I assume they’re in that culturally religious but functionally atheistic blob that makes up most of society, or at least the chunk of society around me. I think it’s an understandable, and even appropriate reaction.

  2. 2

    It just doesn’t make any sense. It is like saying “every hamburger that a homosexual eats takes away from the hamburger eating rights of Christians” or something. They aren’t actually losing any rights, although I guess they are losing the feeling they get from thinking they have control over the culture which is NOT a right.

  3. 3

    To authoritarians, power and rights are interchangeable. Fischer despises increasing other people’s rights because it reduces his group’s ability to demonize and control others.

  4. 4

    A human right is only a human right if every human has it. If someone wants a right for themselves that they would deny another it is not a human right but a privilege.

    Christians call for the right to discriminate. By doing that they make it not a human right but a privilege that *I* can ignore. It has become a matter of choice, not an inborn right not to be discriminated.

    I will never discriminate on gender, sexual orientation, nationality and many other things. I will however remain to be disgusted by bigotry, by any philosophy that divides and hates where we should tolerate and love. (*)

    I don’t call that discriminating but if anybody does I am cool with that. I can live with discriminating bigotry, you’ll will just have to learn the tolerate that. 🙂

    (*) Bit of my brony shining through there.

  5. 5

    It’s the whole “tolerance cannot tolerate intolerance” thing that Christians and other bigots like to call “hypocritical”.

    “Oh, I have my (sexist/religious/racist) beliefs, you’re discriminating against me by saying how dumb they are and how I shouldn’t act on them!”

    When I was Christian, I saw that kind of thing as discrimination, too. When visiting a Japanese temple, I refused to participate in their basic ceremonies, and a fellow student called me out on it as being disrespectful. I thought to myself, “Hey, you’re an atheist, you don’t care because you don’t think idols matter, but MY religion thinks this is evil idol worship! Don’t discriminate against me; heck, I think it’s more real than you do, I’m respecting it by treating it as the worship it obviously is!”

    I think I made similar self-rationalizations about doing horrible homophobic shit like voting for Prop 8. “It’s not me imposing my religion, I’m just voting according to my beliefs (even though I know gay people and they’re totally chill and obviously not demon possessed or rebelling against God), isn’t that just democracy? How is this discriminatory?” I’m tremendously ashamed of that vote, now.

    I saw similar sexist crap in recent comments sections when a woman writer complained about the sexism inherent in having “booth babes” at gaming conventions like E3. Along with saying the writer was just jealous and/or insecure about her looks, I also saw plenty saying “it’s totally natural to like nearly naked women”, “other conventions do it too, don’t just complain about E3, that’s not fair”, “stop discriminating against straight men who like it and the women who want these jobs!” Ridiculousness.

    So yeah, I simultaneously totally understand where Fischer is coming from, and totally believe he’s an idiot for it. You can hold your stupid beliefs, but we can stop you from acting out on them and severely criticize them for what they are: shameful and ultimately unjustified discrimination.

  6. 6

    Jason, indeed the guy is demanding privilege. He is demanding the right to harm a class of people.

    Alonzo Fyfe has an excellent series in his April archive on a hard defense of secularism. Fyfe argues that a secular society requires secular evidence and that supernatural evidence is no admissible. God is unavailable for cross-examination. He develops this, and conclude that a law that seeks to harm a class of people (two examples: rapists and homosexuals) must be supported by good, secular evidence. In the first case, we harm rapists by arresting, prosecuting and imprisoning them, thus stripping them of freedoms the rest of us exercise. We can do this because the evidence is strong that rape itself harms the victims, and preventing harm to victims far outweighs the harm to the rapist in removing his freedoms.

    On the otherhand, what good evidence has or can be presented to justify harming homosexuals by preventing their marriage? As noted, secular evidence is required. Thus, Fischer is left without reason to cause harm other than “god told me…”.

    Hearsay evidence is not admissible. God is unavailable for cross-examination.

    Currently, Fyfe is doing a series on the Ethical Politician, and it is a very interesting series.

    I commend Fyfe to you.

  7. 7

    I have to say I disagree with anyone who thinks that Christianity is being discriminated against here. No one is saying that they have to have gay marriages or sanction them. No one is saying that they have to accept homosexuality at all. What we are trying to do is prevent their bronze-age belief from permeating our laws and making our government as intolerant as they are.

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