The New Intolerance: We Are Now Required To Embrace Just About Everything, Except the Gutter Religion Christianity

Pardon the "attack" on Christianity in the headline -- but I think that sums up the venomous beliefs of the bullies.

There is no principle here. The zealots are not claiming that we must be tolerant towards all -- that is a principle most could agree with.

No, they are instead claiming we must embrace the things they love, and hate -- and persecute -- the things they hate.

This is not "tolerance." This is, at best, simply the replacement of one set of bigotries and hatreds with the
left's favored set of bigotries and hatreds.

This WSJ is worth a read, though it gets, I think, pretty deceptive in its middle part. The WSJ says that opponents of Indiana's RFRA law "claim" that the law would "empower" florists and wedding photographers to "discriminate" against gay weddings.

That's not the claim, Old Bean. That's the entire point.

And it signals how lost this issue is when not even the defenders of the RFRA can even admit the law's purpose. They seem compelled to pretend this bit about refusing service to gay weddings is just some hypothetical crazy talk.

It's not. It's the whole point. And we should not be afraid to say so.

I don't disagree with those who refuse to serve gay weddings, and I don't necessarily agree with them, either. I don't have to. That is the point of tolerance -- not that I either disagree or agree with someone's decision or someone's self-expression, but that I support his rights to decide for himself, and express himself, as he sees fit.

My agreement with his decisions or speech -- my disgust with it -- my sympathies for it -- my hatred of it -- irrelevant, because I am not weighing in on the speech or decision itself -- merely whether I believe an American has a right to so speak or so decide.

And on that matter, I most emphatically do support their right to decide or speak as they would.

Otherwise, I'm afraid I'm going to start needing to demand my own laws, such as a law requiring liberals to confess that the earth hasn't warmed in 17 years and that there is nothing but speculation offered to explain this away whenever I demand they make that concession.

Because that's all the gay "rights" activists are doing here -- they are forcing people who disagree with their political beliefs to endorse those political beliefs anyway, using the crushing power of the state to compel assent.

And if that's the new game in town -- I have a lot of things I wish to force liberals to agree to. Such as the fact that Obama is, in fact, a leftwing socialist who despises America in his core.

This is not about serving gays, this is about acceding to gays' (and non-gay Gay Enthusiasts') demeans that those who dissent with gay weddings nevertheless be forced to endorse them.

And that is unamerican -- or, perhaps I should start learning finally, all too American, at least post-Obama American.

The paradox is that even as America has become more tolerant of gays, many activists and liberals have become ever-more intolerant of anyone who might hold more traditional cultural or religious views. Thus a CEO was run out of Mozilla after it turned out that he had donated money to a California referendum opposing same-sex marriage.

Part of the new liberal intolerance is rooted in the identity politics that dominates today’s Democratic Party. That’s the only way to explain the born-again opportunism of Hillary Clinton, who tweeted: "Sad this new Indiana law can happen in America today. We shouldn’t discriminate against ppl bc of who they love."

By that standard, Mrs. Clinton discriminated against gays because she opposed gay marriage until March 2013. But now she wants to be seen as leading the new culture war against the intolerant right whose views she recently held.

Jazz Shaw at Hot Air has been writing about the possibility of someone demanding a baker make him a Hitler Cake -- does he have the right to refuse?

Surely the answer cannot turn on the unprincipled ground that Neo-Nazis are unpopular whereas gays are tres popular at the moment.

Note to progressives: Who's Hot and Who's Not is not a principled criterion for distinguishing between who has rights and who doesn't. It's also a dangerous criterion, because groups of people become popular, or unpopular, in short periods of time.

I adopted Jazz Shaw's Hitler cake for my own hypothetical -- does a printer have the right to refuse printing up 10,000 flyers reading OBAMA IS A KENYAN COMMUNIST?

What is the difference? In both cases an axe-grinding would-be client wants to compel someone to participate in a political act with which he disagrees.

The only difference is that the left loves The Gayz and hates, allegedly, Nazis. (Though they are huge fans of things which are Naziesque.)

Ashe Schow has a good piece on why the media will never acknowledge that Jackie wasn't raped at all. To explain this, she links a year-old piece by a former hardcore Social Justice Warrior zealot, who has now an apostate about the SJW tactics and their zealot's lack of any doubt about their beliefs, or any concern for the humanity of those they destroy with their tactics.

She's still a leftwinger -- she has not become a rightwinger, for what that matters. I thought that her explanation as to distinction between belief and dogma was insightful, and explains why the left cannot abide any disagreement on their Sacred Belief of gay marriage.

Important disclaimer: I passionately support anti-oppressive politics in general and have only good things to say about it. My current political worldview falls under the umbrella of leftism, although not radical leftism.... What I feel compelled to criticize is only one very specific political phenomenon, one particular incarnation of radical leftist, anti-oppressive politics.

There is something dark and vaguely cultish about this particular brand of politics. I’ve thought a lot about what exactly that is. I've pinned down four core features that make it so disturbing: dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism. I'll go into detail about each one of these. The following is as much a confession as it is an admonishment. I will not mention a single sin that I have not been fully and damnably guilty of in my time.

First, dogmatism. One way to define the difference between a regular belief and a sacred belief is that people who hold sacred beliefs think it is morally wrong for anyone to question those beliefs. If someone does question those beliefs, they’re not just being stupid or even depraved, they're actively doing violence. They might as well be kicking a puppy. When people hold sacred beliefs, there is no disagreement without animosity. In this mindset, people who disagreed with my views weren’t just wrong, they were awful people. I watched what people said closely, scanning for objectionable content. Any infraction reflected badly on your character, and too many might put you on my blacklist. Calling them 'sacred beliefs' is a nice way to put it. What I mean to say is that they are dogmas.

Thinking this way quickly divides the world into an ingroup and an outgroup -- believers and heathens, the righteous and the wrong-teous. "I hate being around un-rad people," a friend once texted me, infuriated with their liberal roommates. Members of the ingroup are held to the same stringent standards. Every minor heresy inches you further away from the group. People are reluctant to say that anything is too radical for fear of being been seen as too un-radical. Conversely, showing your devotion to the cause earns you respect. Groupthink becomes the modus operandi. When I was part of groups like this, everyone was on exactly the same page about a suspiciously large range of issues. Internal disagreement was rare. The insular community served as an incubator of extreme, irrational views.

High on their own supply, activists in these organizing circles end up developing a crusader mentality: an extreme self-righteousness based on the conviction that they are doing the secular equivalent of God's work. It isn't about ego or elevating oneself. In fact, the activists I knew and I tended to denigrate ourselves more than anything. It wasn’t about us, it was about the desperately needed work we were doing, it was about the people we were trying to help. The danger of the crusader mentality is that it turns the world in a battle between good and evil. Actions that would otherwise seem extreme and crazy become natural and expected. I didn't think twice about doing a lot of things I would never do today.

All emphases added.

The left is always on patrol for heretics, and will use actual violence to punish them.

In the current controversy, no one on the left seems willing to ask some basic questions:

If a minority of bakers refuses services to gay weddings, what actual damage befalls gays? There are still many, many more bakers who will bake them their cakes. So what is the actual harm?

They never answer this question -- they never ask it, so they couldn't answer it -- but the actual answer would be: "The harm is finding out that someone disagrees with my Sacred Belief on gay marriage."

To which I say: Get over it, Sally. A lot of people disagree with you about a lot of things. The fact that you're hysterical about it and also quite cruel -- the way that only a weakling can be truly cruel, when he finally gets a bit of power over someone -- is not a good reason to let you beat someone around using the law as your cudgel.

What is being pursued here is not gays' right to have wedding cake. They have this, of course, and do not need the law's insistence to get it.

What is being pursued here is hardcore gay-identity crusaders' insistence that no one has the right to disagree with them on their Sacred Belief, and that the law can and should be perverted into punishing ThoughtCrimes.

What we are seeing here is the enforcement of a new religious code, one which puts "secular" leftist values at the center of religious dogma, and then uses the power of the state to punish heretics, apostates, and blasphemers.

It is ugly, cruel, and stupid, as are most things the left wants.

As I keep saying, never let a weakling get a taste of power. They've had no experience with it and do not understand that power must be exercised, if at all, with restraint and regard for the rights and feelings of human beings.

The weakling given power is nothing but vengeance and cruelty.

Incidentally-- Are there any beliefs on the left which have not been sacralized?

That is, do they have any beliefs which are open to question without inviting their typical full-spectrum punishment regime, from group coordinated stigmatization to pursuit in the courts?

posted by Ace at 03:49 PM

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