BroadSnark

There is an interesting comment stream on the Dissenting Justice blog this week.  Darren criticizes the disruptive behavior of the health care protesters in his post.  Many of the commenters called foul, claiming that liberals did not object when their side compared Bush to Hitler or disrupted meetings.

So the questions are

1. Did liberals do the same thing?
2. Did no one object?
3. Are liberals being hypocrites?
4. Why?

I think the answer to question one is yes.  Liberals certainly compared Bush to Hitler.  I doubt you would have to look too hard to find links calling Bush a fascist. As for Darth Chaney, we had to hit the fictional characters to describe the evil he represented. And Code Pink did disrupt congress with anti-war protests.

I disagree that nobody took them to task for it though.  Code Pink is derided on the mainstream left and right.  Check out this hilarious Daily Show clip.

Still, I think there is some hypocrisy here.  I laugh at Code Pink.  I’m not laughing at the health care protesters.  That is because of one simple fact.

I’m not scared of Code Pink.

The health care protesters, on the other hand, scare the shit out of me. I’ve never heard of anyone dying at the hands of a middle-aged, jewish mother in pepto-bismol pink.   (Although I sometimes think my jewish mother might be the death of me.)

Angry white men, on the other hand, are a whole different story.  When I see red-faced, white men spewing rage I think of lynch mobs and assassins.  I think of James Earl Ray and Timothy McVeigh and Scott Roeder.

You have guns.  We have pink feather boas.

I’m wrong though.  I’m not wrong about historical facts and I’m not wrong to be prudent when faced with angry people (especially if they might be armed).  But I am wrong to act out of fear.  When fear is a motivating factor, what you get is a bunch of scary people yelling at each other.  Fear cannot be the basis for democracy.

I’m also wrong to stereotype people I don’t know.  There are millions of people who think abortion is as wrong as Scott Roeder did, but they didn’t all go to abortion clinics and kill people.  Conservative guys don’t all go home at night and put on pointy, white hats.  Howard Zinn is an old white dude too.

There are people who genuinely believe that socialized medicine is a horrible idea, think it is coming, and don’t want to lie down and let it happen.  And I respect their right and willingness to stand up for what they believe, no matter how much I disagree with them.

It is possible, maybe even probable, that many of these people are connected to the Republican party or insurance companies or right wing lobby groups.  The fact is that all those people are also Americans.  They are Americans who, I believe, do not have the welfare of all of us in mind, but they are still Americans.

So here is my challenge to all sides.  Ask yourself what you are afraid of.  Ask yourself if you are acting out of fear.  Ask yourself if you can do better.

Hello all.  There is a new Carnival of the Godless over at the Socratic Gadfly.  Check it out.

There are a lot of things that piss me off about the catholic church, but the worst has to be the church’s attitude toward contraception.

One of the main reasons the church gives for their position on contraception is natural law. As they explain it on the Catholic Answers website, “contraception is wrong because it’s a deliberate violation of the design God built into the human race, often referred to as ‘natural law.’ The natural law purpose of sex is procreation.”

So, by that logic, you might think the church would be against anything unnatural. Yet they aren’t.

Aren’t houses unnatural protection against the elements, an elemental prophylactic of sorts? Yet the pope lives in a house, a rather large one.

Aren’t cars unnatural? Yet, the pope has his own specially designed one.

Isn’t medical care unnatural? Yet the pope sees a doctor. When John Paul was shot they didn’t just let nature take its course.

Tsunamis are natural. Plagues are natural. Dying from poisonous snake bites or peanut allergies is natural. Should we do nothing to protect ourselves? Should we let nature rule no matter what the consequences?

The catholic church apparently thinks so when it comes to sex. If children are brought into this world to starve to death, so be it. If people do not use condoms and die from AIDS, so be it.

Thankfully, despite the catholic church’s (and other anti-abortion religious group’s) position on contraception, most practitioners take a more logical approach. Lets hope they can have some influence.

In the last year, I’ve been hearing a lot about the atheist movement. It came as quite a surprise. I never really thought about my rights as an atheist. It isn’t that I wasn’t constantly frustrated with christians pushing their beliefs on me, especially politically. It was that I didn’t associate that frustration with being atheist.

I was raised jewish. As a jew, I was raised with the understanding that the history of my people was one long story of resisting christian supremacy. In the 1980s, when the Christian Coalition tried to infiltrate local politics in South Florida, it wasn’t atheists or homosexuals (who were actually the targets) who rallied to prevent them. It was the jewish community. Out atheists were nowhere to be found and it never occurred to me that they should be.

I was intrigued with the idea of an atheist movement and began to follow the stories and blogs. I even joined an atheist meetup and attended an event. And here is what I have come to realize about the atheist movement.

The atheist movement in the United States is very christian.

The fact that non-believers, especially those who are active in the movement, are more often men and more often white is a fairly common topic of conversation among atheists. Less common is discussion about the fact that the majority of atheists were raised christian.

I notice the christianness of the atheist movement most when I encounter those atheists who want to convert believers. Don’t get me wrong. Atheists have every right to try and convince others that they are right. And I’m all for the ascendancy of logic and humanism. But when these people make their arguments, they often make them without sensitivity to what religion means to someone when their religion is in the minority.

A white, European, christian in America can separate their ethnicity (if they even acknowledge they have one) from their religion. Not all of us can do that. If someone asks me if I believe in god, I say no. I tell them that I am an atheist. More often, I am asked what my background is. Then I usually say something like – I’m jewish, but I’m not a believer.

Now I don’t practice a religion. I don’t pay attention to religious tradition of any sort. I haven’t stepped foot in a temple since my bat mitzvah (the last time my mother made me go). But I cannot fully deny my jewishness just because I don’t believe. Nazis would not have given a shit whether or not I was actually a believer. The only reason christian atheists in America can separate their christianity out so clearly is that christianity is so ubiquitous here.

My point is this. Non-christians in America often have their identity intertwined with their religion in a way that most US christians couldn’t possibly understand. Denying my jewishness isn’t just a denial of the culture  I grew up in, and which is a part of me, it is an affront to centuries of people who fought death to preserve their culture.

I don’t mean to infer that leaving religion for a christian is easy. I’ve never known what it is like to be a part of the dominant religious group and couldn’t possibly know what it would be like to leave it.  Many christians are shunned when they come out to their families. The fact that I did not have that experience says more about my inability to become un-jewish than it does about the reasonableness of my family.

But Christians don’t become un-christian either, not completely.  They just don’t realize that christianity is culture as much as belief. Christianity is the default in this country. It is so dominant that christians think their culture is just American. It is isn’t just lazy Sundays and christmas vacations that are christian.  It is the food you eat, your childhood memories, the language you speak, and the language that speaks to you.

So, by all means, keep pushing religion out of politics. Keep fighting for reason.  But don’t make the mistake of thinking that others personal choices are the same. When your history involves having to fight for the right to practice your religion (and this goes for christians in some countries) your relationship to that religion is very different.