Well, if your idea of “equanamity and forgiveness” means acting as apologist for calling the cops on people who express their religious beliefs, I’ll have to respectfully disagree.

Apparently you manage to mine my words evidence of the same anti-Christian animus with which you scour these here intertubez. It must take a lot of um, fertilizer to nourish your garden of victimhood. Not much else to say. Good luck- I’ve found that a benign feeling of equanimity and forgiveness is a better way to go through life than seething anger and resentment, but whatever works for you.

“As for the rest- yes, you don’t get it. I don’t want Christians (or anyone else) being forced to shut up.”

Bullshit. You follow this by very carefully detailing exactly when you think people should be forced to shut up — at the point you find them disagreeable. Then they should be fired or jailed. Got it.

Um, okay, I’ll bite. You were making references to people getting fired, and here you were talking about “criminalizing”. Well, if you enter a voluntary consent decree, and you violate it, you can go to jail. It doesn’t matter what the subject is. Your position on this is as silly as me saying that they’ve criminalized freedom of assembly because a person violated a TRO. Or that they have criminalized freedom of contract because a court is enforcing a non-compete clause. *gag*

As for the rest- yes, you don’t get it. I don’t want Christians (or anyone else) being forced to shut up. I have no problem with someone coming to my door and tryng to convert me (I could politely ask them to leave). In fact, I have no problem, at a school assembly, for a student speaker to make a brief mention… like, “I’m here thanks to my faith” or “I’d like to thank my parents, my priest, and most importantly, God”. In fact, having attended school assemblies (the life of a parent) I’ve seen this many times. What I don’t want is for people to use a school (government) platform to get a free shot at converting people who are a captive audience, and our jurisprudence supports that. Heck, it’s not just the law, it’s just common sense and courtesy.

And I say that whether the speaker wants to rant about converting to Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or uses the platform to tell the students that they should all be atheists because there is no god. It’s not appropriate.

Think about the work situation- if you’re at work, it should be fine if a co-worker tells you about his experience in church, or temple, and proudly displays the ornaments of his religion. But if a co-worker is using work-time to continuously proselytize you (or, conversely, to argue for atheism), it’s a display of bad manners.

Right. The bar on censorship is set so low that you want to silence people who are not even offensive. Simply expressing a belief system different than yours is enough to warrant silencing by force. I get it.

And the “on their dime” is an interesting thing. Do you believe that people who don’t like gays should be able to silence pro-gay speech if the speech is in a public forum? Do you believe that people who hold political views that you don’t like should be stopped from speaking in a public forum? Do you believe that people who hold values different than yours should be stopped from speaking in a public forum? No? I get it. Just Christians.

Well, Christians pay their dime, too. And if your position is that it’s OK to censor speech any taxpayer doesn’t like, then let’s get to it. There’s a lot of speech that needs to be stopped on the public dime.

And, of course, as we become more and more socialized, *every* place is on *your* dime. Eventually, with any luck, you’ll be able to stop all expression altogether.

Congrats.

Actually, when these go to court, freedom of speech frequently wins. The problem is that antichristian bigots are very good at using SLAPP tactics to intimidate folk. The reason that things are changing is that Christians are beginning to fight back.

But, it’s fun to see this conversation follow the familiar path that it takes with antichristian bigots:

First there’s the denial: “This never really happens.”

Then the minimization “Well, it happens rarely and it’s not a big deal.”

And then, finally, the admission: ” OK, it happens. And I think it’s a good thing. The law’s on my side, so shut up or I’ll do my best to see you hurt.”

Ahem. Once again, remember the question I was responding to. These are exactly cases that are responsive to the question. That they are not responsive to a question I wasn’t answering is not surprising.

And, again, the fact that you *approve* of it doesn’t change what it is. Calling every expression of religious belief “proselytizing” is a cute way to support the criminalization of faith, but it doesn’t make it right. And, as long as folk like you think that criminalizing expressions of faith is a good thing, then it’s appropriate to respond in kind.

Ahem. Let me remind you of the question:

“Under what circumstances have people been prohibited from discussing the religious origins of their work ethic?”

That you *approve* of it doesn’t change what it is.

It’s your and loki13s position that as long as there are a lot of Christians around, it’s OK to censor them, fire them for their jobs and throw a few in jail if they express their beliefs. There are plenty more left

.

I missed this earlier. That is not any ‘position’ of mine. My point was that Christianity is the default in our nation and that, therefore, the notion that Christians, in particular, are being picked on requires further reflection.

It is wrong to censor anyone’s speech, but speech sometimes conflicts with other rights and legal principles. Separation of church[es] and state is one of our legal principles, and many rights flow from it. These include the right of non-Christians and non-religionists to not be captive audiences to religious speech at publically supported events.

You regard this as censorship of speech; the law regards it as protection of those who do not wish to be proselytized on their dime.

Let’s look at your examples-
1. Person facing jail time for *violating an out of court settlement*. I know you’re not big on the law, and stuff, but you’re not allowed to that. If you do, you get in trouble.

2. Person whose mike was cut off after they deviated from school-approved graduation speech to evangelize during the speech. You’re not familiar with the jurisprudence, but this is considered a school-sponsored speech. Not supposed to do that (just think about your kid being forced to sit and listen to a speaker telling them to convert to Islam).

3. Same as 2, above, but less certain since we only hear from the plaintiff. Again, this is school-sponsored speech. Had the student done it in the hallway, no problem.

4. Is more of a close call, since we only get one side. If the school was harrassing a student, that isn’t right. But still- mentioning beliefs is fine, but ou shouldn’t be using a *school platform* to evangelize to a captive audience.

5. Same. Graduation speech.

6. Again, close call but the same.

So… that’s it? Christians are being hunted down because our current jurisprudence doesn’t allow high school graduation speakers to try and convert a captive audience? You realize that this applies to other religions, too, right?

*sigh* I wish I had the problems you did.

No, you are simply engaging in the same kind of denial. We can either talk about the point I’m making or you can have a conversation with your pretend Christian about a pretend issue that you create on your own.

Or, of course, you could simply *be* a Christian and experience it, then it wouldn’t seem so unusual to you. But, of course, you aren’t. You simply project your denial as reality. It doesn’t matter *how* many examples I give you, it will never be enough.

I know, I will *never* convince you that arresting Christians for their faith is anything to get worked up over, and you will *never* believe that this taking of offense thing happens enough to make you care. When that kind of denial occurs in other arenas, it’s called “willful ignorance.” It doesn’t work well with sexual harassment, where SCOTUS condemned an employer for denial saying they “must have known, or was engaged in willful ignorance and did not wish to know.”

You do not wish to know. And, accordingly, you never will.

I think something similar is happening to Billo and others like (him?). If you search long enough and hard enough, you will find evidence of people acting like jerks toward Christians. This reinforces a belief that “Christianity is under attack” (a belief that some media outlets are only too happy to serve). But the situation day-to-day is very different. America is a nation dominated by Christianity, to such an extent that it forms a background unnoticed to most of us (see, for example, our default holidays). Part of the recent evolution in America has been to understand this and to grow more accepting of those with other beliefs so that, for example, Jewish people can choose to get Yom Kippur off. I think that this is frightening because for many, it is not enough that Christianity not only be the most commonly practiced religion and the “default” religion in America (and only moreso, given that immigration trends favor Christianity in general and Roman Catholicism in particular), but it must be dominant, and any accommodation is seen as a loss. Hence, it is not enough to be inclusive and wish people “Happy Holidays” (even if you live in an area with a large Jewish population)- you MUST wish them a Merry Christmas.

Now, this isn’t to say that there aren’t specific wrongs. There are atheist jerks who go out of their way to denigrate people of faith. There are Christian jerks who go out of their way to denigrate atheists. There are those who file frivolous lawsuits to keep God (or Gods) out of everything. There are those who file frivolous lawsuits to put God (or Gods) into everything. What can we learn from this?

1. People are jerks. Don’t be one. And if someone else is a jerk, it doesn’t give you the right to be one just because you can say “What’s good for the goose…” (Here’s a clue- if your friend rapes a kid, would you do it too, because “what’s good for the goose…”?)
2. There’s at least one lawyer for every jerk out there.

What an…. interesting characterization of my position! It must be very hard to meet in underground rooms, knowing that the next centurion’s knock means you go to the arena.

Seriously, there are jerks, and they do bad things. What I find alternately laughable and pathetic is that… well, let me quote you:

You and loki13 are like a middle class white guy in the 1950s saying “Why are some of these silly blacks blathering on about racism? I’m not racist, and none of my friends are. I have black friends, and they are all polite and pleasant. What’s the big deal?”

Being a Christian in America today is *just* like being black in Selma in the 50s. Really?

I started the post talking about people’s thin skins, and the circle of idiocy. I guess everyone is an oppressed group now. So who, exactly, is the oppressor?

Oh yeah, them.

Anyway, if you got it so bad, I guess the rest of them got it so good. The atheists (it’s good to be an atheist in middle school… not so much)… jewish people (there’s no anti-semitism in America)… the Sikhs (tuban means muslim, y’know!)… the muslims (sorry, Islamofascists)… the hindus (that’s in *God* we trust, not *Gods* ya furriner)….. the buddhists (well, they do have to suffer Richard Gere)…

What I’m saying is… get over yourself. If you really want the whole goose/gander treatmeant, you might want to think this through. Ever hear about walking a mile in someone’s shoes? Perhaps you’re fixated on the beam in your eye? ;)

Take care.

Well, that’s an interesting rephrasing of my positin, but it’s a mischaracterization. My position is that if it’s good to use taking offense to censor Christians, then it’s equally good to use it back. It’s your and loki13s position that as long as there are a lot of Christians around, it’s OK to censor them, fire them for their jobs and throw a few in jail if they express their beliefs. There are plenty more left.

I respectfully disagree

You must be joking. It happens all the time. The denial around here is laughable. You and loki13 are like a middle class white guy in the 1950s saying “Why are some of these silly blacks blathering on about racism? I’m not racist, and none of my friends are. I have black friends, and they are all polite and pleasant. What’s the big deal?”

Some of the more egregious examples:

More recently, it was Mary Allen, president of the Pace High School graduating class.

In addition:

Here

Here

Here.

Here

Here

And I can get you an arbitrary number more, if you like.

How many will it take before apologists for this kind of censorship stop pretending it doesn’t happen?

As much as I sympathize with the perception of Chrstians in the U.S. that they are de facto excluded from the public sphere, I cannot say the perception is well-founded.
As loki points out, Christianity of one sort or the other is the default in this nation. Take you kid anywhere around Christmas time and some smiling sales clerk will ask her/him what Santa is bringing for Christmas. Look on Inside Higher Ed for the recent story about Christian students at some college complaining that having no classes on Jewish holidays ‘discriminates’ against them – with nary a moment’s reflection on all those Christian holidays simply built into all school calendars. Look at our paper money; the God in whom we trust is not a Hindu elephant god.

As much as I sympathize with the perception of Christians in the U.S. that they are de facto excluded from the public sphere, I cannot say the perception is well-founded.
As loki points out, Christianity of one sort or the other is the default in this nation. Take your kid anywhere around Christmas time and some smiling sales clerk will ask her/him what Santa is bringing for Christmas. Look on Inside Higher Ed for the recent story about Christian students at some college complaining that having no classes on Jewish holidays ‘discriminates’ against them – with nary a moment’s reflection on all those Christian holidays simply built into all school calendars. Look at our paper money; the God in whom we trust is not a Hindu elephant god.

I really thought the Canadians had more sense.

Randy: I guess they are terrified that if their children see an elephant god, they will abandon Christianity. How insecure these people are!

Well, really: imagine yourself as a kid being dragged on the weekend to a building full of solemn adults, told to ‘behave,’ forced to dress up, and seeing pictures of some poor guy nailed to a cross with thorns digging into on his head. Then, you go to the zoo, eat fun food, get to run around and shriek, and when you get to the elephants you see a dancing elephant statue. Who wouldn’t convert?

I think this exchange illustrates how difficult it is to bridge the divide between some people. For me, America is a mostly tolerant place, where Christianity is far and away the dominant religion (see- the Supreme Court, see also Congress, see also the Executive, see generally We the People). I’ve heard of these “militant atheists” because they publish books and provide some color on the news (see Hitchens). But I’ve never had one come to my door to try and get me to come to (no) god, like the LDS, or the Jehovah’s, or… um, well, several other less identifiable denominations. I’ve never had them approach me in malls and question me with their “clever” brain teasers to try to get me to understand only (no) god has the answers. There’s no position set aside in prisons to minister to the atheists, and there’s no army (non) chaplain. Neither my undergrad nor my grad school had a “Atheist Society” (perhaps they met with the apathetic society while listening to air supply?), yet they had thriving Christian Fellowships.

I don’t get time off for atheist holidays. There are no respected atheist ministers in the community. The asked question where I used to live isn’t whether you are a Christian, but what kind of Christian are you (it may or not be acceptable to be Jewish). Now that I’m back in the big city, it’s just live and let live.

So yeah- I’m sure that crappy things have happened to people because they were Christian. And because they’re black. And because they’re gay. And because they’re male. And because they’re gingers. And because they’re my brown eyed girl. But to say that it’s some systemic problem? Wow…. I would need advanced Victimology 401 to understand that.

I’m sure that members of *any other* religion, or atheists, would be happy to exchange their place for the hated, despised, hunted-down place that Christians have in American society today. I can only imagine that a Jewish reader, or a Sikh (for example) is reading your litany of horrors (everything short of the lions) and thinking- yeah, y’all got it rough!

They would love to have to have your saucey goose.

One would think that if a student’s religious beliefs led her to work hard, be ethical, and achieve success, it should be encouraged. Instead, antichristian bigots refuse to allow those students to mention the reason they developed those attitudes and insist that they either lie or be silent.

Under what circumstances have people been prohibited from discussing the religious origins of their work ethic? Do you have any evidence that this has ever happened?

But to get back to the original article, this is simply the civil liberty version of going John Galt. If the evangelical atheists and militant antichristians want to play this game with our expression, it’s only fitting that the game gets played back to them. Frankly, it’s amusing to watch the hypocrisy.

The last time I checked, “evangelical atheists” were typically not Hindus and very few Canadian or American Hindus are “militant antichrisitans.”

On the merits, I think different treatment of Christian and non-Christian symbols is appropriate. Christians are the overwhelming majority in this country: almost 80% of Americans are Christians of one stripe or another. Of the 535 members of Congress, only 50 are non-Christians and another 8 are “not stated,” making at least 89% of Congress Christian (at least 86.5% if you consider Mormons non-Christians). Because of the overwhelming dominance of Christianity in this country and the minuscule number of Hindus, no reasonable person would interpret the presence of a Hindu symbol as a government endorsement of Hinduism. The situation is very different with Christianity.

I doubt things change a great deal in Canada, since 80% of Canadians are Christians too. I haven’t looked up statistics for their Parliament but I doubt it includes any significant number of Hindus.

It’s going to get worse, not better. As we move more towards socialism, then more and more of our lives will involve government subsidy/involvement/interference. And as that happens, the militant antichristian bigots will further use the cry that anything involving government funding must be purged of the evil of Christianity. Just watch as the concept of the faith-based hospital is made functionally illegal. Get those crosses out of those clinics!

That, of course, isn’t what the cases I’ve referred to are about. Nor is it the case of the ACLU threatening to sue because of the cross in the LA city seal representing the history of Spanish missions. And, I’ll be happy to agree with you that teachers should neither proselytize *nor* denigrate a person’s faith. Unfortnately, the latter seems to be de rigeur.

And, of course, the idea that cops — or anybody — should not let moral and ethical values affect what they do is simply silly. The demand should be the moral and ethical values acted upon be ones that are worthwhile; they should not involve persecution based on their origin. It’s not that way, unfortunately. Instead, we are told to lie about it and claim they are justified in terms of secular philosophy because any mention of the *real* religious basis for some of them must be punished. The antichristian insistence that recognizing one’s ethic of “Thou shalt not steal” is be based on one’s religion be punished is simple bigotry.

One would think that if a student’s religious beliefs led her to work hard, be ethical, and achieve success, it should be encouraged. Instead, antichristian bigots refuse to allow those students to mention the reason they developed those attitudes and insist that they either lie or be silent.

The bottom line is that if evangelical atheists and other militant antichristians want to use the force of law to promote their bigotry, then they should be willing to live by the same constraints. And that means that “hate speech” is not limited to Christian expression, but also include hateful bigotry against Christians, and should be viewed as such. It means that if Christian expression should be censored, then similar nonchristian expression should also be censored.

And, when it suddenly becomes obvious that such censorship is not a good thing, then everybody — Christian and nonchristian — should benefit. Who knows, we might develop a society that doesn’t center on finding things to be offended about.

But until then, goose and gander is the way to go.

“In a history museum talking about the history of Spanish missionaries in California, on the other hand, displaying Christian symbols of some kind would be almost inevitable for educational purposes. I don’t think even the ACLU would ever have a problem with that.”

The link that egd gave you is fixed here.

Cops wear guns when they arrest folk. Read the articles I posted. Or, I guess, you don’t have a problem with folk being *arrested* for being Christian, just being *shot*?

I”m not a Christian, nor am I invested in this dispute; if I were, I’d certainly want to press the issue just to prove a point to the evangelical blowhards. Get rid of the thing.

billo says:
Throwing people in jail, arresting them and dragging them into court, destroying their careers and abrogating their civil liberties is not just being “obnoxious.” I can ignore a loud mouthed antichristian bigot. I can’t ignore a cop with a gun or a pink slip. The fact that you can’t tell the difference is exactly the problem.

I think some people could say exactly the same thing from the opposite perspective. They can ignore a preacher, they can’t ignore a school principal who thinks it’s his personal duty to proselytize students, or a police officer or judge who lets his religion interfere with how he does his job.

These religious debates almost invariably arise because of the extension of government into zoos and schools and parks and other so-called public goods that would be better off in the hands of responsible private owners. Presumably, our collective objections toward Ganesha, crosses, sex education, etc. are inflamed because they are funded by our tax dollars.

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.
-Professor Bernardo de la Paz, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress

Ricardo:
In a history museum talking about the history of Spanish missionaries in California, on the other hand, displaying Christian symbols of some kind would be almost inevitable for educational purposes. I don’t think even the ACLU would ever have a problem with that.

Well, you would think they wouldn’t have a problem with historical references…

billo says:
Throwing people in jail, arresting them and dragging them into court, destroying their careers and abrogating their civil liberties is not just being “obnoxious.” I can ignore a loud mouthed antichristian bigot. I can’t ignore a cop with a gun or a pink slip. The fact that you can’t tell the difference is exactly the problem.

Cops are shooting people for being christian? Throwing them in Jail for being christian? What are you smoking and where can I get some.