Thursday, July 2, 2009

Against bigoted religious people, fight fire with fire.

Many of the standard arguments against giving us the "special privilege" of equality rely on religion. Bigots claiming religion as a justification (or a pretext) love to quote-mine their holy books to condemn us. We really need to grow a backbone and fight fire with fire.

I will draw examples from Christianity, but, of course, the same basic principle applies with regard to other religions. When women pastors rebuke us, we should point out what the Epistles say about the role of women in the church. When African-Americans denounce us, we should remind them of what the Old and New Testaments say about slavery.

When they say that those parts of the Bible need to be "interpreted correctly" or "were meant for the church back then," we should demand to know why they get to use that argument, but we do not. Actually, I have asked that question in several fora, and the only response that I have received is that all-purpose scathing rebuttal known as pretending not to have heard.

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