(no subject)

[serene]

Can't get Andrea Yates out of my head. Before today, I didn't know who she was.

If you know who she is, does she haunt you?

If you don't know who she is, don't google her unless you're up for a serious downer with a dose of feminist rage.

Comments

[someotherguy.livejournal.com]

I would argue that they aren't living according to Biblical principles -- after all, they argue that I'm not. I've been told so. Often. They pray for me. : )

You're all living according to Biblical principles. Either side, any side, can point to a passage that supports what they want to be true. That's kind of the problem. A good person who makes a point of living according to Biblical principles, and who announces that fact, validates the Bible which can then be used by bad people to support their position.

The second greatest commandment, Jesus said, was to love your neighbor as yourself.

Unless you use a different Gospel, in which case he says don't murder, don't steal, and honor your parents are the important commandments, but really you have to give everything to the poor.

In the Gospel you quote, the greatest commandment is to love God, and that's where the fundies have you. First of all you gotta do what God wants, which the Bible says includes all kind of horrible things, then only in the absence of specific instruction otherwise do you fall back to loving your neighbor.

Then there's the whole issue of who is meant by your neighbor. According to the commandments, your neighbor is the guy (as in male) who's wife and slaves you're not supposed to covet. Which kind of sucks if your the wife and your husband is pushing you to quit your meds and have another kid.

Maybe it's a lack of imagination, I fail to see how anyone who claims much of what a lot of the fundamentalists claim as their beliefs can be said to be doing that.

Really? Because about 20 seconds in a fundy chat room would tell you that they're claiming to save gays, liberals and uppity women from the fires of hell that they so richly deserve by forcing them to mend their ways.

Part of the reason this matters is that their particular brand of Real Christianity (TM) is presented often in the media as being de facto being the sole brand of Real Christianity. The rest of us are often yelled at for not separating ourselves from them, for not condemning them loudly and strongly enough. (I had an exchange about this earlier this week on another blog.)

This is kind of complicated, so I'm not sure I can make it come across right, but I'm going to try.

The problem, I think, is that you wait for one of these ass-hats to do something utterly outrageous, then you disown them as Not Real Christians who don't live according to Biblical Principles.

You don't protest their day-to-day asshattery, and more important you absolutely refuse to acknowledge that their asshattery has a Biblical basis.

That means that a month from now when the furor has died down the next asshat can still go to the Bible, pull out some passage that says women should submit to their husbands, and go along their merry, sexist way.

My comment about not seeing them as being true Christians was really sort of a stream of consciousness throw away comment. I didn't dream it would engender this much discussion.

Because in your mind, Christianity is Good, ergo anything that isn't good isn't Christianity but some sort of fake Christianity. This is extremely frustrating and more than a little insulting to those of us who aren't Christians and have to deal with pro-Christian bias on a daily basis.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

You don't protest their day-to-day asshattery

Whatever your other points, this is absolutely not true. I scream about their asshattery all the time. I don't view them as irredeemable, true, but I do decry what they do and say. Frequently.

You do not know me. You don't know how I am in real life, you don't know the decisions I make, the stands I take on issues. For you to make this assertion is nothing short of insulting.

I am not going to continue a conversation in which I am insulted. You may choose to belittle me, but I really have other things to do with my time than stand around defend myself.

[someotherguy.livejournal.com]

Whatever your other points, this is absolutely not true. I scream about their asshattery all the time. I don't view them as irredeemable, true, but I do decry what they do and say. Frequently.

Good for you, but that's hardly typical of the plural "you".

You do not know me. You don't know how I am in real life, you don't know the decisions I make, the stands I take on issues. For you to make this assertion is nothing short of insulting.

That's true. All I know about you is that you came in here and dismissed an action that is very typical of a certain type of Christian as being non-Christian, and in so doing casually insulted every non-Christian on the planet. My apologies for assuming that your words here, your defense of Christianity as exclusively good and pure, and your dismissal of bad people as non-Christian in some way represented your actual views.

I am not going to continue a conversation in which I am insulted. You may choose to belittle me, but I really have other things to do with my time than stand around defend myself.

And so you walk away secure in the knowledge that your status as a Christian means you don't have to defend yourself, yet still wreathed in the warm glow of martyrdom. Sweet deal.