Austin Cline writes one of the sharpest blogs on atheism on the vast internets. As Cline frequently delves into the lunacy that is the radical religious right, he writes a fair amount about GLBT equality. He put a timely piece up yesterday:
Militant Queers Demanding Too Much, Being Rude
When atheists are attacked for being “militant” and “rude” for their criticisms of religion, one of the arguments made by religious apologists is that atheists are driving away liberal believers who would otherwise be allies on a variety of political and social issues. Atheists’ criticism of religion is thus rejected not because it’s wrong or poorly reasoned, but rather because it supposedly has unacceptable political consequences.
Atheists can respond by pointing out how, in the past, activists in a variety of civil rights and progressive movements were attacked in exactly the same way: they were accused of being so rude and militant that moderates wouldn’t want to work with them. You don’t have to go into the past to find examples of this, though. There is currently a very good example of it in how “progressives” and “liberals” are treating advocates of gay equality for criticizing Obama because he hasn’t repealed “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” yet.
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So, gays should just accept being treated as inferiors, not criticize the system which insists on treating them as inferiors, and shouldn’t criticize a politician who presented himself as a friend of equality. Gays should apparently just be happy that this politician supports other causes important to them, sacrificing one of their most important interests for the sake of all the other concerns. Sound familiar?
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Liberal religious believers have proven themselves more than willing to dismiss atheists and atheists’ interests in the pursuit of political power. Liberal religious believers have even threatened to abandon science if atheists persist in being mean by criticizing religion, so those making such threats can’t be regarded as having a strong commitment either to science generally or the intellectual values behind science. Now, we can see that liberals — and this includes liberal religious believers — will also be happy to abandon gays and gay rights in the pursuit of political power as well.
Militant queers demanding too much and being rude? That’s not a problem; that’s a game plan!
There’s much more at Austin Cline’s blog.
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