This is the thing.
You’re not really interested in “religious liberty.” That you have. You can gather together in your pointy little houses and preach anything you want to one another. Joshua stopping the rotation of the Earth, for trivial reasons? Gotcha. Ritual cannibalism, with wine? Absolutely. The most enjoyable physical activity we have being something we should be ashamed of? Why not? God running a masochist Disneyland where you can’t get out? Absolutely. Flying Spaghetti Monsters? Extraterrestrials living in our bodies? If you must.
In countries which don’t have religious liberty, you would not be able to have any of this. The army would enter your place of worship and cart you away, on principle. You could be tortured at length for not believing whatever they think you should believe. Here, you can believe in anything you want, you can preach at length to anybody who believes the same thing, you can make a pest of yourself to people who don’t, you can write books full of nonsense syllabification saying the multi-eyed goat is coming and you can make millions of dollars doing so.
That is religious liberty. That’s not what you want. Stop pretending it’s what you want. What you want is the freedom to make other people feel like shit for not feeling or acting the precise same way you do.
When gay kids are beaten up in school and you say that anti-bullying policies infringe on your religious freedom, the problem is not that you can’t believe homosexuality is wrong, but that your kid gets punished for making Johnny so miserable that he kills himself.
When you say that you won’t let that woman get birth control pills, that in fact she doesn’t even want for birth control in some cases but wants instead to regulate excessive blood loss during menstruation, the problem is not that you can’t believe that she’s an icky person for having so much sex but that you want to be able to righteously refuse her and make yourself feel better.
When you want to protest over a TV show whose main characters are not exactly the same kind of person you are, the problem is not that you don’t like the show or can’t just switch to another channel but that you object to anybody being able to see it.
When you fire somebody for not living according to the premises of your religion, it’s not that they’re busily having sodomy and worshipping the devil on the photocopier, it’s that you like punishing people who are not exactly like you.
The problem is not that there are people living on your street, in your neighborhood, in your city, in your country and in the world whose private lives are completely different than yours; it’s that this drives you crazy.
The problem is not that you can’t believe what you want to believe. I come from a religion which teaches us not to eat bacon. (A rule I break, by the way, despite having once had my life saved, literally saved, by a pig; yes.) I know that some of my co-religionists are quite serious about this. They are free not to eat bacon. They do not enter restaurants and point the holy finger of shame at people not of our religion who they see eating bacon. It is difference between electing not to eat pig, and being one.
You are free to believe that certain things are sins, and to refrain from them yourself. You are free to advance this premise and to teach it to your children. You are free to write books and make speeches proclaiming it at the top of your lungs. That is all freedom of religion. Where wanting freedom of religion becomes wanting the freedom to bully is where you object to the people who believe otherwise living in any state other than shame and fear, where you think criticism of any damn thing you choose to do to them, from refusing them basic services to crucifying them on chain-link fences, is part of this contract. It is not. It is you taking more pleasure in the freedom to shun and torment and inconvenience than you do in the freedom to believe. It is you, to use a metaphor so many of you seem to treasure like a beloved puppy, shoving your beliefs down everybody’s throats.
You are not being oppressed if you are denied the joy of oppressing others.
If you need that joy in order to feel holy, then get used to disappointment.
The rest of us have had more than enough of your bullying.
Comment By: Drew Bittner
June 29th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
It’s never been about religious liberty–it’s about having the freedom to persecute others under the guise of religion. I wish they’d obliterate that nonexistent “right.”
Comment By: David Vineyard
June 29th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
It’s repression, not liberty that most religions are interested in. My way or the highway.
God gave man free will and religion has been repressing it ever since. The Founding Fathers feared religion, not embraced it. They feared the Catholic Church and the Church of England and wanted government free of them, not religion free of government.
Religion is battling for the right to control us, to repress us, and to deny us our nature so we conform to their narrow simplistic view of the world, not because they fear those who are different, but because they fear their own humanity.
Comment By: Adam-Troy Castro
June 29th, 2015 at 12:18 pm
http://churchandstate.org.uk/2014/10/cardinal-says-gay-couples-shouldnt-be-invited-to-family-gatherings-if-children-are-present/
Comment By: Connie Collins
June 29th, 2015 at 2:17 pm
Surely he means clergy shouldn’t be invited? They have a worse track record.
Comment By: Michaele Jordan
June 30th, 2015 at 1:05 am
Unfortunately that’s always been what religious liberty meant. When the Puritans came to this country seeking ‘religious liberty’ they were fleeing a country that already had the highest standard of religious liberty in the known world. They considered themselves persecuted because the police objected to their beating up ‘Papists’ or ‘unbelievers’. So they came here and passed laws permitting themselves to do that.
Comment By: Tim Lieder
November 3rd, 2015 at 10:17 am
The argument is aimed at cultural pluralists to trip them up.
Comment By: Ellen Cameron
November 3rd, 2015 at 11:59 am
As a person of faith (the exact flavor is irrelevant), I find myself in *full agreement* with Mr. Castro’s premise (although I might have refrained from the “pointy little houses” remark). “Freedom of religion” means that one is free to practice one’s form of worship. It does NOT mean that one is free to force others to practice that same form, no matter what they may think. How would that be different from the “Sharia law!” sensationalism that the ultra-right gets so heated about? It’s sad that so many who claim religious rights are so reluctant to grant those same rights — and yes, that *does* include the right to have no religion at all — to other people, and that the word “hypocrisy” is, to them, just a bunch of letters in the dictionary.
Comment By: Vera Nazarov
November 3rd, 2015 at 2:18 pm
Awesome! Shared! =)
Comment By: Jay Cuasay
November 3rd, 2015 at 3:18 pm
I work in a church, but I’ve always been fond of a line from the movie Angel Heart: “Religion is a dung heap. Everyone gets up on their own pile and starts shouting about somebody else’s.”
On my good days, I try not to be that guy.
Comment By: Martha Fletcher
November 3rd, 2015 at 4:17 pm
Bingo!
Comment By: Fen Needwood
November 3rd, 2015 at 4:17 pm
“Thatâs not what you want. Stop pretending – “. You first, idiot. You don’t have the slightest concept of what religious liberty actually means, you don’t even understand the issue enough to represent the other side fairly.
Comment By: Fen
November 3rd, 2015 at 4:02 pm
“Stop pretending – ”
You first, idiot. You don’t understand what religious liberty is, you don’t even understand the issue enough to represent the other side fairly. All you are about is providing cover for your anti-religious bigotry. So how about you “stop pretending”. Hater.
“Both morals and sound policy require that the state should not violate the conscience of the individual. All our history gives confirmation to the view that liberty of conscience has a moral and social value which makes it worthy of preservation at the hands of the state. So deep in its significance and vital, indeed, is it to the integrity of man’s moral and spiritual nature that nothing short of the self-preservation of the state should warrant its violation; and it may well be questioned whether the state which preserves its life by a settled policy of violation of the conscience of the individual will not in fact ultimately lose it by the process.” – Chief Justice Harlan Stone
Comment By: Fen Needwood
November 3rd, 2015 at 5:17 pm
“Both morals and sound policy require that the state should not violate the conscience of the individual. All our history gives confirmation to the view that liberty of conscience has a moral and social value which makes it worthy of preservation at the hands of the state. So deep in its significance and vital, indeed, is it to the integrity of man’s moral and spiritual nature that nothing short of the self-preservation of the state should warrant its violation; and it may well be questioned whether the state which preserves its life by a settled policy of violation of the conscience of the individual will not in fact ultimately lose it by the process.” – Chief Justice Harlan Stone
Comment By: Doc Arkham
November 3rd, 2015 at 6:17 pm
“You first, idiot. […] you don’t even understand the issue enough to represent the other side fairly.”
Apparently. It seems the other side is actually represented by people who begin by calling people they disagree with idiots.
Comment By: Gale Mead
June 29th, 2016 at 6:08 pm
Now I really want, in fact *need* to hear the story of the pig who saved your life.