I read that essay and thought oh christ, more of this stuff. Frankly, it is very offensive -- I was being polite before. I find it offensive when an ancient, complex and shaded belief system is portrayed as some cartoonish cult that worships statues. Yeah, that's us. Us and the cargo cults. We think everything is God, when we aren't buggering altar boys, that is. I don't want to belittle the pedophilia issue but to bring it up as an indictment of the entire belief system is akin to saying that the Baptist faith is obviously morally bankrupt, because George Bush belongs to it. It is a fallacy.
Nor was the initial essay framed in terms of questions, as in, I have heard this... it was *telling* me that a faith the writer clearly does not understand is ignorant and sinful and a "falling away" from some truth that the writer's church claims to know. I don't want to go fishing in the text for examples -- really, reading it made me feel unclean -- but no, I would say hate speech is not too strong a word.
I think the important thing though is that he was listening to Will, and so did not deserve the accusation of narrow-mindedness. He did not mean to be offensive and was willing to take another look at what he had posted.
Dana
> Tired of hearing it I can understand, but "Hate Speech"?
>
> I am not saying you don't have a right to feel that way, but I don't
> see how the bullet points, in answer to a direct question by others on
> the list, can be construed as hateful.
>
> At the very most, it may have been ignorant, but that deserves
> education, not anger.
>
> IMHO, Will took the right approach and added to our collective
> knowledge.
>
> Jerry Johnson
>
> >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/05/04 01:17PM >>>
> I find the whole thing unfortunate. I actually agree with everything
> Mike Haggerty said. I too get extremely tired of hearing that stuff
> and even calling it hate language was not much of a reach. I suppose
> that I should mention that I was raised as a very traditional Catholic
> and still occasionally attend mass. Will Bowen did a pretty good job
> of refuting the points.
>
> Ben appeared to be trying to hold a reasonable discussion and should
> not have been slapped down for that I don't guess...
>
> Dana
>
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