re: #291 HappyWarrior

I didn’t say they deserve a pass or even respect. I said individuals shouldn’t be suspect simply because of their group. You’ve never been threatened by a Muslim. That’s great. People in Boston had their friends and loved ones killed by them and I wouldn’t give them a free pass to hate all Muslims because of it just as I think your and Ziggy’s bad experience with Evangelicals shouldn’t give you both a pass to hate all Evangelicals. You don’t have to like or even respect them but my point is I don’t think it’s right to assume Evangelical= enemy anymore than Muslim or nonbeliever does and frankly Klys especially has been working hard to get Ziggy to see people as individuals rather than their group label for sometime now.

I didn’t say Evangelical=Enemy. I didn’t say I hated them either. If an Evangelical simply came up to me and started conversation or something, I would never know they were an Evangelical unless they told me (or started preaching to me, or threatened me, &c). But once they tell me their ideology, I have to frame it in terms of where that ideology leads.

Evangelicals in this country have a long history of killing people they don’t like. (African-Americans, abortion proponents, Muslims, Catholics, pretty much anyone not in the subset “Evangelical.”) While I can’t say what percentage would take my rights away from me, I have President Geo. HW Bush’s remark “I don’t think atheists can be patriotic nor should be citizens.” (While I was in the Navy not being patriotic.)

If an Evangelical president can say that about a significant fraction of the Armed Forces (and by extension though he didn’t say it, Gold Star Families), how many of his followers think the same?

Dinner’s up, gotta go.