re: #995 mcmeador

Criticizing someone’s free doctrinal choices, whether they be political or religious, cannot be reasonably considered to be in the same class with demeaning their essential nature (racism, sexism, homophobia). In the first case, you are criticizing their willfully appropriated ideas; in the second, you are disparaging them as individual members of a genetically determined group that you dislike - that is, due to something over which (unlike politics or religion) they have no control. This is why we consider Muslims’ claims of racism to be laughably illegitimate; we know that they’re trying to tap into a grievance well that they cannot credibly claim.