The willful failure of these people to comprehend what freedom of religion really means, along with the founder's intentions in penning that into the constitution, is beyond idiotic.

What if the Mormons decided that their God has ordered them to murder Christians? Would Christians be violating the Mormon's freedom of religion by fleeing or defending themselves from slaughter? Do things like this not even occur to these people? What is wrong with their brains?

So you won't be dragged to any legal gay weddings in chains, Scott, we promise.

Dammit! Then what the Hell am I supposed to do with all these manacles the homosexual lobby asked me to pick up?

@1, I'm not sure what the psych diagnosis is, but there does seem to be a total blind spot for the Right Wing Authoritarian types. They seem to have an actual inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes, or to look at their own reasoning from the other side.

Like the legislators in Louisiana who voted for tax dollars to fund Christian schools, and then realized the same would have to apply to Muslim schools. They were actually surprised that this would be the case. It is an illness.

http://jezebel.com/5923898/republican-ho…

Talk about whiny victimhood... holy fuck.. .these outspoken religious Christian types sure bang the "we're being oppressed" gong louder than ever.

Yep, freedom means other people or in this case other churches are free to do stuff you don't like, such as perform wedding ceremonies for same-sex couples.

And is it just me or did this supergenius spell "Magna Carta" wrong? (checks) Nope, just a variation. Darn, that would've been fun.

Damnit. Now I want some pink jackboots.

Thank the non-existant gods for Doc Marten

http://www.amazon.com/Dr-Martens-Clemenc…

Trying to "make sense of"/decode/unwind the tortured and abused language people like that employ to turn the sky green and the grass blue is a waste of time.

Up is not down. In is not out. Being lectured at by an asshole like Lively is not participating in communication of ideas.

The only important thing to make of this is that Lively's opinion is outside the realm of God's Love and Christ's teachings. As a Quaker, I must respect that, like everyone else on the planet, our teachings tell us that we're all carrying a speck of God's Light within us, so he must have one, too.

But, if he's not going to use it, he should give it back.

I'm thinking of going old school and opening up a temple to Jupiter at Safeco field. On his most holy feast days (say, when the Angels are in town), I'd like to round up as many Christians as I can get my hands on and make them happy martyrs out in center field in front of the bleachers.

It's a good thing I have the first amendment on my side, protecting my God, I mean Jupiter, given religious freedoms.

The Magna Charta collapsed? Oh, wow! Was anybody hurt?

"The English Church" of 1215 was the Roman church. Henry VIII fixed that for you, not teh gehs.

I think it may be time to jump on the Fred Clark Bandwagon: Whenever Perkins is mentioned, he should be referred to with his formal name: The Liar Tony Perkins.

@3:

I'm not sure it's an "inability" so much as a flat-out refusal to put themselves in someone else's shoes. From their perspective, they believe not only in the obvious "rightness" of their position, but that it's been divinely handed down to them, so there's simply no point in looking at the argument from another position, which, by their circular reasoning, is automatically wrong.

It's probably a complete waste of time to respond to nonsense like this. Scott Lively is a Troll.

How come the worst homophobes have gay sounding names like Scott Lively?

@2, I'll be right over.

It's people like Lively that are driving others away from religion. So, keep it up, Lively! Oh, and btw, men who say that shit are hiding something.

"While gay people take pains to make a distinction between Christians and rightwing assholes like Lively who use Christianity as a cover for their bigotry."

Gay people may make a distinction but atheists do not. The bible makes it clear how christians feel, and I will not cut any of them a bit of slack until they renounce it.

If I wrote a book as full of evil as the bible and told people I lived my life by it they would lock me in a padded cell.

Now I really want a pair of pink jackboots. I love how it really confuses some people that I am a straight man and occasionally wear pink. When I broke my arm this year and had a pink cast for 6 weeks it caused at least a few people to call me "brave". WTF?

Also, Dan should totally lead a gay, pink uniformed army whose sole purpose it is to fill the pews of gay weddings with unwilling attendants. That would be so fucking entertaining.

@17 hello <--- atheist who DO make a distinction between "personal belief" and "rightwing asshole trying to force his beliefs down all our throats".

Dear Christian Right,

Don't worry. No one is trying to take away your legal right to be hateful and bitter. Seriously. Other people being happy does not infringe on your right to believe stupid things.

Love,
Pastanaut

@1 They're stuck in a pre-enlightenment view of morality (basically, viewing morality as absolute and arbitrarily dictated "by God" through whatever authority figure); that's why they can interpret "freedom of religion" to mean "freedom to tell everyone else what to do" without their heads exploding from the cognitive dissonance. It's no wonder people like Santorum claim that colleges are out to destroy the church. Conservative churches are about 400 years behind the secular intellectual tradition, and they'd like to keep it that way.

Once again I am thankful for god-bothering individuals, because they provide the greatest testimony for separation of church and state.

These wimps could use some real political oppression in their lives, to give them some perspective.

In the meantime they just sound like a spoiled 10-year-old crying that he's "oppressed" because his mommy is making him cut the crust off his OWN damn sandwich.

@17: Lenin, Stalin, and Mao made it clear how atheists feel, and I will not cut any of those genocidal tyrant wannabes a bit of slack until they renounce it.

Seriously, grow up, if you're going to start talking shit about the bible learn some history and put it into context, and stop being such a drama queen about issues you've invented. Yes, fiction written circa 1500 BC has characters who are slaves. What were you expecting, airplanes and telephones? And while I was being over the top in my first paragraph, the reality is that the human rights record of atheism over the last 100 years is horrific, so you might want to throw fewer stones around your glass house.

@21: You either didn't notice or just didn't care, but #17 makes it very clear that he's an atheist who interprets "freedom of religion" as "freedom to tell everyone else what to do." But he's one of you, so that's OK, I guess.

The (sad) reality is that trying to tell everyone else what to do is pretty normal human behavior and doesn't, in general, have anything much to do with religious or self-proclaimed "non-religious" identity.

@24 I'm about as hardcore an atheist as they come, and I don't paint all religious people with the same brush, nor do I think religion is inherently evil or useless.

No, I did not see @17's comment, but now that I've read it: I read it as saying that the Bible is ridiculous and people who believe in it deserve unrelenting criticism. But criticizing someone for their beliefs/actions is NOT the same as thinking you have a right to dictate how they live their lives. Right wing Christians don't just want the freedom to criticize gay people/whoever else they disapprove of, they want the power to turn their disapproval into legislation. So while I don't necessarily share 17's views (I don't go around telling people I think the Bible is stupid, e.g.), I think you're wrong that he or she is cut from the same cloth as Scott Lively. And, regardless of that, your implication that I'm some kind of hypocrite for failing to respond to 17 is irritating.

N.B. There are atheists out there who are hypocritical that way; you only have to look as far as your typical campus skeptics organization to find them. I find these people even more obnoxious than the likes of Scott Lively, because they're making atheists in general look bad.

Oh, and @17, you don't speak for all atheists. I do happen to think that there's a difference between reasonable religious people and fundamentalist crazies.

And here I thought that his point was that "religious liberty" means "the church can say any damn thing it wants, right up to and including saying that we should kill everyone who's a sinner".

@24, that first line is a load of crap. Lenin, Stalin, and Mao were both atheists and genocidal tyrants, but the two were unrelated. Unlike, say, the Crusades--in which the fighting was explicitly in the name of religion--these three guys did not commit their atrocities in the name of atheism.

I get so damn tired of that argument.

Why the Hell didn't anyone tell me about my "right to sodomy"? The way I see it, I'm owed years of back sodomy.

@28, the Crusades had more to do with preventing the large number of knights around at the time without a war to fight from tearing Western Europe apart fighting over bits of land here and there for petty lords and generally terrorizing the populace (knights, in general, weren't shining examples of chivalric heroism), as well as securing greater political power for the major players of the day (only some of whom were church officials), than it did with religion. The religious aspect of the campaign was largely pretext. Please, if you're going to cite history in your arguments, learn more than the paltry and all-too-often incorrect offerings you get in high school textbooks first.

tl;dr, the comparison is legit.

@25/26: Thank you. As a spiritual person who could easily be mistaken for an atheist most days (as I consider my beliefs my own private business), the fact that so many atheists out there seem to think I am nevertheless deserving of unrelenting criticism and mockery just for having the beliefs I do is really quite grating.

I just hope Scott gets what he so richly deserves, both in this life and the next. That would look something like what god had in store for Herod The Great.

The provision protecting the English Church stood "unshakable for 800 years"? Has this ignoramus never heard of Henry VIII?

@17 "Gay people make a difference but atheists do not"

Oh, because you know what all atheists think, right ? Or, because you think you, of all people, can dictate what a True Atheist is ?

There are fanatics and bigots everywhere, in religion and out of religion. And just like Salafists are not representative of Islam, despite their loudmouth claims to the countrary, just like Evangelicals or the Pope Motherfucker are not representative of Christianity, you are not representative of Atheists.

What do you think you are, to be able to define what others must think ? Anointed by a supreme Power, are you ?

If your marriage is weakened by someone else's, then you don't need legislation to strengthen it. You need marriage counseling.

For someone who's opposed to assplay, Scott Lively sure does a lot of talking out of his. That stuff about Magna Carta was a hoot!

@38: Because, generally speaking, one pretext is as good as another for the amoral bastards who spend their lives seeking power. I'm no fan of organized religion, but without the church some other pretext would have taken its place, the Crusades would still have happened (albeit probably under a different name), and we'd be no better off for it.

At the end of the day, the problem is rooted in allowing a few individuals (be they popes or presidents or CEOs) to control the lives of the rest of the population. Positions of power are most attractive to those who most desire power; thus do the most vicious and predatory members of our species continually rise to the top. The pretexts they use in that rise are only so much window dressing.