On the whole "being offensive" thing

In my Dawkins report, I discussed the way many Christians — primarily of the conservative stripe — can't stop whining about how horribly offensive the anti-religious rhetoric of the "new atheists" is, while intentionally ignoring, and even defending, far worse behavior from their own. A perfect example is this odious hypocrisy I read via Ed Brayton's blog.

Oklahoma representative Sally Kern, not surprisingly a sponsor of the anti-education bill HB 2211, recently had a sickening homophobic hate screed of hers recorded and made public. Is she apologizing? Of course not. She's a Christian, and morally superior to you, after all. So not only is she sticking to her guns, she's got the lunatics at the WorldNutDaily (to which I refuse to link, so go over to Ed's if you must immerse yourself in such filth) concocting a nice little conspiracy theory in her defense as well. Get a load of this. Here they are talking about how the thousands of gays and lesbians whom Kern gratuitously offended with her hate speech are the ones with the problem, and how they're victimizing her.

Basically, they're trying to silence her by threatening, intimidating, harassing and frightening her until she can't take any more abuse. No dialogue, no debate - just crush her.

Only a fundie would think there's something meriting "dialogue" and "debate" when some foul-tempered, hideous old cow (oh noes, the eebul afeist is calling her naaames!) rants about how gays and lesbians are more dangerous to America than terrorists, that they're bringing about the downfall of civilization, and who lies about non-existent "studies" that support such idiotic ideas.

From where I'm sitting, the entirety of the "dialogue" and "debate" hate speech like Kern's deserves can be summed up as, "You're a sick individual, a disgrace, and a vile liar, and would you please go crawl back under your rock, you ignorant useless bitch. Thank you. Signed, The Human Race."

That's their game. It's despicable, and utterly un-American.

While religious hate is just so praiseworthy and "pro-American," of course.

In a sense, Kern does a better job of validating Dawkins' points than Dawkins does. When Dawkins wrote in his essay "Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds"...

Religion changes, for people, the definition of good.... For non-religious people, the behavior of consenting adults in a private bedroom is the business of nobody else, and is not bad unless it causes suffering – for example by breaking up a happy family. But many religions arrogate to themselves the right to decide that certain kinds of sexual behavior, even if they do no harm to anyone, are wrong.... The following quotation from the Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg has become well known, but it is so devastatingly true that it is worth quoting again and again: “With or without [religion] you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”

...he was talking about you, Mustang Sally.

Now, back under the rock with you. Here, take your Bible. You'll need that, since you haven't got a brain.

Oh gee. Did I offend someone?