Christian right just wants tolerance? Pull the other one
Posted on 03. Feb, 2010 by OHC in International, United Kingdom
ConservativeHome religious contributor Melanchthon posted last night a so-called ‘Plea for Tolerance’, claiming that Christians were persecuted and looked down upon in political life.
We understand that the rest of you will never really accept our twisted, unnatural beliefs and practices – that would be too much to ask. We seek only toleration. Now, up until recently, many of you have been prepared to tolerate us in your own way. You may have quailed at really granting us full freedom to hit our children or deny abortions or contraception to our youths, but by and large, provided we kept our beliefs and practices personal, in the privacy of our homes, churches, and consciences, up to a point you were content to leave us alone.
The problem with the religious right is that they are not content to keep themselves to their own homes, churches, and consciences. They, by definition, try to fuse religion with politics.
Conservatives ought to be fine with parents telling their kids not to have abortions. But demanding legislation for other people’ kids is not fine. I’ll leave aside the ‘Christians just want full freedom to hit their children’ argument.
Particularly, they lose the right to call themselves private or persecuted when they demand legislation by virtue of this being a ‘Christian country’ or ‘Judeo-Christian morality’. They are public and proud of it, and by institutionalising their beliefs, they discriminate against other people.
And that would be fine if we believed that the state is the right venue for that, but we don’t. Indeed, the ‘religious right’, as believers in the state imposing their values on the rest of society, are not really right wing at all. They are left wing and centralising statists. As such, they deserve to be left behind.