> But if they don't infringe on you personally --
>in the strongest sense of personally, which doesn't include offending your
>tender sensibilities through public display -- then you should respect their
>right to be happy and treat their symbols with a respect that comes out of
>that.
They can do whatever the hell they want, but when they want to pray to the dead guy on a stick at a basketball banquet, they can go fuck themselves. Not too long ago, St Pete city council members (or some local gov group) had a hissy fit because an atheist was going to lead the session that day.
This is par for the course. They have managed to become tolerant of the variety of religions, but tolerant of Atheists? Fugheddaboudit. You get the seething judgment -- of immorality -- beanth the surface of every christianist I've ever met. *Gasp* How can you be moral? How can you not desire spirtiaulity or have "spiritual yearnings."
Yearning? What the HELL is a spiritual yearning? Whatever.
This is all very nice, but this movement, toward suggesting that it's atheistis and agnositcs who are intolerant -- what the hell? Gimme a flippin' break. I think the things you write are marvelous and thoughtful, but the "tender sensibilities" stuff.... people don't get upset because someone's religious in public. They get upset because people want to pray to the same freakin' god in public. because they want to testify and, in doing so, render their judgements on everyone for not being religious and that kind of stuff.
Testifying in many circles is all about proselytizing. Proselytizing is NOT leaving other peole alone to believe what they believe.
Reglions and religious adherents have a long, long history of shameful intolerance and I see no reason to make an equivalence here.
I also think it is utterly impossible for religions -- as communities of identity practice, if you will -- to ever tolerate all that much, btw. By their very nature, an identity politics rests -- just as nationalism rests -- on an Other and its invariably a denigrated other. Reglions tend to deal with the sacred and profance and, by their very nature, are going to define the Other as aligned with the profane.
How you can possibly get around that ... beyond me.
A. Not A. And since they' _political_ the A/Not A is what's at stake. Get too many Not A's in positions of power and the identity of the A feels under attack.
As the pendulum swings.
Kelley
"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."
-- rwmartin