Bloodless Coup

What Religious Persecution?

Two issues come to mind as I'm reading the NYT story about Delay agreeing to be on the "Justice Sunday II" telecast (this is not a surprise, nor is it interesting). What first caught my eye was the second paragraph:

Mr. DeLay's planned appearance adds the imprimatur of a top Republican elected official to the event, which seeks to call attention to what its organizers say is the Supreme Court's hostility to Christianity and traditional families in its decisions about abortion, homosexuality and government support for religion. It will be broadcast to churches and Christian television stations and distributed as a video.(emphasis added)

Now, will someone please point me to the Supreme Court rulings that force people to have abortions? Or the ones that require people to be homosexual? And, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the Constitution supposed to explicitly require "hostility to...government support for religion", not favor any particular religion?

I'm going to say this clearly: The fact that people, as Christians, can't force the rest of the country to live like they do is not religious persecution, it's freedom of choice.

If you don't like abortion, then don't have one, or even go out and try to convince others not to have one. But outlawing abortion removes other peoples freedom of choice.

If you don't like homosexuals, then don't associate with them, or even try to convince them not to be. Don't pass laws codifying them as second class citizens. That removes their freedom of choice.

You're not being persecuted when other people do things you don't agree with or like. Persecution is being a Muslim in America on 9/12/01, or being one in Britain over the last month, being Buddhist in Tibet, or being a guy named "Jesus" in Palestine about 2000 years ago. That was some serious persecution. Being Christian in America today is as close to "anti-persecution" as you can imagine.

The second issue I have with the NYT story is further down:

In a televised prayer on Tuesday for Judge Roberts's confirmation...the television evangelist Pat Robertson asked his viewers to pray: "Take control, Lord! We ask for additional vacancies on the court." (A "prayer point" on the Web site for Mr. Robertson's "Supreme Court Freedom Project" includes "additional vacancies" as well.)

Now, that's just out of bounds. Completely wrong. In fact, that might just be some religious persecution. Even if it isn't, I'd argue that there is a double standard. If I was a fairly public person, and I put out a statement saying the country would be better off if a sudden vacancy were to open up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, I'd have the Secret Service all over my ass. Robertson calls for something very similar, but you don't see anyone investigating him. Oh, yeah, he's persecuted all right.

Posted by baltar at August 3, 2005 12:08 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics