Reply #16: There Are Separate Things Going On, Sir, That Should Not Be Conflated

[The Magistrate]

First, there is large group of political reactionaries attempting to move people to act against their own best economic and social interests by persuading them their problems are owing to the moral imperfections, mostly sexual behavior, of other people, and not to the systematic extraction of money from their pockets into those of the wealthy. In doing this, they brandish the standard of Christian faith. They proclaim it a religious duty to engage in hate speech and restrict the civil rights of many citizens by law, and protest that opposition to this, disagreement with it, any social or legal restriction on it, is interfering with their free exercise of religion, and flows only from bigotry against their religion.

Second, there is the question of genuine critique of a set of religious beliefs. People are entitled to form and hold their own beliefs on religious questions, and are under no obligation to agree with any particular body of beliefs, or to refrain from commenting on what seem to them the flaws in any body of religious beliefs. Persons who do give credit and adherence to a particular body of religious beliefs can have no reasonable expectation, and certainly have no right, to never meet with any expression of disagreement with that body of beliefs, even if that disagreement is so total as to constitute complete disrespect for their beliefs. Nor do such persons have the right to be taken seriously when they cry such expressions of disagreement with or distaste for their beliefs is simply an expression of bigotry. In the overwhelming proportion of instances, such expressions are far from bigotry: in my experience the most vigorous disdain for religious beliefs is found among people who are more familiar with the doctrines and practices they assail than the average person in the Sunday pews.