I know the two readers I have are probably also fans of Amanda Marcotte and the crew at Pandagon, but I think she’s right on about why Bill Donohue gets all up in arms whenever there’s corn in his shit:
It’s obvious that [Donohue] thinks that “religious freedom” means “the right to demand a) the right to completely define an entire religion for yourself and eject anyone who has different views than yours and b) the right never, ever to be mocked, criticized, or looked at funny”.
Indeed. And judging by his reaction to various and sundry perceived insults of his professed faith, the slightest criticism or mere examination of his beliefs is sufficient cause to be executed for heresy. Or, as Lindsay Beyerstein put it:
Somewhere there’s an Inquisition missing its Inquisitor.
There used to be a tradition in this country that said “I may not like what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” That’s the spirit that I was raised to believe in, and one of the things that made me proud to be an American. It’s why we allow neo-Nazis to publicly display their stupidity and regressive extremism — not because we agree with their views, but because we believe in a marketplace of free ideas where We The People™ can be trusted to determine for ourselves which speech is intellectually and morally acceptable and which is repugnant and deserving of ridicule or protest. But that just won’t do for people who think as Bill Donohue does.
Amanda suggests a possible reason for this:
Without trying to repeat much of what Jesse said, the real discrimination only occurs if someone is punished by job loss for speaking out against religion. In my case, there was a vulgarity aspect that’s kind of undeniable. But PZ didn’t say anything that wasn’t basically polite, if humorous. More tellingly that that is the fact the ire transferred neatly from the kid who innocently took a wafer out of mass in the first place. Since that kid was supposedly the original “criminal”, why is it that PZ has eclipsed him in focus just by issuing supportive statements? (bolding mine, emphasis in original)
Why, indeed. Lindsay makes the point more explicitly in her closing remarks:
The Catholic League claims to be a civil rights organization. Yet it consistently targets high-profile atheists like Amanda Marcotte and PZ Myers and attempts to get them fired. Draw you own conclusions.
And yet, the thinly-veiled attempt to remove atheists from polite public discourse isn’t the worst aspect of this whole debacle. Its the blatant projection. In his latest press release on the incident, Donohue whines that he himself is being persecuted for his stance:
Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has ‘declared a fatwa’ against him. He should know better—I don’t need others to do the fighting for me. I’m quite good at it myself. But he’d better be careful what he says, because if I get any death threats, it won’t be hard to connect the dots.
Donohue has even gone so far as to hide behind the skirts of an obscure Virginia pol (about 1400 miles from Myers’ stomping grounds in Morris, MN — very brave of him):
As a result of the hysteria that Myers’ ilk have promoted, at least one public official is taking it seriously. Thomas E. Foley is chairman of Virginia’s First Congressional District Republican Committee, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and one of two Republican at large nominees for Virginia’s Electoral College. His concern is for the safety of Catholics attending this year’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis, Myers’ backyard. Accordingly, Foley has asked the top GOP brass to provide additional security while in the Twin Cities so that Catholics can worship without fear of violence. Given the vitriol we have experienced for simply exercising our First Amendment right to freedom of speech, we support Foley’s request.
In light of the very real death threats that Dr. Myers and Webster Cook, the UCF student in question, have received since “Crackergate” began (two words: “holy hollowpoint“), in addition to the death threats that previous targets of Donohue’s stack-blowing episodes have garnered, Donohue’s pearl-clutching strikes me as absurdist theater at best, and blatant disingenuousness or shameless projection at worst. And to make matters worse for Donohue, it does an incredible insult and disservice to the Christian martyrs throughout history for him to compare blowback to his theocratic impulses to the very real suffering professing Christians endured in many of the places where they’ve been the demographic minority from Roman times to today.
And that, more than anything else, should nullify any credibility he might have.
