16 February 2014

Is "bigot" the new "sinner"?

It seems that, at one point in history, you could tell someone that they were doing something wrong and they'd either agree, try to justify their behavior, or would apologize and quit doing it.  It seems that, anymore, you can't tell someone that they're doing something wrong.

For example: if you say that sex outside of marriage is wrong, then prepare to be called a prude, archaic, outdated, judgmental, and so on.  Now if you say that homosexual sex is wrong, then dear Lord are you going to be labeled: homophobe, bigot, intolerant, hateful, Nazi, KKK, and many other awesomely negative things. 

The irony here is that those who disagree with me (when I say that homosexual sex is wrong) are often the ones to escalate the hateful rhetoric.  I'm just saying what the Bible says pretty clearly.  It doesn't mean I hate gays; just because hetero sex outside of marriage is wrong doesn't mean I hate those people either.  They all need Jesus.  This makes me a hateful bigot, so they say. 

Does anyone else here see the irony, the hypocrisy behind saying, "you can't label people, you label-label, labeled, label label LABEL!"  I call someone a sinner (we are all sinners, by the way).  They call me a bigot.  I believe that "bigot" is the equivalent of "sinner" for the nonreligious. 

How does this advance the discussion?  How does this make them tolerant, open-minded, and accepting of all?  Because it's not tolerant (b/c they don't really want opposing views to exist), it's not open-minded (b/c they're not really interested in hearing the other side), and it's not accepting of all (b/c anyone who disagrees with them is evil, even though there really is no right and wrong, so they say).  This seems to be where decades of debate has led: if a gay person disagrees with me, I can respect that.  If I disagree with a gay person, I'm a hate-filled bigot.  Our society doesn't let you say anything is "wrong" anymore, except for saying that it's wrong to say that something is wrong.

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