Day: April 10, 2006
Poll: Another 3 Points Down for Bush in ABC/WaPo Survey, Another New Low — But Still Astronomically High for Such a Bad President
The biggest risk to our national security is not terrorists (although terrorism is a close second). It is the collective delusion of one-third of our fellow citizens that President Bush is doing a good job:
The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll… found that 38 percent of the public approved of the job Bush is doing as president, down 3 percentage points in the past month and his worst showing in Post-ABC polling on this key measure since he became president. Sixty percent disapproved of his performance.
Quote du Jour
In times of disorder and stress, the fanatics play a prominent role; in times of peace, the critics. Both are shot after the revolution.
— Edmund Wilson
Christians Sue for the Right to Hate
If I were a Christian, I don’t know if I could stand the mud that Christ’s message is being dragged through:
There is a growing campaign among Christians to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment.
Ruth Malhotra went to court last month for the right to be intolerant.
Malhotra says her Christian faith compels her to speak out against homosexuality. But the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she’s a senior, bans speech that puts down others because of their sexual orientation.
Malhotra sees that as an unacceptable infringement on her right to religious expression. So she’s demanding that Georgia Tech revoke its tolerance policy.
With her lawsuit, the 22-year-old student joins a growing campaign to force public schools, state colleges and private workplaces to eliminate policies protecting gays and lesbians from harassment. The religious right aims to overturn a broad range of common tolerance programs: diversity training that promotes acceptance of gays and lesbians, speech codes that ban harsh words against homosexuality, anti-discrimination policies that require college clubs to open their membership to all.
The Rev. Rick Scarborough, a leading evangelical, frames the movement as the civil rights struggle of the 21st century. “Christians,” he said, “are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.”
In that spirit, the Christian Legal Society, an association of judges and lawyers, has formed a national group to challenge tolerance policies in federal court. Several nonprofit law firms — backed by major ministries such as Focus on the Family and Campus Crusade for Christ — already take on such cases for free.
If you’re a Christian reading this, you’re probably thinking, “Well, these are extremist Christians. They’ve got nothing to do with me.
As an outsider looking in, I see them as part of your group that is besmirching you all. Fundamentalist Christians are making your religion synonymous with hatred, just as fundamentalist Muslims are making Islam synonymous with terror.
Moderate and liberal Muslims have been just as silent about the disgracing of Islam as moderate and liberal Christians have been silent on the degradation of Christ’s message of love, tolerance and avoiding judging the sins of others.
Christianity has a martyrdom ethos that is bred to bone from the birth — it was part of the training of 1st Century Christians to prepare for death in the Roman arenas. Today, 1900 years later, when an outside group tries to pressure a Christian group, it fulfills the Christian group’s need to be persecuted. The only way these modern-day Pharisees can be stopped is by saner voices from within their religion.
Something like 80 percent of Americans (250,000,000) claim to be Christians, but evangelicals only make up 10 percent of the country or 30,000,000. That’s about eight non-evangelicals to one.
Why the silence? If fundamentalists are so outnumbered by “real” Christians, why is it that we only hear from the taliban wing?
It boils down to this, as trite as it may sound: What would Jesus do?
