What Christians and apologists have to say here doesn’t matter to me.
It’s their actions that matter. It’s the fact that someone is being shunned and treated with hatred by people they trusted on the basis of outright hypocrisy that matters. And, as long as churches are tax-exempt (thus saving them tens of billions of dollars that the rest of us make up for with our own taxes) and receiving tens of billions due to Obama and Bush’s ‘faith-based initiatives’, I and any American have every right to complain about their discrimination of gay people
Look at the Phelps crowd. They ARE your people. Christians were perfectly content to ignore their activities until they started targeting military funerals. They were out there picketing and spreading hatred long before then, and as we’ve seen, Christians are perfectly accepting of hatred as long as the subject of that hatred is one of their pet opponents.
Folks like to ask why we atheists give a damn about stories like this. Why do we care? It’s simple. Christians are not content to keep their hatred within their own homes and churches. They are demanding that their personal religious beliefs be enshrined in secular laws that affect all, including the 24% of Americans who are not Christians. (Remember DADT, pro-bullying laws, sodomy laws, the ‘gay panic’ defense, and pro-discrimination laws?)
Frankly, if Christians acted like Christ, we atheists wouldn’t have to work so hard to counteract the damage the church causes in this country, and heck, the Church itself would be the better for it.
There’s nothing like a radical conservative display of zealotry to remind us of our successes in the fight for equality, all in just the last ten years:
Lawrence vs Texas
Perry vs Swarzenegger
Hate Crimes law passed at the federal level
DOMA no longer being defended.
Six states with legal gay marriage (And Washington, D.C.)
Several other states have civil unions and/or recognize gay marriages from other states.
DADT repealed and military integrated
Record support for gay marriage at a national level.
Next up on the plate: ENDA
Say what you will folks, but the train is rolling on this issue and in thirty years these jesus freaks will all look every bit as silly as the folks who protested integration in the fifties.