Undeniably awful: Lobbyists for Christian privilege issue fallacious report

[beam me up scottie]

Undeniably awful: Lobbyists for Christian privilege issue fallacious ‘report’
By Andrew L. Seidel
Staff Attorney
Freedom From Religion Foundation

The defenders of Christian privilege are peddling the false narrative that Christians are persecuted in the United States. Again.

Every year, Liberty Institute–which has restyled itself “First Liberty” for ironic reasons we’ll get to later–issues a report on hostility against Christians in America. The report is entitled, with no hint of satire or shame, “Undeniable” and it is full of mischaracterizations and specious claims. It is less a report and more a long list of press releases copied and pasted into a PDF. It is certainly not the scholarly proof of Christian persecution that it purports to be.

Their methodology for past reports is truly absurd. They run a cumulative total of all "hostile" events, but the Institute goes out of its way to make the cumulative total appear to be the annual total. In reality, it appears as though every year the new report just adds to the previous year’s report while allowing everyone to believe all those so-called attacks happened in that year. For example, the report cites the ACLU’s case against Birmingham, Ky., for its illegal nativity scene–which the ACLU won at the federal circuit court level because it was unconstitutional–as evidence that attacks on religion “in the public arena” are increasing. But the court decided that case in 1986, thirty years ago.

Put another way, the Institute is double-, triple-, and quadruple-counting these “attacks.”

The “report’s” examples of hostility are drivel, if past reports are anything to go by.

The 1986 ACLU case mentioned above proves this point nicely. The nativity was on government property and was illegal. A court order removing something illegal is not hostility. That’s like arguing that a court forcing a spray-paint happy teen to scrub off his graffiti shows hostility to the criminal. The Supreme Court has essentially laughed off this argument. Justice William Brennan put it rather nicely:

"It should be unnecessary to observe that [a curative] holding does not declare that the First Amendment manifests hostility to the practice or teaching of religion, but only applies prohibitions incorporated in the Bill of Rights in recognition of historic needs shared by Church and State alike." Sch. Dist. of Abington Twp. v. Schempp, 374 U.S. 203, 232 (1963) (Brennan, J., concurring)

The Institute also claims that mockery amounts to hostility. I kid you not.

Much of what the report labels “hostility” is actually fairness. For example,the report mentions several cases during which FFRF stopped unlawful church bulletin discounts (i.e., “Bring in your church bulletin and get 10% off your meal”). Those discounts privilege customers based on their religion and force the nonreligious to pay a higher price. Halting that disparate treatment is equality, not hostility. The Institute can’t grasp the difference because Christian privilege is so entrenched that its removal feels like an attack. But it should get used to the feeling because the time of Christian privilege in this country is at an end.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/freethoughtnow/undeniably-awful-lobbyists-for-christian-privilege-issue-fallacious-report/

"The Institute also claims that mockery amounts to hostility. I kid you not."

Now where have we heard that before?






*Posted in the Atheists and Agnostics group: A place where atheists and agnostics can engage in frank discussions about the effects of religion on politics