Thursday, May 17, 2007

If You Didn't Agree With Falwell, Then You're Guilty of Hate Speech?

I expected this, but not to the degree I'm seeing today. The fundies over at OneNewsNow (I'm so going to have to come up with a nickname for them, lol) have implied that anyone who disagreed with Rev. Falwell is guilty of hate speech. Here's an example...

"In some of these things I've been looking at he's being called a bigot;
[and] some people are absolutely sure that he's going straight to hell," she
says. That reaction, she continues, is to be expected. "I'm not surprised by
this level of vitriol because it seems like it's [coming from] all these people
who've just been very angry at him for holding up a standard to which they
couldn't achieve."

I hate to break it to these folks, but Falwell was a bigot, plain and simple. As for where his soul now resides...I wouldn't even hazard a guess. But what I'm most insulted about is the statement toward the end of that quote...that I'm angry with Falwell because I couldn't achieve his standard. What makes this author think that I or anyone else was ever interested in achieving his so-called standard?

If anyone is guilty of hate speech, it's the faction which holds Falwell and other similar religious icons up as models for the rest of us "lost sheep" to follow. To the fundies I say, you can't have it both ways. You simply can't call upon your rights to free speech while insisting that those who oppose you should be silenced...period.

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