{"id":662,"date":"2009-04-08T20:23:05","date_gmt":"2009-04-09T01:23:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/?p=662"},"modified":"2009-04-08T20:23:05","modified_gmt":"2009-04-09T01:23:05","slug":"fearmongering-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/08\/fearmongering-bigotry\/","title":{"rendered":"Fearmongering Bigotry?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got an email about a new commercial being aired by the <a title=\"National Organization for Marriage\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nationformarriage.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">National Organization for Marriage<\/a> (NOM) concerning a &#8220;storm&#8221; that&#8217;s brewing in this country. What is the storm? Same-sex marriage, of course. The commercial is just filled with nonsense, but attempts to convey a sense of dread about how same-sex marriage is taking over the country and taking away the rights of our citizens.<\/p>\n<p>httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Wp76ly2_NoI<\/p>\n<p>Some quotes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;Some who advocate for same-sex marriage have taken the issue far beyond same-sex couples.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;They want to bring the issue into my life.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My freedom will be taken away.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a California doctor who must choose between my faith and my job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m part of a New Jersey church group punished by the government because we can&#8217;t support same-sex marriage.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Those advocates want to change the way <strong>I<\/strong> live.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It goes on, but then turns brighter by saying that a &#8220;rainbow coalition&#8221; (oh, the irony!) is &#8220;coming together in love to protect marriage.&#8221; Then it invites viewers to visit the website and join them (the bigotry there is even <strong>more<\/strong> prominent, enhanced by the vehement denials of bigotry).<\/p>\n<p>At the bottom of the video, there&#8217;s s line of text stating &#8220;The stories these actors are telling are based on real incidents.&#8221; No detail is provided, however, so we don&#8217;t know what happened to the woman who says, &#8220;My freedom will be taken away&#8221; or how the New Jersey church group was &#8220;punished by the government.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Regardless of each story&#8217;s details, the one common thread is that all of them are born of religion-based bigotry. Sadly, in a country where about a third of the people see evolution as false, it&#8217;s not all that surprising. Religious belief removes the motivation for scientific inquiry and curiousity in the same way that it accentuates and validates bigotry and intolerance. Any time a claim is made of &#8220;absolute truth,&#8221; you can be somewhat sure that &#8220;truth&#8221; is nowhere to be found. Any time a claim is made of &#8220;objective morality,&#8221; you can be somewhat sure that &#8220;morality&#8221; is the last thing you&#8217;ll find.<\/p>\n<p>The same-sex marriage opponents are the worker bees of religious dogma. If the ancient holy book claims that same-sex marriage is wrong, then same-sex marriage must be the evil storm of Satan trying to overtake and destroy this nation &#8220;under God.&#8221; Oh&#8230; and no shellfish.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe they&#8217;d better form a rainbow coalition.<\/p>\n<p>*snicker*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got an email about a new commercial being aired by the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) concerning a &#8220;storm&#8221; that&#8217;s brewing in this country. What is the storm? Same-sex marriage, of course. The commercial is just filled with nonsense, but attempts to convey a sense of dread about how same-sex marriage is taking &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/08\/fearmongering-bigotry\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Fearmongering Bigotry?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,18],"tags":[114,370,443,551,709,768],"class_list":["post-662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-morality","category-politics","tag-bigotry","tag-gay-marriage","tag-intolerance","tag-national-organization-for-marriage","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-storm","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalitynow.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}