We’ve seen Michele Bachmann do it, because prohibitions in the military prevent one person from harassing another to convert. The actual regulation simply requires respect for those who don’t want to be converted to be able to say no, and have it respected. We each get to hold our own religious or spiritual beliefs (or agnostic or atheist), and we don’t get to force them on others.
This is a problem for the religious right who tend to take very seriously the requirement of their faith to convert others. Those who are less extreme in their religion tend to do better at recognizing and understanding acceptable boundaries. Like sex, when it comes to religion and another person, we have the right to say NO. That doesn’t make the other person a victim because you don’t want to be proselytized, any more than someone who wants sex and is turned down is a victim.
But as they did with anecdotal stories in the lege debate, like the claim about county clerks who quit rather than compromise their beliefs in issuing same sex marriage certificates because of their religion. Here is the thing; if issuing marriage certificates to everyone who is legally qualified is the job description, no individual petty bureaucrat gets to add additional restrictions of their own, just because they want to — even if the reason they want to do so is religious. If you don’t want to do that job that way, then you should quit; but you are not a victim of religious persecution. You might very well be a victim of your own intolerance, but that is your choice not persecution.
The right promotes this crap, and they don’t mind lying to do so. Sadly the facts never seem to matter to the right, and “thou shalt not fact check ” if it could show them wrong seems to be their 11th Commandment, which they follow enthusiastically. And the related 12 Commandment is “Thou shalt make stuff up”.
Case in point from Right Wing Watch:
Truth in Action Ministries Pushes Fake Story of Athlete Supposedly Punished for Religious Expression
It apparently doesn’t matter that a Texas student athlete who had claimed he and his team were disqualified from a race over a religious gesture recanted his allegations and admitted that he made it all up, as it appears that Religious Right groups intend to pursue the story anyway.
The debunked accusation, promoted by Fox News and even Gov. Rick Perry, was featured as the top story on Liberty Counsel’s radio show Faith & Freedom even after the student and his father both acknowledged that the disqualification had nothing to do with religious expression.
Today, Truth In Action Ministries today is promoting the fabricated case as well, with Newcombe citing the fictitious account to warn of the imminent threats to the freedoms of religion and speech.
Another example of why we need to act, including legislate, on fact not on religious belief. Because seriously, they will believe anything that is self serving, true or not.
