Jane Says

Just read it:

Leftist Christians, like Lamott, are supposed to be "tolerant", which means, I suppose, that they aren't supposed to offend "anti-choice" Christians with the intensity of their principles. But in my experience, what pro-choice women are supposed to "tolerate" is the proclaimed right of anti-choice Christians to tell them what to do with their reproductive lives, their bodies, their families, and their birth control choices. Where does "tolerance" enter in here? Tolerance is about agreeing to disagree. Anti-choice and anti-abortion activism is not about agreeing to disagree, it is about social control.

[...]

When Christians talk about secular Americans being "tolerant" of Christian beliefs, they are misusing the word. What conservative Christians want is not toleration, but social control. Toleration takes place between two people who know one another, and is a feature of personal relationships. Social control is about who gets the power to dictate policy and law. Christians like Mark Joseph sometimes play the "tolerance" card as a way to present themselves as a disempowered group, but what it is about them that is disempowered is their ability to tell the rest of us what to do. And most of the rules they want us to follow are abstract--rules about how men and women should relate, rules about what families should look like, rules about what people should learn. The program, for Christian conservatives, is not essentially about faith or morality--those are elements in a larger program. The larger program is enforcing conformity. What's the real goal? Well, no doubt it is money and power--have you seen how wealthy the Pope is? Of Pat Robertson? Or the pastors of some of those other mega-churches?

Secularists are sometimes called "fundamentalist" because they hold their beliefs--say pro-choice, separation of church and state--quite passionately. They vehemently do not want to be dictated to by religious groups, and they do not want their children to be forced to go to religious schools (school where creationism is taught as science). They are alleged to be "intolerant" of Christians. But the secularists are rarely if ever saying "Do as I do", they are saying "Leave me alone". The Christians quite often are not only saying, "Do as I do", but also "My right is to make you live by my beliefs, and if you resist me, then you are 'intolerant'."

Attention all theocrats. Here's the deal. I tolerate you. You tolerate me. You believe what you want. You leave me alone. It's all good.

You want to dictate what women can do with their lives, their bodies? You want to limit the legal benefits associated with marriage to a man and a woman? You want to deny birth control to women? You want to teach your creation myth as equivalent to evolution in public schools? Then, we'll have problems.

You decide that you want a theocracy?

Go to Afghanistan. I hear the Taliban are back in business. I'm sure they'd be sympathetic to your plight.

Jane Says