“Thou Fool” is Out. Fag is Ok…

HE People at Focus on the Family remind us that calling people names, bullying, etc, is a bad thing: unless you’re torturing kids you perceive as gays or lesbians… It’s national “No Name Calling Week” in 7th Grades around the country. And as ReligionDispatches tells us:

Thousands of elementary and middle schools are celebrating “No Name Calling Week.” The week is inspired by James Howe’s novel The Misfits that tells the story of a group of seventh grade friends who institute “No Name Calling Day” to bring attention to the harmful words directed at students because of their weight, height (or lack of), as well as sexual orientation.

Who in the world would object to the idea of a week to refrain from taunting or calling someone else offensive names? Why, Focus on the Family, of course

If your religion teaches that (for example) Christians are three-God worshipping idolators, shouldn’t your kids be allowed to throw stones at them? If your religion teaches that Protestants are iconoclastic gnostics, shouldn’t your kids be allowed to call them such on the play ground? If your religion teaches that fundamentalists are backwards idiots shouldn’t your kids be allowed to bully them into enlightenment? No. Absolutely not.

But if your daughter likes to play baseball, it’s fine to to call her a dyke.

Jesus would have done so.

I don’t want to paint this as a right-wing thing. ECUSA is quite good at throwing gays under the bus too – that’s why Gene Robinson wasn’t allowed to play any bishop games at Lambeth and that’s why no one from ECUSA walked out in protest.

Say it with me: “There is only one sin left.”

To be non-partisan, let’s make that: There is only one sin left, right?

2 Responses to ““Thou Fool” is Out. Fag is Ok…”

Fr. Ernesto
January 28th, 2009 at 10:57 pm

I am no supporter of James Dobson, given that I vote for President Obama, but I did find the following statement in the article you listed: ". . . as well as to hate crime laws that limit their ability to call other people names like 'sinner,' or use hurtful words to assure others that God surely hates them for some reason or another."

Let me put it bluntly, if I cannot say the word sinner, then I, too, will streneously oppose this week. Barring the word "sinner" from a school campus is to ban the ability of any student to share the Gospel. The rock-bottom of the Christian Gospel is that we are all sinners and are all in need of redemption. To eliminate the word sinner from discourse on any school campus is to eliminate Christianity from the conversation.

That phrase turns the week from a "No Name Calling Week" to simply another week in which radical progressives try to silence any Christians, whether conservative or moderate. Sorry, Huw, count me on the side of those who oppose the week, but, if and only if the official organization also supports the wording in this article.

Huw
January 28th, 2009 at 11:23 pm

I don't read that to mean within the walls of a church where people are free to go. But there's a difference between you preaching and living the gospel on the one hand and people yelling names on the street. But to be fair I have often wondered in these pages when either left or right would try to pass laws against each other that would trap Christians as well: which is why I'm an Anarchist.

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