Juan_Bottom wrote:Now I'm remembering this. I told you; we don't want people pretending to be sensitive. Don't pretend to be a different person depending on who you are hanging out with. As you said: you find holocaust jokes to be amusing. Then make holocaust jokes. You think I want to have friends who are secretly members of the KKK or something? No, I do not. I want to know who everyone really is.
I'm not sure if I understand the above paragraph entirely. Did I find the fake movie names thread funny? Yes. Did I post an idea for a fake movie name related to the Holocaust or Nazis? Yes. Did I stop posting and reading the thread when you indicated that you found it offensive? Yes. I didn't try to hide any of these things from you or anyone else. If the point of you posting that you were offended was not to get people to stop, what was the point?
Juan_Bottom wrote:Now, nothing is above criticism, and to claim that your beliefs deserve the same sensitivity as the Holocaust is bizarre to say the least. There is no comedy in making fun of something that one cannot change. If my father chocked and died on a walnut, then yeah, walnuts become a sensitive issue, and the gentlemanly thing to do is not to discuss them around me. But if you want to participate in a religion that takes money from you and gives it to lawyers that are defending pedophiles, then yeah, you're not above criticism.
There is a distinct difference between criticism and being offensive, just like there is a distinct difference from making a joke thread about Holocaust or Nazi themed movie names and being anti-semitic. I am not offended by criticism of the Catholic Church or Catholics. I am offended by what I deem offensive (yes, what I deem offensive) posts regarding Catholics. The way I deal with that, so as not to get into an argument about what is or is not offensive to me, is to not read or not reply to said posts. You are equating my participation in a thread about Holocaust or Nazi themed movie names as being more offensive than your outright anti-Catholicism and bigotry. Seriously?
Juan_Bottom wrote:As I asked you before, can you explain why mocking Catholicism is insensitive to you? I can tell you, it's a voluntary belief, not an involuntary condition. So again, I find it bizarre that you're insecure enough in your beliefs that you think they should be above reproach. And what I find reproachable is people going to their Catholic church, and donating their money to the very people who had been protecting child rapists for decades.
Why do I need to explain why mocking Catholicism is insensitive to me? I didn't expect you to explain why making a Holocaust-themed movie thread was offensive or insensitive to you. No one was mocking the Holocaust or Jews in that thread. I'm not insecure in my beliefs, I just find the whole situation so insanely hypocritical. I'm more offended by your hypocrisy than your bigotry.
Juan_Bottom wrote:And while we are on the subject of the Holocaust, I'm also pretty dissatisfied with the Catholic church's consent to the Nazi massacre of Europe's minorities and Jewry. I'm dissatisfied by their enabling Nazi fugitives to escape. But I won't hold that against a Catholic because that is in the distant past... the church should be at a different place.... and then they elect a Hitler Youth to be their king. When I ask myself WWJD? I never come to the conclusion that Jesus would join the Nazis or vote for a Nazi Pope. By being a member of the Catholic Church you are consenting to this madness.... of protecting Child Rapists, and protecting those who protected them... and of financially supporting a living deity who was also a part of the Nazi movement. These beliefs are ridiculous and warrant all the mocking and insults that they get. As Saxi irrelevantly said to me in the other thread, there is a distinction between having a belief and having a personality cult. We weren't born into a world where we got to choose whether there was a Holocaust or not, but we do get to choose what to believe in. As always, the distinction between between something that is worthy of criticism is choice.
I will never understand why in this country religion is never supposed to be discussed or questioned without making everyone into a victim.
You keep using these word "discussed" and "questioned" and "criticism." Do you understand what those words mean? Do you understand the difference between mocking and criticizing? Do you understand the difference between offensive speech and a discussion? I'm not sure you do.
Let's break it down again.
- A number of people participated and read a thread that was a collection of meant-to-be-humorous names for movies that had some relationship with the Nazis or the Holocaust. None of the movie names were meant to be or were anti-Semetic.
- You indicated that you found the thread offensive.
- People made one of four responses: (a) ignored you; (b) engaged you to convince you that the thread was not offensive; (c) stopped reading or typing in the thread; and (d) kept reading and typing in the thread.
- I chose option (c) in deference to you being offended. Regardless of whether I think you should be offended or not is not an appropriate determination for me to make (in my opinion).
- At around the same time, there were some threads in this forum and in McGill mocking Catholicism, the Catholic Church, and Catholics generally. There were also threads criticizing Catholicism, the Catholic Church, and Catholics generally. The threads criticizing those things were not offensive to me. The threads mocking those things were offensive to me. You (and pimpdave) posted in those threads at length in what, to me, was a rather disgusting way which was meant to troll me or bait me. Instead of choosing option (c), which would have been the gentlemenly way to go, you chose option (d).
The rest of your above post is really just window-dressing you're trying to put up to make yourself look like a victim of some cruel conspiracy and to make me seem like an oversensitive jerk that can't respond well to criticism of a religion. But keep in mind that I did not bring this subject into the public forum, you did. I did not rail against you in public or in private, and yet you rail against me. And keep in mind that your posts in the McGill forum were not criticisms of the Catholic church; hell, they weren't even jokes.
I'm not insecure about my religious beliefs or choice of religion. I'm not above criticism for the religious organization to which I belong. I've criticized the Church enough myself. But there is a level of respect that should be accorded a person because of their religious beliefs. I don't make a big thing about being Catholic. I don't post in the creationism threads. I don't try to force my religious beliefs on others. I don't try to enforce my religious morals on others, in fact I mostly go against the religious teachings of my church with respect to the government regulation of gay marriage or abortion.
So I'm not sure why you think I would be insecure or oversensitive if you merely criticized the Catholic Church. And all that should tell you that if I was offended, I had reason to be.
And with that, you now go on my foe list. Congratulations on being the first one on there ever.