Wednesday, March 14, 2012

False Equivalence Award for March 2012

We're only halfway through the month, but she so thoroughly pegged the meter that I'm going to award it to Pamela Geller right now.
Did you see the virulently anti-Catholic ad that ran in the New York Times last week? That ad inspired AFDI/SIOA, in cooperation with SION (Stop Islamization of Nations), to create the same ad but for one thing: different religion. The craven quislings at the New York Times rejected our ad.

No.
I said, “But I am, it’s the exact same ad.”

He said, “No, it’s not.”

The NYT is exactly right here, and Ms. Geller is entirely wrong. If it was exactly the same ad with only the religion changed, we might imagine it directed at Jews. It would then be directed at a particular Jewish denomination, as the original ad was directed at a particular Christian denomination. It might condemn that denomination arguing to impose their own moral choices on everyone else. It might condemn Haredi leaders who argued in favor of sexual segregation enforced by the state, and who vehemently opposed a requirement that a Haredi-funded hospital still needed to provided desegregated access for patients and employees. It might urge Haredi women to depart for a more liberal denomination.

Now, let's imagine the real "only the religion was changed" version of the Geller ad, translated back to one directed at Christians:

All the outrage...
(Picture of Fred Phelps ranting)
..over this..
(Small picture of crucifix suspended in urine)
...is a bit hard to swallow.

Open Letter to "moderate" Christians:
It’s time to quit Christianity.
It’s your moment of truth. Will it be religious freedom, freedom of speech, or back to the Dark Ages? Do you choose women and their rights, or priests and their wrongs? Whose side are you on?

In light of the ongoing, ruthless, international crusade against abortion, the 2,000 year record of institutionalized oppression of women, the many Christian attacks across the world, and the endangering of free peoples across the world, if you’re part of the Christian Crusade, you’re part of the problem.

Why are you aiding and abetting Christian leaders who have repeatedly and publicly announced that abortion is murder, and thus that those that perform or abet it are worthy of death, and who deny the rights of all women everywhere.

Think of the acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, social evils and deaths that can be laid directly at the door of the Christianity's antiquated doctrine.

If you imagine you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on Jew-hatred, hatred of women, hatred of non-Christians, hatred of gays — you are deluding yourself. If you remain a “good Christian,” you are doing “bad” to the rights of women and non-Christians everywhere. You’re kidding yourself if you think the church is ever going to expunge the Bible of its violent and repressive texts or interpret them out of existence.....

See what she did there? The original ad was about a specific denomination with a central hierarchy that defines its doctrine and excommunicates people who depart from it. The Geller version treats Islam, a religion that contains many different denominations, as identical to its craziest sects. It is gratuitously insulting nonsense, and a good deal more inflammatory than the first ad.

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