Gays are responsible for....

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

But no. It's about gay people wanting to get married. **insert eyeroll here**

Actually had someone come up to my door and try to convince me to vote against the gay marriage provision on our ballot tomorrow.

Claimed that (as usual) God had a massive problem about that.

So I looked at him and said...

"So...we had innocent people being burned, stoned, pressed and/or hung because someone claimed they were witches...people tortured and brutally killed if they wouldn't convert to Catholicism...Native Americans being evicted from their lands and in many cases killed...Jews being mass murdered into near extinction...and you're telling me that in spite of all of that, God has a problem with two dudes who want to be in a legally binding, committed relationship?

This and not all of all of the previous? Go. Away."

And I closed the door on them.

[wolfie]

There's actually a photo already on the Facebook group where I found the original article about Hurricane Sandy, which goes as follows:



(it WAS intended to be satirical I think)

Colbert has a large following among both the right and left wing communities. The right-wingers love him because they agree with what he's saying. The left-wingers appreciate a good over-the-top satire. Colbert's specialty is satire - the right-wingers don't have the wit to realize he's poking fun at them.

[s_stabeler]

"So...we had innocent people being burned, stoned, pressed and/or hung because someone claimed they were witches...people tortured and brutally killed if they wouldn't convert to Catholicism...Native Americans being evicted from their lands and in many cases killed...Jews being mass murdered into near extinction...and you're telling me that in spite of all of that, God has a problem with two dudes who want to be in a legally binding, committed relationship?

This and not all of all of the previous? Go. Away."

And I closed the door on them.

devils advocate here: if the guy was only talking about their opinion on gay people, how do you know they didn't think the other examples you listed also were send to Hell? (my personal opinion is that if there is a god, they probably have an extremely dim view of violence in their name.)

[Rapscallion]

Oh, I don't know. The bible has plenty of examples of smiting going on. Hard to protest against it when it's the only way the chosen of that deity survived.

Rapscallion

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

devils advocate here: if the guy was only talking about their opinion on gay people, how do you know they didn't think the other examples you listed also were send to Hell? (my personal opinion is that if there is a god, they probably have an extremely dim view of violence in their name.)

Sorry, that cuts no ice with me. When someone comes to my door saying that "God is punishing the innocent victims of H. Sandy" because of the tolerance of homosexuality and that I should vote against same sex marriage unless I want God to do it again...

Then this is not someone explaining to me their opinion on gay issues and is instead committing an act of religious extortion on the behalf of a supposedly benign and benevolent and all-loving God.

When someone in one breath say "God is love, Jesus died to redeem your sins" and in the other say "if you don't do what he wants you to do he's going to kill hundreds of random strangers" then they bloody well deserve to get both barrels of my sarcasm shotgun.

[EricKei]

This same sort of thing happened with Katrina -- the word was effectively, "God is punishing New Orleans for <insert negative stereotype du jour here>" (and let's just conveniently forget the many thousands of square miles of non-New Orleanians who were affected, as well). Got annoying really quickly.

That, and the long-standing rivalry between New Orleans and Atlanta (where many of the major news agencies are based) tended to skew the news coverage, as well. Local news saw the response to the storm quite differently than the national news groups. Main example at the time -- while many outlets were screaming at Bush/the feds (who were not without culpability, I admit), the local ones were angry at the local and state government here who need to be, arguably, the first responders. The Governer at the time, in particular, was reportedly being obstructionist, as well.

All in all, it just seems that some people like to come up with excuses to hate people that they already hate, maybe in order to make themselves feel better. I don't like to use the term "rationalize" nor "justify" in these cases, as such things are neither rational nor justified.