Actually, it was the third rail of Left-wing online political discussion – religion – but I’m trying to keep the titles shorter. Besides, Kevin didn’t grab it so much as he brushed against it lightly:
This doesn’t mean you can’t fight religious groups on substantive grounds, of course, any more than strictures against mocking blacks mean you can’t oppose affirmative action. I’ll never give an inch to the creationism/Intelligent Design crowd, for example, but you can do it without ridiculing anybody’s actual religious beliefs — something that will win neither arguments nor friends in any case. My advice: the next time you’re tempted to mock somebody or something on religious grounds, just substitute “Hispanic,” or perhaps “Hindu,” and see how it sounds. If it sounds like something you probably shouldn’t say, then you probably shouldn’t say it.
And if that still doesn’t convince you, remember Amy Sullivan’s advice: just think of ’em as an interest group and pander to them. We libs know how to do that, don’t we?
It was probably that last paragraph that set certain elements of his comments section off so. ‘Pandering’, after all, is what the Other Side (however you want to define it) does. It’s interesting to consider, though, how little of an issue all of this is in the offline world. Contrary to popular online belief, there are quite a few evangelicals and fundamentalists in the Democratic Party, and luckily for said party the more… vehement… rants of certain secularists tend not to impinge on the Evangelicals’ / Fundamentalists’ radar. This is unlikely to change dramatically in the next decade, although I make no promises after that. Still, Kevin’s advocating a good habit to get into*.
(Via Kikuchiyo)
Moe