One of the favorite pastimes of Christians is arguing over who else counts as a Christian. The more extreme the sect, the more likely they are to exclude other Christians from Christianity.

As an outsider, I don’t have a horse in this race and there is nothing motivating me to arbitrarily exclude people for Christianing in ways I don’t approve of.

Consider this sentence: “Since I’ve been on the receiving end of WE DON’T SERVE YOUR KIND HERE when it was about more than just a cake or a website, I’ve grown distrustful of all self-identifying gays”.

That sounds pretty damned bigoted, doesn’t it? Well, so does your statement!

There are plenty of Christians who are fine with homosexuality. This is true individually and on the level of churches and organizations of churches.

Those welcoming Christians are not responsible for the ones who say that Christianity “forced” them to be bigoted against gays. Just as you’re not responsible for Communists or Objectivists.

@TruthSandwich
spoke in defence of a religious right of Christian business owners to discriminate against me in the public square. Because if 9 Christians sit down with a Christofacist and they're not trying to talk some sense into the fascist, we've got TEN Christofacists, y'know?

As you can imagine, these friendships were damaged by that.

The specific Christians you knew in HS who defended bigotry are bigots.

Blaming Christians as a whole, however, would itself be bigotry.

@TruthSandwich
I do not blame them ALL, but I do FEAR them all - and not just the Christians - and what they might allow to happen to us in an urgent situation and there's nowhere else to go.

To get from PHX to MIL's in CA, we have to go through the desert. During the 1st 4 hours of the 6-hour drive - both ways - I'm anxious and worried about what we'll do if we break down and the only available tow truck says, "Sorry, we don't serve your kind," and leaves us in the middle of nowhere.

Feel me?

@TruthSandwich
Well, you seem determined to convince me that I'm the bad guy here, so I guess I'm the bad guy.

You're starting to remind me of my fundamentalist cousin who said that if the gays would stop being so hateful to the bigoted Christians who want us dead, then they'd stop wanting us dead or something something....

And it has everything to do with Christianity if the bigots are waving their Bibles to justify their bigotry.

Good people use the Bible to justify their goodness. Bad people use it to justify their badness. It’s a Rorschach blob: people see in it what they want to see.

Your cousin was wrong: it’s not bigotry to oppose bigots. But it is bigotry to oppose Christians who are not bigots, unfairly blaming them for those who are.

Let me put it this way: It’s good to hate Nazis, but bad to hate all Germans. It’s good to hate white supremacists, but bad to hate all whites. It’s good to hate Christofascists, but bad to hate all Christians.

It’s good to hate bigots, but it’s bigotry to hate those who merely share irrelevant attributes, such as nationality or race or religion, with bigots.

In the fight against bigotry, we must not ourselves become bigots. We have to narrow our focus to the guilty, not just those who resemble them on the surface.

#bigotry

@TruthSandwich
While I appreciate that, I hope you'll also appreciate that Zappa was right when he said, "All people are assholes until they prove otherwise."

I thought those people from HS were my friends until they turned out to be bigots, y'know?

Due to my lived experience as a gay man, when someone self-identifies as a Christian, it puts me on notice that my safety just might be at risk.

If not giving them all the benefit of the doubt until I'm sure I'm safe makes me a bigot, so be it.

Reacting to someone who outs themselves as a bigot isn’t bigotry. Treating them as bigots in advance, just because of their identity, is bigotry.

Consider this parallel: “I don’t hate all Jews, but I assume they’re evil until proven otherwise.”

Sounds pretty fucking racist, no? And it’s not any less bigoted when applied to other groups.

The majority of Americans are Christian. A minority of Christians are bigots. Do the math.

@TruthSandwich
You're sounding like my cousin again, "LGBTQ are the real bigots."

Let me be clear: I'm not talking about regular everyday people - I'm talking about the risks we face when DOING BUSINESS with bigots who use their religion to justify their bigotry against me. If I'm faced with a choice of shopping at a store with a crucifix over the door or Walmart, I'm heading to Walmart!

Please stop trying to minimize and dismiss my lived experiences.

Pretty sure I never said anything like that. In fact, I said the opposite.

Calling any group bigoted, except when that group is defined by its bigotry, is bigoted. So saying “Germans are bigoted” is wrong, while “Nazis are bigoted” is correct.

It’s also ok to stick to hard numbers, such as saying that the majority of white voters in America support white supremacy, since this isn’t a generalization, just measured statistics.

LGBT are not defined by bigotry, except in the sense of being a frequent target of it.

Walmart, incidentally, has a track record of systemic bigotry.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/edwardsegal/2022/02/11/walmart-is-sued-for-gender-and-race-discrimination-by-eeoc

Walmart Is Sued For Gender And Race Discrimination By EEOC

Days after former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores sued the NFL and other for discrimination, another discrimination lawsuit is in the news. But this time the alleged discrimination took place in the retail industry.

^{Edward Segal (Forbes)}

False. Bigoted businesses have denied you goods or services. That bigotry has nothing to do with Christianity, regardless of whether they claim it does.

We know this because most of the businesses that treat you just fine are run by Christians, since Christians make up about 2/3 of the population.

It’s not bigotry to hate bigots, but it’s bigotry to hate people who merely share some irrelevant characteristics with bigots.