How To Tell U*Us They Have Said Or Done Something Anti-Religious. . .

U*U minister Rev. Kit Ketchum aka Ms. Kitty has just blogged about How to tell someone they have said or done something racist.
Rev. Ketchum asks her blog readers "What do you think?" about the YouTube video below -



I have submitted a comment to Rev. Ketchum's "moderated" Ms. Kitty blog and I am reasonably confident that she will see fit to post it.
Ms. Kitty had a bad habit of "memory holing" some of my critical comments in the past but she seems to have learned that such censorship and suppression of legitimate criticism and dissent doesn't reflect all that well on her or other U*Us, U*U clergy or otherise.
In recent weeks and months Rev. Kit Ketchum has been quite good about posting the comments that I have seen fit to post to her "moderated" Ms. Kitty's Road Show And Saloon blog. Here is a slightly revised and improved version of the comment that I just submitted:

I generally follow the policy advocated in that video in terms of all kinds of injustices and abuses, not just discrimination. I tell the person, or those other people that they are ostensibly accountable to. . . what they said or did and why it is wrong. That being said however, if a person or persons, or indeed group of persons, consistently say and do things that justify saying what they *are* I do not hesitate to do that as well.

A racist, is a racist, is a racist.

Likewise an Atheist Supremacist is an Atheist Supremacist is an Atheist Supremacist. . . ;-)

For the record, I recently told UUA Presidential candidate Rev. Peter Morales what he said during his "stump speech" announcing his candidacy for President of the UUA. See the comment that I posted to the 'Old Friends' post on his 'Along The Campaign Trail' blog. Unfortunately Rev. Morales' poorly formatted campaign website does not provide URLs for individual pages so you will just have to go to the home page of his Peter Morales for UUA President website, click on the link to his UUA presidential campaign blog and then click on the link to the 'Old Friends' post to read what I said about what he said. I am reasonably confident that Rev. Morales has enough personal integrity not to "memory hole" my legitimate concerns about his apparent religious intolerance. Hopefully in the coming days Rev. Peter Morales will responsibly respond to my public sharing of my legitimate concerns about his rather poor choice of words about "obsolete religions" in a way that allows me to refrain from saying what he might very well *be*.



Update: A quick check back to Rev. Kit Ketchum's Ms. Kitty blog confirms that she did post my comment but asserted that she feels that my final paragraph about what Rev. Peter Morales said in his "stump speech" is "off-topic". Here is the follow-up comment that I just submitted in response to that assertion by Rev. Ketchum -

Rev. Kit Ketchum said, "Robin, your final paragraph is off-topic, I feel. Please stick to the topic. Thanks."

That would depend upon just how narrowly you want to define the topic Rev. Ketchum. Some people consider words or actions that discriminate against Jews or Muslims as being "racist" even though that is not really true for Muslims at least. Rev. Peter Morales effectively described Judaism and Islam as "obsolete religions, created for another time" that "lead to tribalism, violence, suspicion, hatred, and oppression" and "contribute to the darkness" of "hatred, injustice, prejudice, ignorance" in his "stump speech" announcing his candidacy for UUA President. Other people would call that "discriminatory behavior" religious intolerance. Is intolerance of religions that are closely associated with specific races not a form of racism? I dare say that Rev. Peter Morales' blanket condemnation of Judaism and Islam as "obsolete religions" could be considered to be a form of anti-Semitism aka antisemitism. . . Would you like me to run Rev. Morales' "stump speech" by the Anti-Defamation League aka ADL and the Council on American-Islamic Relations aka CAIR or the Islamic Society of North America to see if they consider it to be "racist"? It might be a worthwhile exercise just to see how these organizations respond to what Rev. Peter Morales quite evidently said in his "stump speech".

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