Recently, the fundie that I have had the misfortune of sparring with more than once posted an attack on the idea of rights.

Over the past few decades, there have been groups of people demanding their rights. They came to the knowledge that they have rights because many countries, not just America, provide rights in their constitutions.

Some are called the Bill of Rights, while others call their bills of rights, Human Rights Acts. They are not all the same. What that tells you is that human rights are very subjective and often used to promote illegal and sinful behavior to levels of normality and acceptability.

In America, the ACLU is one of the leading organizations championing rights for just about anything that moves. A great book that documents the Aclu’s actions since its founding, is called ‘The Twilight of Liberty‘ by William A. Donahue.

Twilight of Liberty is a sequel to Donohue’s highly regarded The Politics of the American Civil Liberties Union, but with a marked change in emphasis. Instead of challenging the ACLU’s nonpartisan reputation, as he did in the earlier volume, Donohue now seeks to demonstrate why and how recent ACLU policy undermines the process of liberty. He argues that the ACLU, by relentlessly warring with mediating institutions, and by pushing a radical individualism in its policies, is not making us more, but less free. (Amazon page description)

The fundie goes on, later in their post, to say:

Instead of giving everyone ‘rights’ God has given everyone standards to live by. There is the right way to live and there is the wrong way to live and so many unbelievers complain that they will be punished for their choice to live the wrong way.

They have no excuse as believers are out there every day telling all who will listen what the rules are for this life. But many people do not care about these standards and want to live life their own way. They feel they have a ‘right’ to live as they please.

They do not have the right to do that but they do have the right to choose to live in a way that is disobeying God’s standards of right and wrong. Today in America, Canada, and many other western nations, there are groups that continue to make their wrong choice and then force it down everyone else’s throats.

Emphasis mine. The arrogance and hypocrisy here are astounding. Unbelievers, by definition, do not care about the threat of punishment from a deity they do not believe in, but ‘punishment’ in the form of denial of rights by other human beings is something they have every right to oppose. Whenever a far-right fundie campaigns to remove LGBT rights, or remove women’s rights, or to oppose the arrival of refugees, and uses their religion as a basis for their actions, they are well and truly forcing their belief system down the throats of others.

For example, LGBTQ members want to marry and adopt children. However, historically and biblically, those institutions are only for those who choose the right way to marry and have children.

Biblically doesn’t matter. In previous posts, I informed the fundie that marriage predates Christianity, and that marriage is not a religious institution. In ancient Rome, Greece, China, and Mesopotamia, same-sex unions were not uncommon. So, historically, the fundie’s claim is bunk. It was the rise of Christianity (and other Abrahamic religions) that led to stigmas and even persecution of the LGBT community, and the idea that same-sex marriage was evil. In many ways, removing the interference of religion from what was previously a civil institution is restoring balance and justice.

Other groups want the right to kill unborn children but NO ONE has the right to kill someone else. If those unborn children were cognitive enough and had the knowledge of what constitutes a betrayal, they would be dismayed at how their parents betrayed them.

When the fundie demands that the law reflect his narrow-minded, woman-hating views on life, that is a form of forcing his views upon others, despite his prior claims that he does no such thing. When he makes these demands, despite volumes of evidence presented to him that shows his views kill women, he is displaying wilful ignorance. Pregnancy and childbirth are the greatest killers of teenage girls, and the facts show that when abortion is legal, abortion rates actually decrease, especially when combined with thorough sex education. None of this matters to the fundie, who will ignore all of this, and make some snarky-yet-cowardly remark as to how I’m not addressing anything. He is also the last person to lecture others on parenthood, as he well knows.

Illegal immigrants do not have the right to live in another country, nor do they have the right to violate any immigration law just because they were born in a country where their leaders abuse the citizens and allow crime, etc. to act freely.

People do not have the right to leave their country and reside in another without following the rules their target country has set for such moves. They made a choice and it was a wrong one to come illegally to another country.

What’s utterly strange here, is that the fundie prefaced this part with a Biblical quote:

When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.(Lev. 19:33-34)

Leaving aside how the fundie ignores the very quote he posted, at what point do we stop dismissing refugees and start helping them? If someone flees a warzone, and arrives at the shores of another nation, cold, desperate and alone, is it the Christian thing to force them to return from where they came, or help them? If they are running from a barbaric regime, they would not have had time to go through the rigmarole of immigration procedures, does that mean we fail to show them compassion and kindness? The fundie really seems to hate those concepts.

When we allow God’s standards of right and wrong, etc., to be abolished, then innocent people will suffer because of it. That is not right no matter how you look at it.

Does the fundie suffer because two men or two women get married? Does he suffer when an 11 year-old girl receives an abortion to save her life? Does he suffer because someone else extends the hand of kindness to a frightened, lonely refugee? Does anyone actually suffer for any of these things?