Courtney’s Right-Mind has me and several of my friends lumped together as the worst of Moscow’s bigots — people who persecute other people based on their religion. Much of what he says requires too much context for me to explain, and I have no intention of making an impassioned defense of myself to Dale Courtney. However, his analogy of my bigotry against — his example — Mexicans is especially offensive, given my background.
He highlights as one example of my “defense of bigotry” my letter to the editor last year, in which I comment that that Francis Foucachon’s cries of “this reminds me of Nazi persecution!” are absurd. It’s not religious persecution when I and others choose not to eat at West of Paris — and make that choice because we don’t want to support a business owned by a congregant of Christ Church, someone not willing to repudiate the dangerously inane, and, yes, bigoted, railings of Doug Wilson and his Kirk leadership.
I’m a Christian. Clearly I’m not making my choice to avoid Foucachon’s place because he’s one, too. What a very odd definition of “bigot” is employed here.
But Dale will say what Dale wants to say, and he and his accolytes and fan club will all nod their heads and agree that I truly represent the worst of religious bigotry and hate. That these white men of privilege would accept the racist jokes, sexist interplay, obnoxious application of dubious theology, insular worldview and cagey acquaintance with truth that permeates Dale’s blog and saturates Kirk culture while working themselves into a lather about me — the one who publicly calls them to repentance for it all — is laughable. Or would be, if it weren’t so abjectly pitiful.
Now, Dale knows that his list of bigots and their vile deeds is purposely lacking the kind of context — or, hey, let’s call it “truth” — that would show that he’s not only dead wrong, but hurling brickbats at other people who’ve simply called the Kirk on bad behavior. But he’ll have to answer for this and many other things, and there will come a day when his whining and special pleading will be revealed for what it is — the desperate attempts of an unhappy man to vindicate himself for things he ought to repent of instead.
Paraphrasing the Scriptures, if they mock me and slander me when I proclaim Christ in truth, then I should rejoice. And I do, except for the sadness I feel that so many are being deluded by so much clamor.