The image on the right was a recent meme posted on Facebook shortly after the horrible tragedy killing 50 people in Orlando, carried out by a lone Muslim gunman who had declared his allegiance to ISIS. The ACLU and many progressive secularists were eager find a way to blame Christians for the massacre.
The rhetoric dished out by progressive secularists defining anyone who disagrees with them as a "bigot" has now been stepped up a notch. Not only are you a bigot if you disagree with them but now it somehow follows that if you disagree with their ideas you must want them to suffer a horrible death. Huh? Excuse me. That is an inexcusable leap of prejudicial logic. If anything this reveals the hearts of the persons making the declarations. The whole argument is based on the idea (false in my estimation) that if you disagree with LGBT politically then you must want them dead. So I am simply taking the same logic and turning it back on them. If that argument has any validity then it follows that you must want people dead if you oppose them politically. Since I disagree with making POLYGAMY legal (for example), your leap of logic is that somehow I want them dead. So if you likewise opposed polygamy then it would follow you wanted them dead, according to your own logic. This is a self defeating argument that cancels itself out.
Not only his this irrational thinking but it is demonizing a whole group of persons of horrible intentions and is creating perhaps one of the widest wedges between people this land has ever seen Isn't THAT the very definition of prejudice? Let's live in peace together with our diverse ideas, allowing liberty of conscience(1) and stick to changing people's minds through persuasion, not bullying or fear tactics.
Certainly not all secularists use this tactic... but the mass assigning people who disagree with you words like bigotry, homophobe, hater, etc in large measure has become a defining characteristic of progressive secularists. It is more of a tactic than it is an argument but it has proven very effective because people fear being called a bigot. No doubt Christians are guilty of using poor arguments as well ... but I cannot help but to think that this has become many progressives only argument. It is used so frequently and so unsparingly toward anything they disagree with that it simply looses any real meaning. There is real prejudice and hatred and bigotry out there in the world but when used against anything one disagrees with it trivializes the real thing.
Let me just comment on one of the statements in the meme. It claims that Christians are complicit in the tragic Orlando shootings by arguing, "you weren't the gunman, but you think gay people are sinful and need saving ... so you're part of the culture that built him." While it is understandable why someone might make this statement during their pain in the face of such grief, but the reality is, we are all sinful people desperately in need of saving. You are not unique in this. I am no better. My sins, no doubt, easily equal or far exceed the sins of most of those who died in the nightclub. I do not deserve God's forgiveness. But Jesus came into this world to save sinners ... He was a human being who was uniquely without sin and died the death I deserve, who now, having been risen from the dead, declares freedom for the captives.
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(1) What I mean by "liberty of conscience" is that belief cannot be forced by law, or sword or coercion, or bullying. ... or else it is not genuine belief. Trust in Christ must be done, by the grace of God, through declaring the gospel and gentle biblical persuasion.