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Richard Wade's avatar

"You must respect my religion! You must respect my beliefs!"

I respect your RIGHT to your religion and to your beliefs. If I find things about your religion or beliefs to be objectionable or absurd, I cannot respect those things. BUT I can and do treat YOU respectfully.

"I AM my religion! I AM my beliefs! So to respect ME, you must respect THEM!"

No, you're not. You HAVE your religion and beliefs. They're important to you, but they are not you. You're just trying to force me to respect your religion and beliefs because I want to treat you respectfully. I'm not going to fall for that.

And by the way, the phrase "must respect" is absurd. Respect is only given, never taken. Forced respect is not genuine respect. That would be subservience. Don't expect that from me.

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Val Uptuous NotAgain's avatar

Theists, and especially Christians, tend to equate their religion with their personalities. So, his comments are taken as personal attacks because they are their religion. None of what he said come as anywhere near the vitriol and violent rhetoric we see from many national (or nationally famous) GOP politicians concerning LGBT people or people of color. And there is very little legislative damage he can do to the religious, as opposed to the very real damage the GOP as a whole has done to all minorities and the lower classes.

Unfortunately, this might hurt him, but he may not have had much of a chance to begin with looking at the primary. Perhaps his challenger will find a bigger landline before the election, but I doubt it.

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