Dear Dr. Esposito,
I just recently read through your article New Narrative for 9-11 and Muslim Americans. It is an interesting piece of writing, and I am always looking for people who are willing to give an apologetic for their viewpoint. In your article, you try to make the case that fears of Islamic extremism in the Muslim American community are unfounded, and that Muslims in America as a whole are well integrated into the rest of western society. I must confess that I am not convinced of your article’s thesis, and I would like to explain why. Read the rest of this entry
The debate over the increasing acceptance of LGBT lifestyles in mainstream culture is one issue which — at least in Canadian society — has been more or less dominated by one side, which seeks to label all dissenters as “bigots,” “homophobes,” and even “extremists.” If you do not give them your unconditional assent and affirmation, they will level the most relentless forms of criticism against you. And this is precisely the case in the recent controversy over Toronto city mayor Rob Ford’s decision not to attend the annual Pride Parade.
To give a little background to people who are unfamiliar with this issue, Rob Ford is one of the most Conservative city mayors that Toronto has had in a long while. This particularly manifests in his policies regarding LGBT issues. He has publicly stated that he disagrees with same-sex marriage during his mayoral campaign, has refused to show up at a Pride flag raising at a public square, and has at least once threatened to cut public funding to the city’s annual Pride Parade. After all, why should the city spend public funds on such a parade anyway? Shouldn’t the LGBT community get its own funding if it wants a parade? Mayor Ford isn’t even targeting the LGBT Pride Parade in particular on this issue, since he has said in an article for The Star that “the public sector shouldn’t be funding parades, no matter what parade it is … The private sector should be sponsoring these parades.”[1] Be that as it may, the Pride Parade still got the funding that it wanted. There is just no stopping the LGBT agenda these days.
That being said, however, the biggest faux pas he has made recently (at least from the standpoint of the politically correct Left) was his refusal to attend the pride parade which took place earlier this month, on the grounds that it conflicted with a family tradition where he would spend the long weekend in a cottage away from the city. The responses that have been produced by Leftist pro-LGBT commentators and activists on newspapers and blogs have been merciless; most of them show relentless criticism of Mayor Ford for his personal choice. Now, if that isn’t ironic, I don’t know what is. These activists who demand society to affirm and support their ungodly lifestyles and personal preferences become very militant when others make personal choices that contradict the party line that LGBT activists force everybody else to follow. It seems that these days, their unofficial slogan is, “Support our campaign against bullying. If not, we’ll bully you until you do.” Read the rest of this entry
In conjunction with the Global Atheist Conference which concluded yesterday, Australia’s national broadcasting station, the ABC, invited Professor Richard Dawkins onto to it’s program of panelists, Q and A. The topic to be discussed was, none too coincidentally, “God, Science and Sanity”. And given the makeup of the panel on last Monday night (8 March 2010), it comes as no surprise that Prof. Dawkins stole the show.
For those of you unaware – of which I assume this is the vast majority of you – the Q and A program pits pollies, professionals and “pundits” up against each other while passing the questioning over to the audience, whether to a member in the studio or to someone watching at home who participates via the program’s website. The idea is quite simple: grab a hodge-podge of celebrities, specialists and politicians, throw them in the same room, given them a topic and then let the public “have at it”.
And “have at it” was the operative word last Monday; but not against Prof. Dawkins – that was one parrot that wasn’t going to get knocked off his perch. But the other panelists, namely those who identify as theists, sure did get a hammering.
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