Preparing for Atheist Martyrdom

I'm regularly stunned into silence by things I come across, though often for very different reasons. I'll let you guess my reasons for this one:

Video embedding disabled, follow the link.

Ahem *cough*. Well, that sounds pretty bad. You were just sitting there, worshiping your little hearts out. And some mean, nasty gays came along and ruined the party. Threw coffee on you, even? Man...that must have burned. So badly it didn't leave a discernible mark. Oh, sorry, that's a bit of snark coming through. Wait...wait, what? You were preparing for martyrdom? MARTYRDOM?! Okay, we've hit crazy land. I'm sorry.

Full story below the fold:

Apparently what went down was something along these lines: a group of christians regularly goes into the Castro district of San Francisco, for about the past 3 years. They sit down on a corner and sing their songs and praise the Jesus. Also, they try to convert people and tell them about their sinful and hell-oriented ways. Nice folks, those. "Hey, Jesus is great, you're going to die in a fire! Kthxbye!" Sort of a hate the sin, love the sinner type thing...which really just turns into hate the sin, restrict and oppress and (oops!) hate the sinner.

Oh, and of course, Bill O'Reilly picks up the story and talks to the woman who was "beaten with a Bible." Notice the inconsistencies in the two stories. In the first, the Bible was ripped out of her hands. In this one, she was just sitting there and someone picked it up. And the police saw it. But they didn't see it. And they didn't arrest him, because she didn't want to press charges, even though they're legally required to if they witness an assault. And Bill, to his small credit, actually mentions this, but then just lets it go. Ah, hard hitting journalism.

Oh, and you notice the few clips that Bill shows there. They're from this video, which at the moment is the only footage I know of the whole event:


Oh...riot gear? You mean the one dude with a helmet and kevlar? ...FUCK!

Alright, let me break this down as best I can, though I feel that Abbie over at ERV has already done a better job.

If you want to be a jackass and go to a district of a people that you have just stripped of one of their legal rights, set up shop in front of a monument of a man who had just died the week before and was well known for his fight in the gay-rights movement, and sing your happy songs about the Jeebus and how Prop 8 passed (you know...in California...), and tell anyone who asks that they need to come to Jesus and be cured of their homosexuality...that's fine. It's within your free speech rights.

If people in that district are horribly offended by you and your actions and your continued holier-than-thou gloating and want you to leave them alone, that's fine too. If they want to have a peaceful protest and march you out peacefully, well, public demonstration.

Violence should not be condoned in these situations, and according to the police, there was no violence. One guy apparently throw an iced coffee at some of the christian group, but he was hauled off by other gay men to the police.

Ugh! The self-righteous and pompousness gets to me, especially this early in the morning.

Oh, and what's that you say? Our economy is failing because we don't say Merry Christmas?! Well! Okay! That does it! I'm out, I'm done with the human community. I'm packing it up. I'm moving to the Satellite of Love and am just going to build some friggen robots and watch movies. Movies like Mad Max, which, apparently, we're going to be emulating soon if we don't say MERRY EFFING CHRISTMAS to one another and smile!

AGGGGH!

Nevermind the fact that religiosity in a 1st world democracy correlates with absolutely offensive behavior. Nevermind that it wasn't the atheists in charge of government, or the banks, or regulatory agencies, or the significant block of people buying up sub-prime mortgages...but no, no, no. It's the atheists' fault. Of course it is! We don't celebrate Christmas! Well...wait, actually, most of us do. We just celebrate it secularly. We still say Merry Christmas...oh, oh, I'm sorry. I just let facts get in the way of your ideology.

Sorry for the rant. But. For Christ's cracker-sake, people. Are we getting that stupid and gullible?