the allegedly bigoted quote

[Nelson Lund]

The New Oxford American Dictionary defines "bigoted" as "obstinately 
convinced of the superiority or correctness of one's own opinions and 
prejudiced against those who hold different opinions" or "expressing or 
characterized by prejudice and intolerance."

Of course, the bigoted statement to which Earl Maltz objected is "not 
unconstitutional . . . it's just despicable."

Nelson Lund
George Mason


Howard Schweber wrote:
> "Anyone who has been denied communion can't be all bad."
>
> 1.  The statement is not bigoted.  A bigoted statement is one that 
> implies the inferiority of individuals based on their membership in a 
> class; in its most common usage the term refers to statements about 
> members of ethnically or religiously defined classes.  The statement 
> above says nothing negative about Catholic persons in general, it says 
> something negative about priests or bishops who decide to deny 
> communion to someone.  And those officials are not being criticized 
> for their Catholicism, they are being criticized for their exercise of 
> power.  No other belief or act that expresses their identity as 
> Catholics is called into question, nor is any aspect of their personal 
> character outside the specific decision to deny communion called into 
> disrepute.
>
> 2.  In contrast, calling someone an "anti-Catholic bigot" is a 
> personally directed insult that asserts the moral inferiority of the 
> target, at least for those of us who think bigotry immoral.  I see no 
> comparison -- the second if a vicious personal attack, the former is a 
> political critique couched in satire.
>
> 3.  It is not true that statements of this kind are only heard with 
> respect to conservative Christians.  Personally, whenever I teach 
> Spinoza I observe that "anyone who could get himself excommunicated 
> from the  Jewish community had to have something going for him."  No 
> one has ever suggested that my statement is antisemitic, despite the 
> fact that it is a much closer case (because Jews do not have a formal 
> polity, so there is no distinction between "officials" and community 
> members).
>
> 4.  It is true that one hears more such comments about conservative 
> Christian churches than about other religious authorities.  There is a 
> very good reason for this:  conservative Christian churches, including 
> the Catholic Church, are the only ones in the U.S. trying to impose 
> their values on the rest of us.  More to the point, they are 
> sufficiently powerful institutions, and sufficiently obviously 
> represent the dominant, majoritarian religious authorities, that they 
> have succeeded in imposing those values on the rest of us in the 
> past.  It can therefore be reasonably expected that they will continue 
> to attempt to impose their  values on the rest of us in the future, 
> and that they will have some successes in those efforts.  The initial 
> statement is therefore an example of a classic phenomenon:  satire as 
> a weapon deployed against power.
>
> 5.  The state action doctrine does, indeed, limit the applicability of 
> the First Amendment to government attempts to silence or chill 
> speech.  On the other hand, the manipulation of assertions of 
> victimhood and accusations of prejudice is a well-established and 
> long-recognized tactic that is employed to intimidate others from 
> expressing themselves.  Stalinists do it, African-American politicians 
> do it, some radical feminists do it, Zionists do it ... and 
> conservative Christians have not been slow to embrace the same 
> tactic.  It's not unconstitutional ... it's just despicable.
>
>
> hs
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