Secular Activists Trying to Suppress Christian Schools

From The Federalist, an essay titled “The Other Campus Free-Speech Problem No One’s Talking About.” Some key points:

During the past few years, responding to ever-more draconian codes on secular campuses aimed at constraining free speech, dissenting voices have been raised here and there across the political spectrum, defending free expression and free association for all. This addition of conscientious objection outside conservative and religious ranks is a welcome development. It also brings us to one other large threat to free speech in education these days—one that’s still in the closet.

Secularist progressivism claims to champion diversity, but its activists today do not tolerate genuine diversity, including and es­pecially in the realm of ideas, as revealed by today’s legal and other attacks on Christian colleges, Christian associations and clubs, Christian schools, Christian students, and Christian homeschooling.

These are bellwether ideological campaigns that have yet to gar­ner the attention they deserve outside religious circles. Their logical conclusion is to interfere with and shut down Christian education itself—from elementary school on up to religious colleges and uni­versities.

It’s Not An Education If It Includes Christian Ideas?

Consider a few particulars. The Christian college club Intervarsity has had its credentials questioned on secular campuses around the country. So have other student groups including Chi Alpha and the Christian Legal Society, the focus of Christian Legal Society v. Martinez (2010), which found that Hastings College had not violated the First Amendment in forcing the CLS to accept members who violated its Christian moral code. During the past ten years, two high-profile Christian colleges—The King’s College in New York, and Gordon College in Massachusetts—have been subjected to accreditation battles. Meanwhile, home-schooling remains an object of attack by leftish pundits, New Atheists, the National Education Association, and other progressive standard-bearers.

Still other authorities want to discredit religious higher education altogether. Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2014, a professor at the Uni­versity of Pennsylvania called accreditation for any Christian col­lege a “scandal,” adding that “[p]roviding accreditation to colleges like [evangelical Protestant] Wheaton [College] makes a mockery of whatever academic and intellectual standards the process of ac­creditation is supposed to uphold.” Trinity Western University in Canada has likewise been embroiled for years in a battle to keep its accreditation—because its community members pledge not to have sex outside traditional marriage.

Let’s ask the obvious question: exactly whose schools are being at­tacked as unworthy, substandard, and undeserving of recognition? Christians’ schools, that’s whose—not progressive flagships like Bennington, Middlebury, or Sarah Lawrence. If religious tradi­tionalists were fanning out to campaign against schools dominated by other canons, cacophony would resound from Cupertino to Ban­gor. But because the prejudice propelling these attacks has Christi­anity in its sights, no one outside religious circles objects.

These efforts to impede religious education are also part of an ongoing paradox. It is not Christian colleges that have made a habit of ha­rassing and intimidating speakers who represent different points of view; it is nonreligious campuses. When socialist presidential candidate Bernie Sanders gave a speech in September 2015 at Liberty University, media accounts, including in The New York Times, took note of how courteous and polite the student body was, and how they unfailingly applauded a speaker who acknowledged at the outset profoundly disagreeing with their views.

Contrast their civility with the hostile reception certain other thinkers are guaranteed these days, just by setting foot on secular campuses. Followers of the Cross, especially, are often greeted by an especially bilious class of protester. Thus, for example, University of Tulsa students protested a former self-professed lesbian turned Christian—on the grounds that calling something “sinful” is “thinly veiled hate speech,” as one leader of the protest explained.

Simi­larly, when Jennifer Roback Morse—a former Ivy League professor and head of the Ruth Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to traditional Christian teaching—appeared at the University of California, Santa Barbara, 20 students interrupted her talk with chants, waving signs inscribed with various obscenities. When Christian speaker Ravi Zacharias spoke at the University of Pennsylvania, a local athe­ist group handed out bingo-style cards mocking the speaker to every student who entered the hall. The list could go on.

Read the entire essay.

At Marquette

One might believe that Marquette, a “Catholic” university, would at least be tolerant of Christian teachings about sexuality.

But to believe that, one would have to believe Marquette is really a Catholic university.

At Marquette, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was threatened with being kicked off campus for canning an officer who was engaged in a homosexual affair. He made it clear he did not accept Christian teaching about homosexuality, and would continue the affair. Under pressure from alumni, Marquette relented.

This was in 2011. Would Marquette back off today? We doubt it, given that the institution seems to seek out every way possible to pander to the campus gay lobby.

All of this, of course, represents the glaring hypocrisy of the Orwellian phrase “diversity and inclusion.” “Diversity” is interpreted to exclude a large body of ideas, including the ideas that Christians have about sexuality and the ideas that all civilizations have had about marriage until very recently.  “Inclusion” means intolerant and exclusionary conduct toward Christians and others who hold to these ideas.

Anti-Christian Bigotry in Canada

Happily, Defeated

Arrested for Preaching About Homosexuality

This, of course, is a fundraising video, but the reality it talks about (no free speech for people critical of homosexuality) is endemic. The situation in the U.S., with our First Amendment, is better in strict legal terms, but bullying, harassment and intimidation from the gay lobby can achieve the same thing here that arrests can in the U.K.

[Update]

The Huffington Post ran a reasonably unbiased article on this incident, but note the level of vitriol directed against not only the street preacher, but also Christianity in general, in the comments.

Intolerance of Christians in . . . Guess Where?

From Real Clear Politics:

As an ancient Christian minority in a mainly Muslim society, Coptic Christians have often been persecuted and marginalized.

Even so, Coptic believer Nadia Eweida was startled at the blatant discrimination she encountered in her job at the national airline. While Muslim women around her freely wore headscarves to fulfill their religious obligation, she was forbidden to wear a cross openly while working. Even Jews and Sikhs received more consideration: the policy was directed solely and explicitly towards Christians. When Nadia complained, political authorities and news media were grossly unsympathetic.

We might wonder why Nadia did not simply give up the unequal struggle, and move to a country like Great Britain, where Christianity is not just tolerated but which actually has an established national church. Why would she continue to tolerate the systematic injustice of an aggressive Islamist regime...

Oh wait, my mistake. Is my face red!

It turns out that although Nadia Eweida really is a Coptic Christian, she was living in England at the time, rather than Egypt, and that her job was with British Airways, at Heathrow. It was her British employers who concluded that public expressions of Christianity were unacceptable, in a land where the Queen is head of state, and the Supreme Governor of the Church by law established. British government lawyers defended that situation before a European court. One suggested that if Christians did not like the situation, they should find other employment. And why so much fuss about the cross, they objected? Wearing it is not an actual requirement of the faith, as opposed to an individual whim, so you can’t insist on any right to do so.

British Christians are not persecuted. Around the world, Christians are massacred, tortured, subjected to bogus show trials, starved into submission, and reduced to penury on the grounds of their faith. That’s real persecution, and nothing like that happens in the United Kingdom.

But it is legitimate to point out that in contemporary Britain, aggressive secularism on a wide variety of fronts is making life very difficult for conservative or traditional-minded Christians. Notionally, such an anti-religious campaign should be targeting all supernaturally-based faiths equally, but British secularism is accompanied by a multi-cultural principle that acknowledges some religious expressions as legitimate manifestations. Hence the tolerance for Muslim headscarves or Sikh turbans in the workplace.

Unfortunately, that respect does not extend to the beliefs or practices of Christians who often come from other non-European cultures -- to a faithful Coptic Christian like Nadia Eweida, or to African or Afro-Caribbean Pentecostals. Most media coverage of thriving African churches in Britain involves ludicrously exaggerated charges of witch-hunting and even human sacrifice by these supposedly primitive fanatics. It’s good to know the old idea of the Heart of Darkness is alive and well in the former imperial metropolis.

Legal cases resulting from religious discrimination have generated vast media attention in Britain. The Eweida affair apart, some other employment conflicts involved nurse Shirley Chaplin, ordered not to wear a cross on her ward duty; or Lillian Ladele, a marriage registrar who refused to conduct same sex civil partnerships. Relationships counselor Gary McFarlane was fired because his religious beliefs prevented him offering sexual therapy to same-sex couples. McFarlane and Ladele, incidentally, are both black.

In the United States at least, a clash between gay rights and the rights of religious believers would normally mean walking a delicate legal tightrope. Not in England, though, where the senior judge Sir John Laws -- the amazingly titled Lord Justice Laws -- proclaimed in the 2010 McFarlane case that in any such clash, religious rights would, and must, always lose out. As he said, “The promulgation of law for the protection of a position held purely on religious grounds...is irrational, as preferring the subjective over the objective. But it is also divisive, capricious and arbitrary.”

You can actually spend a good while dissecting Laws’s prolonged shriek, which also noted that “in the eye of everyone save the believer, religious faith is necessarily subjective, being incommunicable by any kind of proof or evidence.” So much for a few thousand years of theology and apologetics -- Christian, Jewish and Islamic.

So much, too, for the British courts, who have moved beyond parody.

The only hope left for the dissident Christians, then, is the European Court of Human Rights, which in recent years has come to occupy a position in European countries parallel to that of the US Supreme Court. And that is where Eweida, McFarlane and the others are now headed. If nothing else, the cases will contribute to shaping the European Court’s developing stance on religious rights, a topic that has caused fevered debate over the past decade. The Court is at what Americans might call a John Marshall moment, deciding the proper limits of judicial power over an emerging constitutional system.

Who would have thought that in the 21st century, Europeans would still be grappling with defending the basic rights of religious believers who still, after years of secular drift, make up a sizable majority of the continent’s population?

The elites that dominate Europe, of course, are the sort of elites that attack religious freedom here in the U.S.

The Ugly Face of Atheism

Warning: Extremely Offensive Language



From the “Reason Rally” (read: atheist rally): one of the performers, apparently allowed to perform by the event organizers. In other words, not a street performer at the fringe of the event.

This, of course, is not your typical atheist, nor your median atheist. But the crowd seems pretty enthusiastic.

But it is a reminder that atheists have their own equivalents of the Westboro Baptist Church. But then that merrie band of bigots would not be given any official place in any Christian event organized by anybody but themselves.

And the reader might go to YouTube to see appreciative comments from secularists.

Bill Maher, Anti-Christian Bigot: More

We have blogged about this fellow before, but he can’t seem to stop spewing out his hatred of Christians.

It’s interesting to compare him to the crackpot “pastor” in Florida who was promising to burn copies of the Qur’an. This fellow got way too much publicity out of it (any nobody can suggest something outrageous and get world-wide media attention, apparently) but he also drew universal condemnation.

Yet Maher continues to be a rather mainstream figure. While most people in the Mainstream Media and among liberal elites don’t hate Christians the way Maher does, they just don’t think his tirades deserve condemnation.

Still More Discrimination Against Christians on a College Campus

From the Christian Post:

A Christian fellowship group that has been on the Wright State University campus for over 30 years was denied registration as a student group this year for its faith-based policies.

Representatives of Campus Bible Fellowship, which ministers to students at secular colleges, reported that they were turned down by school officials earlier this year when they tried to re-register the group.

The Office of Student Activities at the Ohio-based university named two reasons for the denial, according to CBF representatives.

First, CBF refused to adopt university-mandated nondiscrimination language in its membership requirements that would have forced the group to nix a requirement that voting members maintain religious and behavioral standards.

Second, Wright State objected to the requirement in CBF’s constitution that voting members “accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior” and subscribe to the group’s articles of faith.

The group, which primarily emphasizes Bible study, has not been able to meet on the campus since and has turned to a civil liberties group for help.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), which defends First Amendment rights – including religious liberty – on college campuses, has written a letter to university’s president, calling for an immediate reversal of the ban on the Wright State CBF chapter.

“A Christian group has the right to be Christian, a Jewish group has the right to be Jewish, and a Muslim group has the right to be Muslim,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff.

“Courts have affirmed this principle time and time again,” he added. “It is shocking that in a free society, public universities like Wright State still don’t seem to understand or respect this crucial component of religious liberty.”

The Feb. 12 letter from FIRE to Wright State President David R. Hopkins cited a federal legal precedent setting forth the principle that “if Wright State is to allow expressive organizations to exist on its campus at all, it must allow religious organizations to exist, to define their missions, [and] to select their own members.”

According to FIRE, the university’s attorney Gwen Mattison had informed a FIRE representative over the phone that the ban would be lifted for the remainder of the academic year. However, when FIRE wrote in an e-mail, attempting to confirm the details of the phone conversation, Mattison dismissed the details as “incorrect.”

The decision to ban CBF, said FIRE, goes against Wright State recognition procedures.

“It is understood that some student organizations may be created for the purpose of deepening the religious faith of students within the context of a denominational or interdenominational grouping, and that some student organizations may be created for the purpose of perpetuating a national cultural tradition,” states a Student Handbook on student activities.

“Where these purposes are clearly stated in the constitution or bylaws of a student organization and appear to be reasonable, a student organization may be granted recognition through customary procedures as an exception to this policy,” the handbook reads.

More here.

It’s hard to rationalize this as the result of misguided bureaucrats making some blunder. Rather, there has to be an active animus against Christians here.

That’s extremely common among the college bureaucrats that handle “student affairs” and such. They see their job as promoting a politically correct agenda, and Christians (if they are really Christians) can’t conform to the demands of political correctness.

Anti-Christian Bigotry: Just the Worst Cases

From Christian Newswire:

Top Ten Instances of Christian Bashing in America, 2008

VISTA Calif., Jan. 5 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Christian Anti-Defamation Commission (CADC) has prepared a Top Ten list of the most egregious acts of Christian Bashing in American in 2008. Every day in America serious Christians face increasing hostility at work, school, and in the culture because they stand for their faith and values.

INSTANCE #10: Jack Black Musical Video

In a short video posted on FunnyorDie.com entitled, “Prop 8 The Musical,” an all star cast of Hollywood celebrities perform a low budget musical farce that defames Christ, mocks Christians and distorts the teaching of the Bible. Jack Black played the lead role of Jesus.

INSTANCE #9: Bill Maher Gratuitously Attacks Pope

Bill Maher, host of the HBO program Real Time, made light of the Pope during his recent visit and the tragic sexual abuse scandal. Maher said, “Now I know what you’re thinking, Bill. You can’t be saying that the Catholic Church is no better than this creepy (radical Mormon polygamist) Texas cult. For one thing, alter boys can’t even get pregnant. But really, what tripped up the little cult on the prairie was that they only abused hundreds of kids, not thousands all over the world. Cults get raided; religions get parades. . . If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you Pope.”

INSTANCE #8: ESPN Anchor Dana Jacobson’s “F--- Jesus” Remark

Speaking at an ESPN corporate event in Atlantic City, N.J., to honor ESPN Radio personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic, Dana Jacobson let go with a steam of vulgar remarks; “F--- Notre Dame,” “F--- Touchdown Jesus” and finally “F--- Jesus.” Jacobson was suspended for a few days for the incident.

INSTANCE #7: Minnesota University Professor Desecrates Communion

A Biology Professor from the University of Minnesota, Paul Zachary Myers, recently desecrated a consecrated communion wafer from a Catholic Mass. Meyer’s has also asked people to steal the Eucharist for him in order that he might desecrate it and display it on his blog.

INSTANCE #6: Religulous the Movie

Bill Maher released a very shallow, pseudo-intellectual documentary entitled Religulous. The movie did not cover any new intellectual ground. It simply raised the old attacks on the faith. Maher studiously avoided being fair and did not allow for legitimate Christian answers from any leading Christian intellectuals.

INSTANCE #5: Chaplains Fired for Praying in Jesus’ Name

Chaplains for the State of Virginia are being denied their right to pray in Jesus’ name. Six chaplains were fired for continuing to pray in Jesus’ name. Earlier this year in Virginia, Rev. Hashmel Turner, a city councilman in Fredericksburg, was told by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that his prayers during city council meetings that ended in Jesus’ name will continue to be banned.

INSTANCE #4: Colorado Law Criminalizes the Bible

SB200, a Colorado state bill recently signed into law, criminalizes the Bible. Section 8 of the bill entitled “Publishing of discriminative matter forbidden” makes publishing the Bible illegal because it contains anti-homosexual passages. This is part of a larger effort to criminalize the expression of certain opinions and beliefs.

INSTANCE #3: Barack Obama Defames Christianity

According to research into President Elect Obama’s own statements about faith, and an examination of Obama’s position on moral issues, CADC has determined that by any biblical and historic Christian standard, Barack Obama is not a Christian, although he claims he is a “devout Christian.”

We don’t happen to agree with this one. Obama clearly sides with secular liberals on every issue that separates Christians and secular people. But that’s not the same as “defaming Christianity.” In fact, Obama feels the need to at least pay lip service to Christian faith, regardless of his personal beliefs.

INSTANCE #2: Vice Presidential Candidate Sarah Palin Is Attacked

Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, came under sharp attack by some in the mainstream media because she self-identifies as a Christian. The Washington Post published a cartoon by Pat Oliphant mocking Palin because she has a background as a Pentecostal/Charismatic Christian. A suspicious arson fire at Sarah Palin’s home church recently caused over $1,000,000 in damage.

And finally, the #1 Christian Bashing Instance in America for 2008...

INSTANCE #1: Radical Homosexuals Assault Prop 8 Marriage Supporters in California

During and after the November campaign stories flooded in of pro-Prop 8 signs being taken, people verbally and physically assaulted, church property and private automobiles vandalized, and person’s jobs and pastor’s lives threatened simply for exercising their right to campaign and vote in support of traditional marriage.

BONUS INSTANCE: Senator Grassley’s Abuse of Power

US Senator Grassley, a member of the powerful Senate Finance Committee, has demanded the financial records of a number of very prominent conservative, evangelical broadcast ministries. The demand was based on Grassley’s concern that these ministries are not spending their contributions properly. Grassley has admitted his concerns were in part driven by media accounts.

Insults anything like these directed against blacks, or gays and lesbians or Muslims would be considered beyond the pale. But Christians, being a politically incorrect group, occupy a free-fire zone.

WKLH and Bill Maher

This afternoon, the management of WKLH considered the issue of anti-Christian bigot Bill Maher, whom the station has been sponsoring in Milwaukee.

We just talked to Station Manager Tom Joerres.

The verdict? Sort of a non-verdict, actually. Joerres stated that all of the station’s contractual obligations to Maher’s promoters have been satisified, and the issue is now moot. There is nothing “left to be done,” he said. He said it was “a moot point” and “behind us.”

He expressed surprise that the issue broke this week, rather than last week. We explained that some things slip under the radar until somebody notices them. In this case, the “somebodies” were Sly Sylvester in Madison, and the Marquette Warrior in Milwaukee.

We asked him whether the station is still giving away Maher tickets, and he said he believed those tickets are all gone.

We asked him whether the promo blurb for Maher is still on the station website, and he wasn’t entirely sure.

In reality, the blurb on the event is now gone from both the WKLH “Concerts” page, and the “Events” page.

Joerres said that, had the station known about the hateful comments of Maher, those comments “would have given us pause,” and “we would have looked at it differently.” Some of Maher’s most incendiary comments, attacking the Pope as someone who “used to be a Nazi” and the Catholic Church as a “child abusing religious cult” happened after WKLH signed on to the sponsorship.

Joerres added that WKLH is not “an AM station that seeks controversy.”

Good point. Anybody has a right to bring into Milwaukee any speaker they want. But any business firm that tries to be “mainstream” and appeal to a wide audience would be well advised to avoid supporting or endorsing people like Maher.

Of course, if the speaker engaged in vitrolic attacks on blacks or homosexuals, the local leftists would immediately see this point.

But where Christians are attacked, they see it differently.

Sponsoring an Anti-Christian Bigot: WKLH Responds

An e-mail from WKLH:

Hi John,

Thank you for contacting us regarding the Bill Maher show. I’ll call you shortly, but first a little background about our promotional involvement.

Our agreement with Pabst/Riverside was a term agreement whereby we partnered to promote several shows within a calendar window.

We are involved in actual artist booking & recommendation ONLY for those shows that benefit station-specific events or charities such as our Christmas for Kids benefit or Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin fundraisers.

At the time of the arrangement Mr. Maher had not made his insensitive remarks, although we will not hide behind that circumstance as an excuse.

The vast majority of shows we have promoted have been well received and non-controversial, including the many that have supported our Dave & Carole Miracle Marathon for Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin and Christmas for Kids.

Mr. Maher’s comments have obviously offended many people. While we usually let the market dictate the success or failure of a given show, we will reconsider our promotional involvement with this show.

Thank you for sharing your comments.

Bob Bellini
Program Director
96.5 WKLH Milwaukee

We talked to Bellini after receiving this e-mail, and the people who run WKLH will be meeting later today to decide what to do about this situation.

Bellini made it clear that he is no fan of Maher.

WKLH could simply “pull its sponsorship” of Maher, although Bellini pointed out that “the horse is out of the barn” in some ways. Promotional materials already printed can’t be unprinted.

But he conceded that WKLH could, if it wanted, stop giving away tickets to the Maher performance and take the promotional blurb off its website.

Such actions, while not large in the entire scope of things, would at least send the symbolic message that WKLH does not condone or support Maher’s anti-Christian bigotry.

A call to 414-978-9000, or an e-mail to Tjoerres@mkeradiogrp.com (station manager Tom Joerres) with a civil statement about how the station should distance itself from this kind of bigotry would be in order.

We can’t imagine WKLH promoting or supporting a comedian who was famous for attacking blacks or gays. Attacking Christians should be equally embarrassing to WKLH.

American Pulling Sponsorship From Bill Maher Performance

We just talked to Wyn Becker, top Public Relations guy at American TV, and he informs us that American TV will be pulling its sponsorship of the controversial Bill Maher concert in Milwaukee.

Maher, who quite openly hates Christians, was sponsored by American TV, WKLH Radio, and the Shepherd Express in what appears to have been a package deal to sponsor acts at certain venues -- the Riverside and Pabst theaters in Milwaukee in this case.

The American logo will not be seen on ads for the comedian, on the web page promoting his performance or any signage connected to the concert.

Becker mentioned that American has been bombarded with calls on this issue today.

Becker admitted that he had seen the list of comedians slated to perform. “I was aware . . . they sent it to me ahead of time” he told us. And further, “they sent the list over.” Becker further said “Did it slip by me? I looked it over and it seemed ok.” It appeared that Becker recognized Maher as a well-known name, but it didn’t “click” that he had made a long series of bigoted comments about Christians.

Becker stressed that, in the entire scope of American TV public relations, the comedians series at the Riverside and Pabst theaters “isn’t necessarily a huge project.” So it’s not as though anybody at American’s corporate headquarters in Madison sat down and hashed over the list of performers.

Becker made it clear that the Maher performance is part of a package of comedy shows -- perhaps 15 per year -- that American most certainly does want to support. “We sponsor the Pabst and the Riverside,” he said, describing them as “historic old venues.”

Indeed, both venues have been revitalized in recent years, and Becker seemed proud of that fact and of the comedy series that has featured acts such as “Second City.” In any given year, American may not know all the acts that will be booked when it promises support before the season starts.

Although everybody -- including American and the management of the Riverside/Pabst operation -- ought to be more careful about involving sponsoring corporations in promotions that will prove embarrassing, no deliberate decision to do something known to offend Christians was made.

It appears that American has done everything it can, at this point, to distance itself from this inflammatory and intolerant comedian.

[Update]

Charlie Sykes has an update on this, with an e-mail from Wyn Becker that we had not seen before, saying essentially the same thing he said in his interview with us.

Sponsoring an Anti-Christian Bigot: American TV Responds

A message from American TV about their sponsorship of “comedian” Bill Maher in Milwaukee:

John-

We regret if our advertising co-sponsorship participation for the upcoming Bill Maher concert has offended you or your “readers.” However, I would like to explain our involvement. We did not directly and individually select Mr. Maher’s concert to sponsor and have no direct connection with the production or promotion of this show. American does have partnerships with WKLH Radio with a number of events they co-sponsor at certain venues around Milwaukee including many comedy shows at the Riverside/Pabst Theaters.

As an example, we are also tied to the Dave & Carole Comedypalooza which is a benefit for Milwaukee’s Children Hospital. Bill Maher’s appearance is part of a yearlong series of comedy concerts which we co-sponsor with The Riverside and WKLH.

You are correct, Mr. Maher is a very opinionated political/social humorist and we may not agree with or necessarily condone the content of his material. Nor would we want to defend his style of humor, since the direction his topics take in his act are very subjective. Our intent was to advertise with a well respected concert venue and radio station which bring in many popular comedy performances throughout the year. This is somewhat similar to us having our television commercials run on a popular show during the year and then have that show deal with a rather controversial topic in a given week, a topic that many people might take offense too.

Mr. McAdams, I know this may not change the way you feel and I respect your opinion, but I felt that we owed you a further explanation since you took the time to voice your concerns. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please feel free to let me know.

Respectfully,

Stephen DeShong
Corporate Consumer Relations

Anti-Christian Bigot in Milwaukee: More

Just a few hours ago, we blogged on the fact that Bill Maher will be coming to Milwaukee on July 24th at the Riverside Theater.

So what’s wrong with that?

In the first place he’s an anti-Christian and generally anti-religious bigot.

But he has First Amendment rights just like everybody else. (Those rights, we note, are not abridged if people demonstrate against him.)

The kicker is: American TV, the local furniture and electronics store is sponsoring him!

They want to sell stuff to Christians -- who after all are the overwhelming majority of the population in Wisconsin. So why are they supporting him?

From Badger Blogger, a suggestion:

Here’s my recommendation for anyone reading this who is truly offended that American would sponsor Maher:

On Monday, call the American TV corporate offices at (608) 271-1000 and ask to speak with company President Doug Ruehl. (Sounds like: “Rule”)

You will be directed to Doug Ruehl’s public relations assistant, who will explain to you that Mr. Ruehl does not accept direct phone calls, but they will offer to arrange a return call to you from Mr. Ruehl.

Explain to him that you are a previous customer, and that you are calling to express your displeasure over American TV’s sponsorship of the Maher appearance, and that you fear that this will prevent you from doing business with American TV and Appliance stores in the future.

A poster at Badger Blogger also pointed out that WKLH Radio is also co-sponsoring Maher. In fact, the performance is advertised on the WKLH website.

They too appear not to mind insulting Christians -- and Muslims too.

The third sponsor is the Shepherd Express. Their core readership is about where Maher is, so it’s no surprise.

Anti-Christian Bigot, Bill Maher, Sponsored in Milwaukee by American TV

One does learn interesting things by reading the Shepherd Express. The interesting thing, when I picked up a copy today, was that American TV is sponsoring the appearance of Bill Maher in Milwaukee.

Maher is famous for, among other things, his hatred of Christians.

Maher has said that Christians are “part of a dress-up cult that hates sex and worships magic.”

He facetiously urged that Americans convert to Islam because “We’re a nation enthralled to religious fanatics anyway. Does it really matter which fanatics we’re enthralled to? They’re both filled with moral pieties and codes of conduct nobody follows anyway.”

Maher said the Pope a “used to be a Nazi” and the Catholic church is a “child abusing religious cult.”

And the quotes go on and on:

We are a nation that is unenlightened because of religion . . . I think that religion stops people from thinking. I think it justifies crazies. I think that flying planes in a building was a faith-based initiative. I think religion is a neurological disorder. If you look at it logically, it’s something that was drilled into your head when you were a small child.

Of course, believing what was “drilled into your head when you were a small child” may be better than beliefs you embraced as a teenager because living by a Christian moral code turned out to be rather inconvenient.

But the key point is: Maher is a bigot.

We called a local American TV store and asked for the manager, to see whether we could confirm this (was this some sort of wild advertising error by the Shepherd Express? The American logo appears in two different ads in the paper, one on page 3 and the other on page 9).

The manager said he couldn’t confirm it because he didn’t know who Bill Maher is. He also said he didn’t know what the Shepherd Express is.

We asked for the number of a “corporate flack” and he insisted he did not know what a “flack” is. Corporate headquarters in Madison said that no flacks will be in until Monday.

Maher’s intolerant tirades against religion far exceed anything Don Imus said about the Rutgers Women’s basketball team. Corporate America distanced itself from Imus.

Is it OK to attack Christians? And while we are at it, Muslims too?

In the past, we have bought a few things from American. No more.