Cornering the market in reactionary behavior

As readers of my blog know, I occasionally get very amusing letters that I share. To be honest, most of the people who are religious don't threaten me with death or anything - probably the most common letter I get from Christians (and so far they have all been from Christians) are attempts to dissuade me from lumping all religious people together.

For the record, I don't lump all religious people together. I do, however, have deep criticisms about religion generally, tho' I'll acknowledge there are a few religious out there I have no beef with. It's sorta hard to get worked up over Jain or Unitarian Universalists. But they feel that my general critique of religion throws the "good" religious people out with the "bad" religious people. I just got done with precisely such a discussion with a Catholic woman. As usual, it went no where. In the end, she was just offended that I think her religion is sexist, racist and homophobic and the supporters of that religion support sexism, racism and homophobia - which is to say that they are sexist, racist and homophobic. I compared the Catholic Church with the KKK in that regard - if someone in the KKK said that they weren't racist, you'd laugh. The Catholic Church isn't so much different from the KKK to me.

But during all of this I got a revelation. At some point, the woman said that religious people don't have the market cornered on sexism, racism and homophobia. I thought back for a while and thought to myself, "But . . . they do. I can't think of a single sexist, racist or homophobic organization that isn't pretty explicitly religious. I can't think of a single atheist organization that is." I wrote back telling her that, but shortly afterwards she stopped writing to me altogether.

So, that's my little revelation. Religious organizations do have the sexist, racist and homophobic markets cornered.