It's a shame reading some of the hateful remarks on the Jim Henson Company's Facebook message. There are people out there that don't seem to understand that it's not an either/or issue. The Henson Company and others like it believe that Christians should be able to practice and gays should be able to get married. The Chick-Fil-A-minded companies believe Christians should have rights and gays shouldn't. They're the only ones forcing their beliefs upon others. The funny thing is that these self-professed bigots on facebook don't exactly know what they're boycotting or what JHC owns. Disney owns the Muppets, Marvel and Pixar and they've supported gay marriage for quite a while. There are so many companies that support this right.
It's that Cable News/Loudest Mouth Wins mentality. I hate this "You're either with us or against us" political scene oozing into our religions. While I do agree that Christians are cast in a negative light (due in part of the words and actions of the craziest that NO one wants to disavow), the fact that they think they're under Hitler levels of oppression (oh, didn't he kill people... like entire races of people he didn't like) is both disturbing and laughable. Yeah, some atheists can get very snarky and annoying, but that's push and push back passive aggressiveness. Some of them still blame zealots for Bush's second term.
But I have to ask... how come no one bats an eye or even roughly mentions when Christian Groups disavow and condemn the acts of zealots like Pat Robertson? There are those that do, and make no sound, and probably agree with JHC and some very liberal organizations. Heck, Jesus's teachings were
pretty liberal in their own right.
However, I do think this. If Christians want to stop being treated like crazy bigots, something they don't like at all, why do they continuously defend the extreme minority that actually
is crazy and bigoted and garbles religion to further their own hang ups? They had churches that basically said that it was okay to use Africans as slaves back in the 1800's, even though that's the most UnChristian like thing I can think of to happen to God's Children. The truth of the matter is, the head of these organizations are megalomaniacs. Religion is second thought to them. No one needs that. It puts Christianity in a bad light.
But the fact of the matter is this. JHC doesn't hate Christianity... they hate that
a corporation is using their influence to further their political agenda, and they do not want to be associated with them because it would make themselves look bad. I hate Chic's actions for the same reason I hate all other corporations' actions... spending so much of their profit to
buy government influence. If I were to buy up city hall to fix parking tickets, that would be a
bribe and
illegal.
What
does give me a glimmer of hope is thus... when Archie, D.C., and Marvel added gay characters (mainly for publicity stunts, since no one really reads mainstream comics cuz they keep screwing them up), there was more support than complaint. And the complaints just made those organizations, mostly hate groups, look even dumber than ever before.