Religious Fundamentalism Used As A Legitimisation of Threatening and Exclusion, Says David Quinn
David Quinn, director of the Iona Institute, writes in the Irish Catholic: "Around the time of the Savita Halappanavar controversy [whether to legalise abortion in Ireland] I received an expletive-ridden phone call condemning the Catholic Church and telling me I should be hanged on O’Connell Street. Around that same time I was in the Henry Street area of Dublin city centre and I was stopped and attacked as a ‘Catholic toe-rag’ by a very angry looking man."
David Quinn continues: "When the Savita Halappanavar story broke, anyone who was in the public eye and expressed opposition to the Government’s abortion Bill was subjected to hate of this kind. Lots of it was laced with intense loathing of the Catholic Church.... We were physically threatened. Most of the emails were expletive-laden and after about the second paragraph lots of them started to indulge in vicious attacks on the Catholic Church and religion generally.
... Those who are religious are condemned as fundamentalists especially if they are religious and conservative. ‘Fundamentalism’ is the sum of all hate in their view.
Once you have convinced yourself those you oppose are motivated by hatred and bigotry and nothing else, then it becomes very easy to hate them in your turn. ‘Bigots’ have no rights. They must be ostracised, defamed and driven from polite society. ..."
Read all: http://www.irishcatholic.ie/article/new-sectarianism#sthash.4uVwjezF.Mxdd54Lj.dpuf