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The Los Angeles Dodgers, a baseball team are apparently hosting a "pride night" and have invited a group called "The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence" to perform at it.
The "sisters" are of course not sisters at all, but in fact, an anti catholic group of men who dress as nuns and mock catholics.
Originally the Dodgers, a baseball team, after learning that this was essentially an anti-Catholic hate group, uninvited them. However, they recently re-invited them.
What is the fucking point of this? What possible reason does a baseball team have to indicate a sexual preference? And why does this include mocking Catholics?
God this stuff is demoralizing. Is that the point?
Where is your evidence that they are anti-Catholic? You linked to their website, but there is nothing there about Catholicism at all. That is in marked contrast to the websites of actually anti-Catholic groups.
...you don't think a panoply of wildly caricatured Catholic nuns is about Catholicism "at all?"
About? At all? Yes. But anti? No, not per se. There are a thousand reasons to dress in drag as a nun other than being anti-Catholic. To criticize certain Catholic doctrines re homosexuality. To push back on political efforts by organized religion (a big deal in 1979). Or just to be ironic, given that nuns are meant to be chaste.
And, btw, one can criticize the Catholic Church (an enormously powerful institution) without criticizing either Catholics or Catholicism.
So would you agree that blackface is not "anti-black" per se? Do you believe that caricatures of Jews are not "anti-Semitic" per se?
Er... maybe we have different ideas about what it means to be "anti-Catholic," but criticizing Catholic doctrines of homosexuality sounds paradigmatically "anti-Catholic" to me. Pushing back on political efforts by the Catholic church seems "anti-Catholic," especially given the Church's long political history.
Catholics, maybe, but Catholicism? This seems like splitting hairs incredibly fine, to the point of suggesting a motte and bailey doctrine at play. Mockery has long been a highly effective approach to criticism, and criticism is not pro-, it is anti-.
"You can keep your Catholicism, we're just going to level your Church, caricature your symbols, mock your practices--no, we're not anti-Catholic per se, don't be ridiculous!"
That seems implausible to me.
Being Catholic is a choice in a way that being black or ethnic Jewish is not. Hence making fun of blacks or ethnic Jews for being blacks or ethnic Jews is more mean spirited than making fun of Catholics for being Catholics.
There is a difference of quality between, for example, making fun of a person for thinking that the Earth is flat and making fun of a person because he belongs to a certain ethnic group. Both are mean spirited, but the former is at least potentially part of some kind of meaningful debate, whereas the latter leads nowhere except to divisiveness.
No, it's not. There's a difference but it's much smaller than people imagine. Is being "atheist" a choice? People don't choose their convictions the same way they choose their clothes. I'm a Christian. Sometimes I wished I weren't, because Christianity is very demanding and because it's low status among my peers. But I'm convinced of its truth for the time being, so whether I like it or not I remain Christian.
Choice or not a choice, 'round these parts, atheism is what Robin Hanson calls the "sacred".
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