Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Poisoning the Well: "Religious Discrimination" Laws

The American media is portraying the recent bills in Arizona and Indiana concerning the freedom of religion as "religious discrimination" laws.  Thus, before anyone begins to research what the law is trying to achieve, they are given a negative image of what the law does.

In logic, we call this "Poisoning the Well."  Basically this involves:

1) Negative claim made about Subject X
2) Therefore any defense made by or concerning X is rooted in this negative claim.

In America today we are seeing anyone who remains faithful to the Christian belief that marriage is intended to be between one man and one woman is labeled homophobic or intolerant, and any attempt to legally defend this is presumed to be rooted in homophobia or intolerance.

It's dishonest behavior used to propagandize. What's alarming is currently we have the government and the mainstream media using this tactic to prevent the freedom of religion in areas they disapprove of.

Now of course any proposed law should be carefully drafted to avoid abuses. However, the basic premise of such laws is that no person should be forced to act in such a way that obligates them to do what they believe is evil. That's also the basic premise behind the Freedom of Religion in the First Amendment.

For the media and government to call these principles "religious discrimination" does not bode well for the Freedom of Religion in America.

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