A skating rink in upstate New York got a visit from state officials after the rink began advertising their "Christian Skate Night" on Sundays. The state warned the owner that he was violating anti-discrimination laws.I read about this at a television station's website, which ran a poll alongside the story asking readers if they agreed that the skating rink was practicing discrimination. At the time of this writing, the respondents to the poll overwhelmingly say no, it is not discrimination, by 91% to 9%, with about 16,000 people answering the poll.
What do you think?
Do opinions of what is and what is not discrimination change when the respondent is a member of a group that is supposedly discriminating? I'm assuming — rightly or wrongly — that most of the respondents are Christians. If the skating rink had advertised Muslim Skate Night or Satanists Skate Night or Gay Skate Night and then been called on the carpet by the state's Division of Human Rights, would the opinions of those 16,000 have been the same, that is, that the rink was not discriminating?
The owner of the rink, Len Bernardo, has renamed Sunday "Spiritual Skate Day."
A blog called Badlands has gotten itself pretty upset over this, ranting and railing against Jews for creating a climate of hate against Jesus Christ, saying Lester Maddox was supporting the Christian faith by chasing blacks with pickaxes and guns, and repeatedly referring to Martin Luther King as Marren Loofer Keen. He calls newspapers "Jewspapers." It must really suck to be that filled with hatred and still think you're a Christian.
Even funnier, or sicker, are comments left on his blog by a visitor saying that the skating rink owner should be arrested for opening his skating rink on Sunday! Yeah... that's what we need in this country, a return to Blue Laws. Jeez.
Meanwhile, the Traditional Values Coalition has fired off a letter to New York Gov. George Pataki asking him to "rein in this illegal attempt to manipulate the law to accomplish a violation of basic civil rights."
A quick look at the Traditional Values Coalition finds they hate gays, hate "radical feminists," support right-wing activist judges, and want the Pledge Protection Act to pass the Senate. This bill, S.1046/H.R. 2389, sponsored by Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Representative Todd Akin (R-MO), would take away the Federal court system's ability to rule on certain issues, namely, any case involving the Pledge of Allegiance.
The chairman of this group, Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, says, "The 9th Circuit Court in California and other federal courts have shown that they are incapable of issuing fair rulings on the Pledge of Allegiance and the words ‘under God’ in the Pledge. We must remove power from these federal courts to tamper with the Pledge — by prohibiting them from ruling on the Pledge in the future."
Jesus Christ | Roller Skating | Christianity | Discrimination | Born Jesus
4 comments:
And what makes you think you know the mind of Christ? Or that Christ would ever condecend to say "Yo!"
Your peaudo-spiritual superiority and your childish adolescence attached to it would lead me to say, 'keep quiet' until you have attained to some sort of maturity- spiritual or otherwise.
Father John,
What makes you think I'm speaking for your Jesus? Perhaps I'm Hispanic. Jesus is one of the most popular names in that culture.
Your Jesus's name wasn't Jesus, anyway. That's a later Greek adaptation. His name was Yeshua, or Joshua — which has been in the top ten of names given to babies in the U.S. every year since 1980.
The phrase "Yo!" is a common word. It was added to the dictionary nearly 15 years ago.
And if I am speaking for your Jesus, then, who in Heaven's name are you to judge it? The Catholic Church has been claiming to speak for Jesus for nearly 2,000 years, and the Protestants have claimed to do so for several hundred.
Who are you to say I'm not?
I checked our your websites. It appears you claim to speak for God/Jesus yourself. But your version of God/Jesus seems to be rather racist and bigoted. I note quite a bit of anti-black, anti-Jew rhetoric on your sites.
Who called you to write "the peripatetic ramblings of a man called in these last days to defend his race, his faith, and his culture, from those that would destroy all three, in the name of 'progress'?
— The Son of Man
Was this "Christian night" a theme (music, etc.), or a "Christians only" thing?
@anonymous it is a theme, not a Christian only
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