Underseer
Contributor
http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/...comedian-david-cross-wearing-temple-garments/
https://twitter.com/davidcrosss/status/1030939207538233344/photo/1
Do you think this crosses the line? I would say not, but this is not so clear cut. At least not for me.
If a modern comedian put on a nun's outfit to make fun of Catholics, would that cross the line? I would say not.
If a modern comedian put on a yarmulke to make fun of Jews, would that cross the line? I would say not.
If a comedian in the 1930s put on a yarmulke to make fun of Jews, then fuck him, he's a fucking bigot.
Jews
Yes, religious beliefs are ideas and thus inherently deserving of mockery and harsh criticism, but we do have a history of treating religious minorities in very ugly ways, and so I think it's worth talking about where that line is anytime we're talking about a religious minority.
What makes something bigoted or not is how it interacts with social attitudes and or political structures that inflict systemic injustice on a minority. Throughout the West in the 1930s, it was simply acceptable to treat Jews badly. Jews were simply kept out of certain jobs at certain companies, or even entire professions. Further, the Nazis were in the process of ramping up anti-Jewish hysteria in a way that was likely to make the mistreatment of Jews by ordinary people worse.
Thus, a comedian in the 1930s would have been playing into all of that by donning a yarmulke for the purposes of mockery. Intentionally or not, his mockery would affect and be affected by what else was going on at the time and sent the message to anti-semites that their anti-semitism is justified. It's OK for your kid to beat up that Jewish kid. It's OK for you to turn down the employment application of someone just because they're Jewish. The comic mockery can send to others the message that further abuse of an already-abused minority is acceptable.
This is precisely why some comedians talk about "punching up instead of down."
But modern comedians? That's different. Jews are in a very different place now. I don't doubt that there are still companies out there with whom they can't get jobs. I'm sure they still have to face the occasional frothing street-corner preacher yelling "Jesus-killer!" at them, but a non-Jewish comedian wearing a yarmulke for the purposes of mockery isn't automatically wrong nor automatically crossing the line.
Back to Mormons
So what about Mormons?
People forget that at one time Mormons faced very real mistreatment in this country. For fuck's sake, the state of Missouri declared war on them. It was technically legal for random citizens to kill Mormons in the state of Missouri up until the law was rescinded in the 1970s.
I would argue that modern Mormons are in a similar place as Jews. While there are still individuals and companies that will treat them badly, overall things have improved enough that systemic injustice against Mormons just isn't an animating concern.
While we should be concerned about systemic injustice, we should also keep in mind that the taboo against criticizing religious ideas has had incredibly negative effects in the past, particularly when the taboo is applied to the majority (which Mormons and Jews aren't in America).
Very likely, the taboo against criticizing religious ideas made things worse for Jews in the 1930s and Mormons in the 1830s. Various Catcholic and Protestant religious leaders in the 1930s were only too happy to fan the flames of hate against Jews in the 1930s and hide behind the taboo. I can only assume that something similar was going on with the Mormons in the 1800s.
Thus, I think things aren't so cut and dried.
In the case of religion, we could just draw a line between the religious majority and religious minorities, but I think that would be a mistake because a sufficiently bad idea by a religious minority could still animate people to commit shockingly immoral acts such as the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult. While Mormons were a genuinely abused minority and we should probably keep that in mind when talking about them, they also had racist teachings as part of their official theology up until relatively recently. African-Americans could not hold certain positions of leadership within the Mormon church until shockingly recently.
Above all, I think we should make a clear distinction between criticizing the ideas and criticizing the people who hold those ideas. If this were the 1830s, David Cross' promotional photo above would have been seen as justification for mistreating Mormons by the average person, but would not today.
Thus, complaints about the above photo fall into the category of blasphemy, and I think blasphemy is an affront to human rights and human decency. If your god needs to be protected from words (or pictures), then your god is not a god.
https://twitter.com/davidcrosss/status/1030939207538233344/photo/1
Do you think this crosses the line? I would say not, but this is not so clear cut. At least not for me.
If a modern comedian put on a nun's outfit to make fun of Catholics, would that cross the line? I would say not.
If a modern comedian put on a yarmulke to make fun of Jews, would that cross the line? I would say not.
If a comedian in the 1930s put on a yarmulke to make fun of Jews, then fuck him, he's a fucking bigot.
Jews
Yes, religious beliefs are ideas and thus inherently deserving of mockery and harsh criticism, but we do have a history of treating religious minorities in very ugly ways, and so I think it's worth talking about where that line is anytime we're talking about a religious minority.
What makes something bigoted or not is how it interacts with social attitudes and or political structures that inflict systemic injustice on a minority. Throughout the West in the 1930s, it was simply acceptable to treat Jews badly. Jews were simply kept out of certain jobs at certain companies, or even entire professions. Further, the Nazis were in the process of ramping up anti-Jewish hysteria in a way that was likely to make the mistreatment of Jews by ordinary people worse.
Thus, a comedian in the 1930s would have been playing into all of that by donning a yarmulke for the purposes of mockery. Intentionally or not, his mockery would affect and be affected by what else was going on at the time and sent the message to anti-semites that their anti-semitism is justified. It's OK for your kid to beat up that Jewish kid. It's OK for you to turn down the employment application of someone just because they're Jewish. The comic mockery can send to others the message that further abuse of an already-abused minority is acceptable.
This is precisely why some comedians talk about "punching up instead of down."
But modern comedians? That's different. Jews are in a very different place now. I don't doubt that there are still companies out there with whom they can't get jobs. I'm sure they still have to face the occasional frothing street-corner preacher yelling "Jesus-killer!" at them, but a non-Jewish comedian wearing a yarmulke for the purposes of mockery isn't automatically wrong nor automatically crossing the line.
Back to Mormons
So what about Mormons?
People forget that at one time Mormons faced very real mistreatment in this country. For fuck's sake, the state of Missouri declared war on them. It was technically legal for random citizens to kill Mormons in the state of Missouri up until the law was rescinded in the 1970s.
I would argue that modern Mormons are in a similar place as Jews. While there are still individuals and companies that will treat them badly, overall things have improved enough that systemic injustice against Mormons just isn't an animating concern.
While we should be concerned about systemic injustice, we should also keep in mind that the taboo against criticizing religious ideas has had incredibly negative effects in the past, particularly when the taboo is applied to the majority (which Mormons and Jews aren't in America).
Very likely, the taboo against criticizing religious ideas made things worse for Jews in the 1930s and Mormons in the 1830s. Various Catcholic and Protestant religious leaders in the 1930s were only too happy to fan the flames of hate against Jews in the 1930s and hide behind the taboo. I can only assume that something similar was going on with the Mormons in the 1800s.
Thus, I think things aren't so cut and dried.
In the case of religion, we could just draw a line between the religious majority and religious minorities, but I think that would be a mistake because a sufficiently bad idea by a religious minority could still animate people to commit shockingly immoral acts such as the mass suicide of the Heaven's Gate cult. While Mormons were a genuinely abused minority and we should probably keep that in mind when talking about them, they also had racist teachings as part of their official theology up until relatively recently. African-Americans could not hold certain positions of leadership within the Mormon church until shockingly recently.
Above all, I think we should make a clear distinction between criticizing the ideas and criticizing the people who hold those ideas. If this were the 1830s, David Cross' promotional photo above would have been seen as justification for mistreating Mormons by the average person, but would not today.
Thus, complaints about the above photo fall into the category of blasphemy, and I think blasphemy is an affront to human rights and human decency. If your god needs to be protected from words (or pictures), then your god is not a god.