http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/02/04/the-ugly-hateful-result-of-the-anti-gay-religio/202417
I am sick and tired of this “sincerely held religious belief” bullshit excuse. It’s bullshit for a couple reasons. One is that those who use it tend to use it as a Get Out of Jail Free card for anything with which they disagree. Where does it end? We’ve already witnessed it used as an excuse not to pay taxes (spoiler alert: it didn’t work and Hovind lost big time), not to comply with federal law to provide comprehensive health care for women (SCOTUS took a shit on the U.S. constitution), and now more and more often we see religious bigots use it to defend their blatant and often boastful intolerance of the “other,” whomever they happen to hate most at the time whomever that may be.
Another reason it’s bullshit is that it only applies to religious people. What kind of magical incantation can atheists or other non-religious people utter to completely avoid responsibility like this “sincerely held religious belief” nonsense? Of course this is a rhetorical question because as an atheist I lack the need for this sort of premeditated “plan B” even if I wanted to avoid personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is one of the pillars upon which I live my life, as I would imagine many other atheists do as well. Why would I want to demean personal responsibility by decrying “but nuh-uh, you can’t tell me what to do because it offends my sincerely held belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster”? Seems like a cop-out to me.
Before you use your religion to back up hateful, homophobic, bigoted behavior, take a step back and think about if your religion is even worth a damn in the first place.
Reason for peace 