Catholic Haterade (with a side of Hater-Tots)

My colleague Karl has often asked (and I have echoed his concerns here) how long it will be before Catholicism is regarded as a hate crime.

Deacon Fournier takes up this issue in his article here.

The topic of Dr. Hudson’s article was recent “Hate Crimes” legislation which includes those who engage in homosexual behavior as a “protected class” in the very same manner as it includes gender and race. Some are concerned over where this legislation could lead. Others take comfort in language found within the legislation which seeks to protect people with “religious positions”. It is here where I raise the concern that a "two step" may be underway. If unchecked, the trends emerging could have the effect of censoring our right to contend in the Public Square. Here is how it happens. First, those who oppose our positions on matters such as the Right to Life for every human being from conception to natural death and the normative nature of the two parent, marriage bound family will relegate our truth claims to simply being "religious positions." Then they will require that these truth claims be confined to expression only within our Church Walls or we will face the Police power of the State. . .

The real possibility looms that today's Catholic positions on these matters of importance for all men and women, including those of other faiths or no faith at all, will be censored from the public debate or, worse yet, made the subject of a new form of censorship. We need to remember history. The early Christians were not persecuted for "religion" but as "enemies of the State" and for "hatred of the human race". In 1999, Evangelical Protestant theologian, Harold O.J. Brown of the Howard Center for the Family, Religion and Society noted a "similarity between the way the Roman authorities charged Christians of that era with "odium humani generis" [hatred of the human race] and the way the political and media establishment charge contemporary Christians with creating a "climate of hate."

Make sure you read the whole thing without retreating into the idea of "that could never happen here." Try to consider the reasons why it couldn't happen here. Are they really reasons at all?

I'm sure a lot of French folk had similar reasons back in 1789.