POINT OF VIEW
Where’s line between faith, discrimination?
Did God create inferior humans against whom the “enlightened” majority may proudly discriminate? The question finds stark illustration in two articles published in the Aug. 14 edition of The Post.
On page A4 was “Rape a key pillar of Islamic State,” in which an Islamic State fighter cited his deeply held religious beliefs as justification for the abhorrent pain and humiliation he was about to inflict on his nonbeliever victim of 12. “Because the preteen girl practiced a religion other than Islam, the Quran not only gave him the right to rape her — it condoned and encouraged it, he insisted.”
In “Kentucky clerk defies order to issue licenses” on page A3, “The clerk, Kim Davis, says her Christian faith bars her from authorizing samesex marriages, and she has refused to issue licenses either to same-sex or heterosexual couples ... in defiance of a direct order from Gov. Steven Beshear.”
The clerk’s opinion was that her right to religious freedom trumped the rights of the two male marriage applicants. And the clerk’s beliefs were based on her presumably sincere view of the Bible.
So: Did the strength of the clerk’s faith warrant excuse or justify the humiliation and hurt that her actions caused to the two applicants, who were rebuffed in their effort to exercise their own right to the pursuit of happiness?
Where is the line beyond which a valid exercise of religious freedom becomes a hypocritical rejection of another’s equal right to freedom? Whether based on one’s interpretation of the Bible or the Quran, can sincere religious beliefs really be morally imposed on others in the name of “religious freedom”?
Or are the stances of both the clerk and the Islamic State rapist similarly hypocritical: “What I believe is right, and ‘too bad, so sad’ for those with different beliefs or lifestyles”?