San Francisco Residents

Something like 23,000 Christian youth gathered in San Francisco for a rally. The youth were met with some disapproval and protests, but nothing as overt and violent as they faced last year. Last year the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution condemning the event, so this year they tried to show a little more tolerance. The city commissioners banned microphones and amplifiers during the hours of their rally, citing sound ordinances.

Many of the city’s more traditional residents (pictured above) attempted tolerance of the youth rally while holding a counter-rally. Many accuse the youth movement as endangering ‘San Francisco values’.

Some of the tolerant left response to the youth rally:

“These people are no better than the Taliban — Christian soldiers,” said Joel Cook, 47, from Alameda. source

“If you look at history, people have been mobilized into things they don’t agree with. Look at the Nazi youth,” Sunsara Taylor said in a phone interview. “I think they’re very similar.” source

“It was important to show these children that even though we may be on opposite sides of the political and spiritual spectrum, we have a lot in common, and we want to minister to them,” said Sister Mary Timothy Simplicity, of San Francisco’s Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, sporting extravagant makeup and a fitted nun’s habit. The Sisters are a group of activists and self-described nuns who include people of all sexual orientations. source

“When you’re in a city where there’s every viewpoint under the sun, and you’re working with a group for whom there can be only one viewpoint, and never any compromise, you’re going to have a clash of ideals,” said Thom Lynch, Executive Director of the San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center. source

“They are being fed, spoon-fed, hate,” said Tom Ammiano, a member of the city’s Board of Supervisors who is gay.

Aaron Peskin, the board’s president, called BattleCry “reckless and irresponsible.”

“We need to increase understanding of our human differences, not teach our kids to be suspicious and hateful towards people unlike them,” Mr. Peskin said. source

The intolerance of the left is disturbing. If there is the slightest hint of disagreement or lack of acceptance of a lifestyle it is immediately attacked at ‘bigoted’ and ‘intolerant’. But apparently what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander.

There’s a couple of things about this overall attitude that I find particularly disturbing. One is the renaming of things to make them either sound more acceptable or more outrageous. For example: We are constantly be told that ‘patriotic’ is railing against our own country and to believe in our country is ‘ignorant, small-minded and bigoted.’.

Another thing that is of concern in this culture war is the comparison of anyone the leftists disagree with as ‘nazi’ or ‘taliban’ or ‘no better than al-qaeda’ or ‘fascist’. Those terms are used to shut up anyone who disagrees with their point of view. The problem is that THAT is intolerant and - yes - fascist. But worse than that, it minimizes the atrocities perpetrated by the nazis, the taliban, al-qaeda and fascists. It normalizes those forms of controlling populations, denies the history of those organizations and leaves us vulnerable to seeing the rise of those types of population control yet again.

I hate to tell the good people of San Francisco - but a rally by a bunch of Christian youth will be the least of their concerns if any of the groups they compared that group to get a chance at them. The nazis certainly wouldn’t have bothered with holding a rally and peaceful protest. They would have just been shipped off as ’socially feeble minded’. The taliban or al-qaeda would be less than sympathetic to their feelings or need to express themselves in their outfits. They will just be hanging at the end of a crane at the city gates as a lesson to others.

Do yourselves a favor - quit calling those who don’t agree with you bomb-dropping names. It’s never a good idea to forget and/or distort the lessons of history.