A journalist and advocate who rose from homelessness and addiction to serve as a spokesperson for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable was shot and killed at his home early Monday, police said.
Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times at about 1:30 a.m. and collapsed in the street after seeking help, police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Police believe the door to his Point Breeze home was unlocked or the shooter knew how to get in, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered, they said.
Authorities haven’t spoken publicly about the circumstances surrounding the killing.
I have done and will continue to call out racial and homophobic bigotry as quickly as I do religious bigotry.
Unfortunately, as shameful as it is, one of those forms of prejudice is supported by most of the active population here.
What? You mean in America, the country ruled by Christians who impose Christianity on children in schools, where the majority religion is Christianity, where Christian organizations get preferential treatment by the government, where Christianity is the overwhelming majority religion of politicians, and where there is an active political movement to literally enforce state Christianity on the population, and where Christian moral doctrine is being widely used to restrict the bodily autonomy of women?? Ah yes so much Christian hate
Unironically shut the fuck up
You have thoroughly convinced me!
Where can I sign up for the daily hate speech against Christians? Oh, nevermind, I forgot I already have a Lemmy account.
It is unfortunate that rather than learning how to fight against their methods, you have instead decided to emulate them.
“Hate speech against Christians”
Please point out the hate speech in the comment you replied to. Telling you to shut the fuck up isn’t hate speech, and everything else is literally a straightforward fact about Christianity in America. Zero hate speech.
Gotta play the persecution game though, am I right?
Those first two lines were intentionally sarcastic exaggeration. Was I supposed to include a /s for the cheap seats? It seemed pretty obvious from here.
They pretty well lost me when they told me to “shut the fuck up”. I certainly wasn’t going to waste my time on a clearly worded response to someone who likely wouldn’t read it anyways.
Not sure who you think is getting persecuted, I doubt many Christians would hang out in a place like this. Even those that push for the bodily autonomy of women would feel unwelcome with so many people openly hostile to their faiths.
If they’re offended by people acknowledging the impact of Christians on LGBT people in the US, good. Leave. I don’t have time for straight Christians who want to hand wring and whinge about others acknowledging the historical and current negative impact Christianity has had on LGBT people.
Do you know how many fucking anti-LGBT bills have been put forward just this year in the US? This isn’t rhetorical, a real number is attached to it. Don’t google it, think of a number.
What number did you guess?
Because it’s almost 500.
How many anti-Christianity bills have there been in the past 50 years, again?
There is nothing wrong with calling people out when they try to suppress your rights. The problem is pretending all Christians are the same on this issue and using that as a justification to attack them all.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/25/1124101216/trans-religious-leaders-say-scripture-should-inspire-inclusive-congregations
https://www.gaychurch.org/find_a_church/
I live in BFE Texas and there are ten Affirming Churches in the area; five of them are within about 45 minutes of me. As a comparison there are only two Cowboy Churches in the same area. Every major City I checked had several Affirming Churches.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans are Christian and they are not just going to give that up because you do not like their religion. These are people that need to be convinced of either the rightness of your cause or at least your right to live the way you want. Right now, all they are hearing is “They’re trying to turn your little boys into girls” or “Fuck the Christians”. Neither of these messages are helpful, and both make them feel the same way as you do when you look at that list. The difference is they have a lot more political influence.
When every asshole that wants to accuse a random Christian of murder, without a single piece of evidence, gets overwhelmingly upvoted it makes that fight harder.
My man, I think a lot of evidence has been presented just in this thread.
I get the point, you don’t easily turn people to your cause with hateful rhetoric, but at a certain point, patience is lost when it feels like people are just ignoring reality and continuing to not just participate in, but support institutions that have created a lot of harm for people.
Not sure why this 2 day old comment just showed up in my inbox, but have a response anyways.
Also an upvote for a well-worded response.
I can appreciate their frustrations. I have certainly felt plenty of my own and dropped a slur or two particularly at politicians.
Some of my issue is directly related to how they express those frustrations in a public forum, but what really tweaks my tail is how overwhelming the support is for those responses.
I ignored them at first, but at some point I need to either address them or drop Lemmy, which at this point means dropping the last bit of social media that I am using. Places like Lemmy and Reddit help me stay informed, so I figured I would try pointing it out some before dropping social media again for a couple more years.
Gee, I wonder who’s doing that? I wonder what religion they claim tells them to do it? I wonder how many Christians think that’s closer to the truth than trans kids knowing who they are? How many of them do you think would even listen to the trans religious leaders you use as a shield, who themselves are pointing out how fucked modern Christianity is?
Have you expended 1/10th as much energy arguing with those people as you have whining in this thread about how a comment made on an obscure forum online is the reason so many Christians think trans people are the devil?
I’m curious what you consider hate speed or bigotry against christians.
If I dislike all christians that follow the bible/their gods commands and believe in their gods benevolence, would you say I’m a bigot?
tl;dr Maybe. It mostly depends on your wording and actions. Christians are not one group or thing anymore than Europeans or LGBT people are. They are a collection of highly varied peoples that can’t even agree on the number of books in the bible or whether Jesus was man, god, or both.
If someone says or implies “all Christians” are this or that negative thing it moves closer to yes rather than maybe. If someone is accuses a person of being something for no other reason than a group they belong to, then the accuser is probably a bigot.
This wall of text is an eyesore, so I added bold to your words and Italics to other quotes to help with readability. My words have neither.
If you personally dislike them, but you don’t let it affect the way you treat them, I really wouldn’t care one way or another.
As far as I am concerned, fear and hatred of the unknown and different are as human and natural as love and lust. It is what people do with those emotions that matter.
If someone’s lust encourages them to date and eventually spend their life with someone they are attracted to that is a good expression. If someone’s lust encourages them to violet the privacy of or assault someone then that is a bad expression.
Fear of the unknown and different is similar. If it encourages someone to learn more about different peoples, foods, or animals, then it is a good expression. If it encourages them to disparage or commit acts of violence against them then that is a bad expression.
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/bigot
https://www.britannica.com/topic/hate-speech
I see bigotry and hate speech as more words and actions than opinions. What does an opinion matter if it is not expressed through word or deed? Is someone really intolerant if they tolerate someone in all areas except their own mind?
Mostly it comes down to treating any group, Christians in this case, as if they are the same and are each responsible for the acts of all the others.
Protestants, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodoxy don’t even agree on the number of books in the bible. If you haven’t run into the idea of the Apocrypha you may find it interesting.
Various numbers below (formatting edited for readability):
https://www.biblegateway.com/blog/2022/04/why-are-protestant-catholic-and-orthodox-bibles-different/
Lest you think that it is only the old testament that is debated here is info about the New testament in Martin Luther’s Bible:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilegomena#Reformation
deleted by creator
“Religious bigotry” LOL
The only people who practice anything that could be called that are religious people themselves. Everyone else just wants to be left the fuck alone.
Fair enough. I should have called it anti-religious bigotry.
Calling out your hateful ideology for what it is, is not bigotry. You seem to not understand that word either. Nothing I said was bigoted.
What? I didn’t call anything you said bigotry. Just adjusted the term I used based on your previous statement.
I am not sure what this means unless you think I am religious. I am not.
Religion is a choice
Expression of Religion is a choice. Belief in religion is often more fundamental to who a person is.
nah
Religion is poison.
It is unfortunate that you think so, there is a lot of wisdom in the various world religions.
We may be beyond the need for religion, but I doubt even that.
Finding wisdom in religion is like trying to pick corn out of shit.
Nice quote, though I think it would be better applied to this whole post.
The few bits of wisdom here are so surrounded by shit that most people would need a hose and sieve to find them.
No there’s not.
You can be a wise, moral and ethical person without religion. It’s easy. Tons of people do that every single day.
As an atheist (i do not believe in an intelligent creator, or othewise deity), the more time i invest in being moral and wise the more friends i make with pastors. Most people cannot tell from the surface that i am not religious, the more i ask myself if i am religious or not the more meaningless that question starts appearing.
I don’t identify with any particular religion, but it would be challenging to prove i’m not religious despite the fact that i do not believe in any god.
I can appreciate that train of thought.
A lot of agnostic and atheistic people have spent a lot of time considering their own moral and ethical values; I know I have. While my own version started with an ethics class I took while at a bible school, I still needed to spend plenty of time once I left that life considering what morals and ethical values I thought were relevant.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that an unbiased observer thought I was religious until they got to know me better.
I fully agree.
Edit: That in no way discounts the idea that there is a lot of wisdom in religion. Even if some of it is outdated.
That is not really what I was referring to Edit: when I said I doubt we are beyond the need for religion. There is a (debated) theory that religion was important in moving from tribalism towards modern civilization. Specifically, the belief that a god or gods would punish your neighbor if he was doing evil behind your back may have been a necessary concept in our development. Even in modern times, the idea that our fellow citizens may be doing evil without recourse is a serious consideration. It may be adding to our current societal stresses.
Of course, that could be all horse shit, but I am leaned slightly towards that opinion at present.
What wisdom is in world religions that couldn’t be found elsewhere without all the murdery baggage?
There is a difference between attacking someone who chooses a disgusting belief system and bigotry. Any adult who remains a Christian knows exactly what the religion with the highest kill count stands for. They decide to ignore that because they get the warm fuzzies once a week for an hour.
Now go restore Roe v. Wade or you are useless to me.
Bigotry is thinking, what I believe is right and everyone who believes differently is wrong.
To point at all varieties of Christianity and say, “you are bad,” is being bigoted.
If you want someone useful here are some people that agree with you and will help you fight, assuming you can manage to not call their belief system disgusting to their faces:
https://www.healthline.com/health-news/meet-the-religious-groups-fighting-to-save-abortion-access
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/22/american-religious-groups-vary-widely-in-their-views-of-abortion/
Episcopalians are less than 2% of the US population. Jewish people and LGBT people are a bigger voting bloc. Using one of the most liberal and one of the smallest Christian denominations as evidence for what Christianity in the US is like is intentionally misleading, when more than 10x as many Americans consider themselves Evangelicals (about 1/4th).
If I was trying to claim that is that standard view, then it would be misleading. Since I was actually claiming that there are a wide variety of beliefs among Christians, some even aligning with your values, it is pretty spot on representation. Treating them all the same is prejudicial behavior.
A fair-minded person would give an individual a chance to act like an asshole before treating them like trash.
A fair minded person would see that the predominant effect that all sects of Christianity has on the US these days is negative, and that’s largely due to the evangelical/Nationalist Christian wing. And sure; they might not be the numerical majority of “all Christians in the US”, but they are having a disproportionately large impact on the rest of Christianity in the country, as well as the country as a whole.
So sure: you can sit here and whinge all you want about how it’s unfair that people are becoming more and more hostile towards Christians because a subset of them are giving all the others a bad name (huh… where have we seen this dynamic before? Perhaps sometime in the early 2000s, in the context of a related but distinct Abrahamic monotheistic religion…?), but when an extremist sect does evil shit and the rest of the denomination does pretty much fuck-all to stop it, people are going to take an increasingly dim view of the religion as a whole. People don’t like it when you do shitty things to them. That’s just humans being humans.
Put another way: I’ll stop pre-judging Christians in America as hypocrites of the highest caliber once they can get their own fucking house in order, because right now it looks a distressingly large proportion of them are doing their level best to tear the fucking country apart in some nihilistic pursuit of hastening the end times so they can get raptured to heaven or some shit like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
You gotta take a stand somewhere. The intolerant religious zealots would be a good place to start.
To borrow a line from /u/theneverfox@pawb.social
https://lemmy.world/comment/3754441
The paradox is literally what’s happening with you in this thread, genius. the Christian church has been out of bounds for centuries, and now that people are finally responding appropriately, you kick and scream saying “not like that! you can only respond appropriately if you follow all the rules laid out by the people who oppress you! you need to tolerate our intolerance because our imaginary friend says we need to hate you to stop the end of the world”
There were “good” people who identify as Nazis. should we let that ideology thrive because a minority of its population put flowers on the graves their compatriots created?
I get that you just want to hold hands and sing kumbaya, but I have trouble holding the hands that are covered with the blood of my brothers, sisters, and allies.
The vast majority of Christians have spent your entire life moving more towards the middle. Yet, all you see is the ground that hasn’t been covered yet. When you push them (not me) back and pretend that they should be judged by the actions of their ancestors instead of their own actions, you make it that much more challenging to have them stay in-bounds, or move back in if they have gone astray.
When you compare the Christian Religion that two-thirds of the US shares, to the secular Nazi Ideology, and claim they have blood on their hands, you push them towards radicalization.
When people that support your stance go out-of-bounds themselves, and aren’t called on it they make it that much harder to show the way back in-bounds to the opposition that have strayed.
Huh, dang I guess you’re right. I mean, it certainly would be pretty wild for you to say that if the majority of Christians that I’ve personally met and the ones controlling my government had been organizing and campaigning to take away the rights of the LGBTQ+ community, women, and any racial minority since before my parents ever met. It’d be downright dishonest of you if, instead of moving more towards the middle, christians have spent the last 40 years sprinting to the far right as fast as they possibly could, to the point where a comparison to the Nazis doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Do you honestly think the women’s rights, LGBTQ+ acceptance, or the civil rights movement was championed by the Christian majority and they weren’t the primary opposition to those ideas?
It’d also be insane if the “secular Nazi ideology” was actually heavily Christian and the Catholic Church spent centuries laying the groundwork for Jewish Genocide, helped the Nazis seize power, and continued to protect them long after their atrocities were well known. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany
I guess if you are part of the oppressors, they’re probably quite nice to you. Sorry if my words are what push you to finally be honest with yourself about what you believe. Didn’t mean to radicalize you
You probably should have just stopped that first paragraph right there.
There was no reason to make crazy ass claims that only a fart-for-brains would believe, then spend the time smacking them down. If you really don’t think the opinion of the average Christian has changed towards LGBT folks, then you haven’t been paying attention. Please feel free to check any numbers anywhere and see that roughly half of US Christians are fine with homosexuality now. Compared to 30, 40, 50, 100 years ago, this is a huge shift.
If you wanted to claim that a lot of Christians joined the Nazis, that is one thing, but the ideology itself is incompatible with Christianity.
From the same wikipedia article that you linked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Nazi_Germany#Nazi_attitudes_towards_Christianity
It is true that the Nazi regime was hostile to the Christian church - because they recognized the power the church held and knew they needed to be the one and only source of truth. Nazism needed to be above god (that’s the “fundamentally incompatible” part of your argument, since the church argues nothing is above god), but never sought to eradicate the belief in Him. When 95% of the regime identifies as Christian, and uses Christian ideology to suppress and genocide members of every other religion, that is a fundamentally Christian ideology, even if they fought for power directly with the Vatican. With many Nazi leaders wanting to treat Nazism itself like a religion - complete with divine rule - I’d even go so far as to argue that Nazism is a particularly embarrassing Christian sect.
Look Ma, I can cherry pick wikipedia too!
Seems like Hitler had more of an issue with the political power of the church instead of their beliefs and even tried making his own Protestant sect.
But you seem to enjoy taking Nazis at their word (surely they wouldn’t lie, would they?) so sure, they were totally a secular organization that definitely treated Jewish people nicely. They were even socialist!
And yet, when you ask about trans identity, they’ll show what they really believe. given the chance, even those who are “fine with it” would rather see us eradicated to please their special guy than for us to live peacefully by their side. Since I know how the Nazi comparison tickles you so much: if you asked the 1930s German population what they thought of Jewish people, more than “roughly half” would’ve said they were “fine” with them.
The shift in Christian attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ community is the direct result of opposition to the church - which was considered to be “out of bounds” and “pushing Christians to be radicalized” at the time. The church changed their stance because they seek power and control over any principles they pretend to have. The shift happened in spite of religion, not because of it. I see you didn’t even try to respond to how Christians were the main opposition to any and every single push for civil rights. If we sat back and placated them like you believe we should, only white landowning men would be able to vote or have rights.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_opposition
If Christians are so progressive, why is it always Christian groups that oppose progress? wait, I can answer this one for you: “Those groups don’t represent ‘real’ Christianity”. Surely there’s nothing fundamental to the religion that makes oppression intrinsic.
I fully concede this point. I had only read the bit about Nazis being secular recently while looking up something and clearly did not do enough supporting research before repeating it.
No objection here.
You seem to be stuck on this idea that I think Christians are the real progressives or something. I have not in any way said or tried to imply any such thing. Just that the majority have been moving toward the middle nearly your entire lifetime.
You should definitely stick to things I actually said, not easy to win stances that I do not hold.
I have made it pretty clear from the beginning that we should stand up to bigoted hateful speech regardless where it comes from. Since you seem to have missed it: That includes Christians, but it also includes LGBT members, and anyone in-between or outside of them.
Pretending that a third of the world all believes the same thing because of certain groups among them is a problem. Treating them all like shit, for something other members of their faith believe, is a reflection on the person treating another human like shit not on their target.
Trans identity is a complex issue. One that affects more than just trans people. Surely it will shift in some way over time, though I would not want to even try to guess in what direction at this point. People go nucking futs when it comes to their kids, and in my opinion the Trans community lost some PR ground when it came out that schools were intentionally hiding students who were transitioning gender identities from their parents. Edit in Italics
If you want to make progress on trans issues, I would suggest that the LGBT community take a transitional stance and then move again in the future, rather than losing their minds because they cannot force the whole population to share their views all at once.
This is a tried and true tactic when it comes to gay rights. When Clinton passed, “Don’t ask, don’t tell” it was a highly controversial pro-gay stance. If he had tried to push the military to where we are today there is no telling how the US would have reacted, but it would not have been good.
deleted by creator
Just be sure you’ve taken a moment to understand who you’re speaking with and what you’re speaking with them about. Because in this case, any issue of bigotry has absolutely nothing to do with this drug related domestic dispute murder.
Commenters here are arguing with each other over something that has nothing to do with this case. So, it’s not that you care about the victim, you care about virtue signaling.
FWIW, the victim regularly attended an Episcopalian church. So, I’m not so sure he’d be cool with people using religion as a cudgel beneath his obituary.
Is that what it is looking like now? The article was significantly sparse on details.
Yeah. No argument there…
I posted this earlier https://lemmy.ml/comment/4475683
Thank you for the link. The article from that comment was far superior.
I am sorry to hear that Josh lost his life like that. Seems like Philly lost a good guy.
Hopefully it wasn’t actually the domestic option. It is a hard thought to think that someone he helped out by letting them live there would come back to kill him.
Also, I am glad to hear that his friends are looking into rehoming his rescued cat friend.
Well hey maybe religious people should stop consistently hurting other humans and society in general because they think their imaginary friend would be down with it.
It sounds an awful like you are saying, “Well yeah, we are bigots, but we are bigots because they deserve it!”
Am I misunderstanding you?
Yes, you are misunderstanding me.
I’m saying that religion has a richly documented history of intolerance and repression, up to and including the present day. I am simultaneously saying that I am intolerant of intolerance.
I feel like you should read up on this if you’re still struggling to wrap your head around the nuance of what pretty much everyone else in this comment tree besides yourself is expressing.
Thank you for the clarification.
I have read that multiple times. I just think it is a shite theory.
I eventually need to put it in my own words, but /u/theneverfox@pawb.social’s post is pretty good for now: (emphasis added)
https://lemmy.world/comment/3754441