Eric, the only way to start off here, is to assume the least offensive interpretation and work our way outward from there.

Sullivan clearly has issues with religion being used as a weapon against persons. (he has also been sensitized to those with strong faith based morals, "moralizing" about gays")

So, from his point of view...those folks are using religion as a political tool. If they advocate strongly for political decisions to come down on the "wrong" side of the debate involving gays...Sullivan will feel that they are wrong...and may even feel persecuted. For being gay.

To him, (and for him) the logical nexus...the "connection" between people using religion as a tool of persecution...is simply a matter of degree.

He is not necessarily linking the ACTS of blowing up schoolbuses, chopping off heads, slamming planes into buildings as MORAL EQUIVALENTS of protest marching against gay marriage ...he is making the connection only in the utilization of religion as a political tool to persecute persons or groups...solely based on that adherence to a faith based reason.

As a heterosexual, I don't feel the sting of being treated as unworthy of marriage, adoption, societal acceptance as parents or couples...as would a gay man or woman. I simply won't feel it the same way.

If the most vocal proponents of my second class citizenship come from a common place...I might begin to see them as unreasonable. Unfair. I might even lash out at them.

Forget whether there is such a thing as Christianists...it's really an issue of people being faith based moralists. And they seek to impose upon Sullivan (and any group of persons who feel attacked by them) their morals...which they believe should be societal morals.

The real issue...is whether we can agree as a nation upon a set of morals that do not denigrate persons, that are reasonable and rational under MAN'S laws...and let the Creator sort out offenses solely committed against HIM.

Sullivan, I believe has an excellent point...but may be traveling down the wrong path to get there. I think you should drive people down THEIR street...to get to YOUR house.

What I would prefer...is a full, frank and unfettered discussion as to why in the world we "good" people of this country...would allow gays to be isolated and picked on like this.

We should have a discussion as to whether that reflects the law of MAN, that we wish to govern our country. I am disappointed in my countrymen in this one respect...and this one respect only. I think we are a great nation and we do great things. I think we are governed by a strong conscience and have a solid sense of right and wrong.

In this instance, however, (and I am more politically aligned with Glenn and Ann...who I see as centrists, than I am with Andrew these days)...I think Andrew has a solid point.

We are better than this, Eric. We should be standing up for gay Americans...I think they are being picked on...and I see no solid reasoning behind the decisions about gay marriage or gay adoption. At all.

The law is no respecter of persons...but, it ought to represent the goodness of man. We have failed in this instance. I listened carefully to the arguments pro and con...and I simply come away with the feeling that gays are being bullied here.

Not by "Christianists", because I think there is no such thing...but by people who are using religion as a weapon against folks who did nothing to deserve a weapon turned on them.

For those of us who despise bullies...it's time to pick up the mantle of righteousness, it's time to get between a bad path and our laws. Those folks don't deserve to be bullied...and folks like you and I and Glenn and Ann...ought to be saying so.

With "all due respect" vis-a-vis cfbleachers, you could also argue that the difference between a steak "rear" and "well-done" is a matter of degree, too, but calling each the same thing tells you nothing about how you're cow's been cooked.

You cannot equate IslamoFascists with Christian conservatives. Period. End of discussions. And if you think the distinction is a matter of degree, then call PETA animalist-fascists, or the Human Rights Campaign gay-fascist-terrorists, after all both are using "pressure" to achieve "political ends" just like al Qaeda! Just like Hezbollah! I see no difference! Just a matter o' degree!

Everytime you post Eric on Miss Sullivan, I repeat my prior point: Why the hell does anybody care what she thinks? He used to be somebody who would say interesting things in interesting ways. That Andrew Sullivan is gone and he's not coming back. He's devolved into a one-note diva who used to be somebody.

Oops! Stupid me! That opening sentence should read:

"With "all due respect" vis-a-vis cfbleachers, you could also argue that the difference between a steak "RARE" and "well-done" is a matter of degree, too, but calling each the same thing tells you nothing about how you're cow's been cooked."

I need to proofread my occasional intervals of blindingly brilliant insight. They happen rarely enough (not "rearly" enough) that you'd think I'd have the time.

I find this remark by Greenwald revealing:

What seems to be guiding Althouse and Reynolds' hatred of the term "Christianist" is that it highlights a fact which they both are eager to ignore -- namely, that the political party to which they are so devoted is dominated by individuals who believe that their religious/Christian beliefs ought to dictate the American political process, shape secular law, and exploit coercive state power to constrain the choices of their fellow citizens.

As opposed to, I guess, the way in which the political party to which Greenwald is devoted doesn't want its beliefs to dictate the American political process, shape secular law, and exploit coercive state power to constrain the choices of his fellow citizens?

Snark aside, the real beef appears to be not with the guy who wants his (non-specific) beliefs to dictate the American political process et cetera, but rather with the guy who wants his Christian beliefs to dictate the American political process et cetera. There are only two ways to justify this:

(1) Hostility toward Christianity and the participation of Christians in the political process; or,

(2) A conception of the United States as a militantly secular state whose laws cannot legitimately reflect or be predicated upon any sort of religious values whatsoever.

Assuming, perhaps generously, that Sullivan and Greenwald are not simply garden-variety bigots, then we're left with explanation #2, which is problematic in a whole panolpy of ways -- not the least of which is that the United States isn't a militantly secular state whose laws cannot legitimately reflect or be predicated upon any sort of religious values whatsoever. (Otherwise we may as well kiss off such things as the Thirteenth Amendment, which was the product of activism by Abolitionists whose beliefs as to slavery were informed by their Christianity.)

At bottom all laws make moral judgements. Some Christians believe that moral judgements informed by Christianity are superior to moral judgements informed by other faiths, or by Andrew Sullivan's collection of ideological tics, or by nothing at all. Andrew Sullivan and Glenn Greenwald appear to disagree, and that's certainly their right. And I think the polity will be well-served by honest and vigorous debate about whether we'd prefer to live subject to laws (moral judgements) informed by Christian values or Buddhist values or Sullivan values or secular humanist values or some other alternative (and we don't have to choose just one!). But that dialogue is not what the "Christianist" project seeks: stripped of all its rhetorical bunting, it's essentially an effort to delegitimize the participation of Christians in the political process, and thereby rig the game in favor of value systems that Sullivan and Greenwald prefer. It's their perogative to attempt this, but it's mine to call them out as assholes for doing it.

It's pretty simple:
Islamists want government by the Koran. Christianists want government by the Bible. Americans want government by the Constitution.

I’m absolutely amazed that there are people actually living out in the real world who believe that Christians want to impose … what … ecclesiastical law on the country? To have the head of the “Church of America” as supreme ruler of the United States? Does anybody really know what a theocracy is? There’s a good example in Iran; check it out.

There ought to be a law, like Godwin’s law that the first person who comes natters on about theocracy in America loses.

" I think you should drive people down THEIR street...to get to YOUR house."

Sounds a lot like Dick Morris's definition of triangulation: "using your solutions to solve their problems".

Sullivan has obviously hit a nerve by coining a word that pretty well defines fanatical Christians. That it coincides with Islamist, fascist, etc. is the point, never mind what Andrew says to the contrary.

To those who say it's unfair to equate Christianists with Islamists, or that it's a matter of degree, I say look at the evidence of Christian religious fanaticism, in this country, at this time: from abortion clinics bombed and their doctors murdered, to gay nightclubs firebombed.

Random acts? Well some are, obviously. But the loose cannon that goes off is usually lit by a smiling Jerry Falwell or James Dobson.
And Falwell, Robertson, and Dobson have their hands in politics, and the ear of the President.

This past year Eric wrote a reasoned (as usual) article referencing the Madson/Mowder gay killings in Redding, California in 1999. He linked to a PBS special about the murders which implied that the community & religious leaders came together AFTER the killings, condemning them. And Eric made the observation that gays probably have more to fear in cities at the hands of common thugs than in rural areas. I would agree, and note that EVERYONE has more to fear in some cities, like Oakland, California or Washington, D.C.

But what was not brought out about the Madson/Mowder killings was that just prior to the murders, Jerry Falwell had visited, and preached at Redding's largest protestant church, The North Valley Baptist Church. The pastor there, the Reverened Royal Blue (you can't make up these names) had given many sermons condemning homosexuality; and Falwell had heard, and been enlisted.
Did the killers, the Williams brothers, feel emboldened in this community? Well, their fundamentalist parents thought it was the right place for the boys & had specifically moved them to the area because it was a friendly, Christian environment.

After the murders, the non-fundamentalist, non-Christianist religions went out of their way to distance themselves from North Valley Baptist, Royal Blue, & Jerry Falwell. A yearly remembrance was started, and included most of the Jewish community.

So I hope that Sullivan's new word IS divisive, and that it helps to seperate and isolate those Christians who seek to impose their version of Sharia on this country.

Shorter Frank: "I don't like conservative Christians, and hold them guilty by their association to violent thugs despite the fact that they expressly condemn such violence."

BC, I notice you postulate that values can be imposed upon law by any number of religions, and you mention the possibility of even secular humanism (which you must regard as a religion)
What you left out was any mention of Islam. I mean, if you want to throw religion into the mix, why leave out Sharia? After all, it's just another value system, isn't it? And a growing one in this country and worldwide.

But isn't our system a development of the Enlightment, where religion was put in it's place? Wasn't reason supposed to be our guiding light? Wasn't religion to be seperated from government?
That you might feel shut out because you can't impose your religious values is the whole point. The system was devised specifically to shut you out by imposing "classical values" like reason instead of faith and the supernatural.
That reason has been perverted by judges, congress, and the executive is no reason to revert to religious dogma, yours, Sullivan's, or Islam's.

BC states: "we may as well kiss off such things as the Thirteenth Amendment, which was the product of activism by Abolitionists whose beliefs as to slavery were informed by their Christianity"

Oh, you really shouldn't have brought this up.
Please read the biography of John Brown, the most famous of all Abolitionists, and how he was revered in Christian churches both before and after he was hung. They prayed for him. They idolized him as a hero of the movement.
And then read about how in 1856 he and four of his sons set out on a killing spree near Lawrence, Kansas pulling whole families out of their homes and butchering them with swords, not unlike the Islamists of today.
And these were the Christian values of the day, just like blowing up abortion clinics to save "murdered" fetuses is today.
Please, spare us any reference linking Christian values with the horror of the Civil War and the Abolitionist murderers who instigated it.

'There are lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights'

How exactly are they personally devout if they don't follow the teachings of the church?

How exactly are they personally devout if they don't follow the teachings of the church?

They follow the teachings that make them feel good and righteous, and ignore the rest. Or "reinterpret" scripture in a modern context to give it new applicability in today's world.

Labels and symbols are powerful. If you can brand the opposition with words with heavy negative connotations, you can define the debate. If you can define the terms of the debate ... well, you win. BC pretty much nails it in his first post.

Of course, the meaning is "people I don't agree with and therefore must denigrate with the dreaded 'ist'." As Ferris Bueller's monologue long ago popularized, "a person shouldn't believe in an ism," and by extension those that do are unreasonable and prone to irrationality.

Of course, that's a dangerous game because anyone can play. We might start by labelling Sullivan a "homosexualist," as his political agenda is often driven by his sexual orientation. We could then move on to reasonably label the Congressional Black Caucus as "racists" -- I mean, race is right there in their name, isn't it?

Do we really want a national debate filled with ultrapolarizing references to "Republican Christianists" and "Democratic homoseuxalists and racists"?

And that's before we even start to talk about the "sock puppetists."

Frank writes:

BC, I notice you postulate that values can be imposed upon law by any number of religions, and you mention the possibility of even secular humanism (which you must regard as a religion)

Of course, I did not say that, and if you read my post as suggesting that it would be legitimate for the United States to impose Christian ecclesiastical law or Sharia law in toto, then you are simply a moron. What I did say is that all laws are at bottom moral judgements, and it is not illegitimate for individuals to advocate for those moral judgements to be informed by Christian values, Islamic values, secular humanist values, Andrew Sullivan's values, Enlightenment values, or any other sort of values, to the extent permissible under the Constitution. The fact that our system of government is itself a product of Enlightenment values does not operate as a constraint on the kinds of value systems which may inform our laws: the process by which we determine the set of moral judgements (informed by whichever value system or systems) we'd prefer to live under is known as "politics". Perhaps you've heard of it.

As to your screed regarding "Abolitionist murderers" and how the Christian values of today involve the bombing of abortion clinics, it deserves no further comment aside from to note that it is as hilarious as it is profoundly deranged and monumentally stupid.

Moneyrunner:

"Scripture emphatically requires us to reject both the earlier and the present law systems in favor of a rigorously Biblical, covenantal law structure." – R.J. Rushdoony

“The civil government of our nation, its laws, institutions, and practices must therefore be conformed to the principles of Biblical law as revealed in the Old and New Testaments."
--Purpose and Mission Statement of the National Reform Association.

--Took me about two minutes to find these...

We definitely need a word to divide the extremists from the rest of us. The world’s billion or so Christians are not at war with the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims.
Yet.
OTOH, Falwell says to nuke the middle east, Ahmedinejad says to destroy Israel, Ohlmert says to bomb, well, everybody: Dangerous extremists all—Zionist, Islamist, Christianist. They don’t speak for most of us, the Jews, Moslems, and Christians, and certainly not for us atheists.
Just as moderate Moslems must face the responsibility of identifying the extremists in their midst, (the Islamist label helps), and condemning them, ditto the other three groups. The alternative is to be labeled by association, as violent thugs. We need to calm down, and rather than dividing us good Christians from them bad Muslims, we need to divide them bad extreme-ists, from us good normal people.
We are not at war with terrorism, we can only be at war with the extremists who promote it. Whoever they are. It makes no sense to be overseas killing the graduates of their madrassas, while we allow them to fund madrasssas in our own neighborhoods. In my personal opinion, Jesus Camp looks suspiciously like the mosque by Eric’s house. I worry that both their graduates will enlist to kill each other.

"Considering Althouse's restraint"

Are you joking? Her ad hominem attack is generating legendary status on the net as we speak! Althouse's primary responses to pointing out the hypocracy of lumping all Islamists in the same boat as terrorists, when Sullivan made clear he wasn't even doing the same (say, with Eric Rudolph), was to call Greenwald an idiot and to criticize his writing (when her typos come early and often).

I think your selective quoting of the xchanges here is a more than a little intellectually dishonest.

Josh, there are many things I don't say, and many things I don't quote. Ann Althouse displayed restraint and humor in the post I quoted. Even the quote was quoted selectively; otherwise I'd have added this:

Anyway, no intrablogospherical squabbling! Really! I mean it. I don't want squabbling! I want amusement!

Far be it from me to criticize Greenwald's writing style, as I don't think mine is much better. So why on earth should I have to quote from some other post in which Ann Althouse takes Greenwald to task stylistically? To satisfy an anonymous commenter's demand for full intellectual honesty? I agree with Althouse that Greenwald's writing is tendentious, overly wordy, and needs editing. So does mine. But I don't think my failure to point that out constitutes anything more than not writing about what I don't want to write about. This deciding-what-to-write-about-and-what-not-to-write-about thing goes to the nature of blogging. By its nature, it's selective. Yet you are also being selective in what you think I should write about, and in your interpretation of it, which can be debated. Because I did not write about what you think I should have written about, you accuse me of intellectual dishonesty. Considering the nature of blogging, I think that accusation is a bit of a stretch.

I also think the remark might be more persuasive if you hadn't just complained about ad hominem attacks.

Always a pleasure to read the Me-Too! blog. Glenn Reynolds should pay you.

Likewise, I enjoy your attention, "GL" -- no matter what name you use.

I'm sorry I didn't know you were coming, though -- or I'd have managed a link to Clayton Cramer too. As you know, he's my immediate uber editor from whom I take my marching orders.

I'd never take money from the blogfuhrer though. If he did pay me, I'd solemnly donate it to the motherland.