FLASH! Christianity Is Politically Incorrect!

James Lileks reports:

I read stories like this, and the very first paragraph makes me tired.

A UNIVERSITY Christian Union has been suspended and had its bank account frozen after refusing to open its membership to people of all religions.

I could understand a University turning a cold narrow eye to a group that declared, in its charter, that nonbelievers and sodomites alike would be cast into the lake of fire on Judgment day - and to prepare them for that event they would be set alight should they attempt to attend a meeting of the Christian Union. But:

Members claim the actions have been taken against them after they refused on religious grounds to make “politically correct” changes to their charitable constitution, including explicitly mentioning people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered.

Personally, I suspect that the organization would welcome anyone who showed up for services, and not inquire too closely about what they wish to do with whom. But the Union isn’t in trouble for excluding people. They’re in trouble for not rewriting their constitution to “explicitly mention” some noisy people who, one suspects, are less interested in access to this particular group than enforcing the use of a wide bland smear of magic words that somehow insulates them from exclusion. It gets richer:

The Christian Union was advised that the use of the words “men” and “women” in the constitution were causing concern because they could be seen as excluding transsexual and transgendered people.

Lileks' entire lengthy commentary on this latest Gramscian attempt to use language issues to either eviscerate Christianity or force it to conform to secular Marxist class struggle standards is well worth reading, as we pursue with vigor the Great Culture War that the Marxists insist is totally passé. But his profound conclusion says it all. Note particularly the sentence HazZzmat has conveniently bolded for you, a point we have made again and again when explaining the Gramscian tactic of remaking the culture by redefining "truth" via the repetition of absolute falsehoods:

Words mean something, as people always say when they’re annoyed by words that now mean something else. A strange example was in our paper today. A vegan boutique has opened in St. Paul, and was given a nice-sized story in today’s paper, complete with photo. Spot the phrase in the next excerpt that made me sigh:

Living in Los Angeles in 2003, Jon found vegan boutiques in San Diego, San Francisco and Ventura, Calif. He said that others exist in New York City, but that his is the only 100 percent cruelty-free vegan boutique in Minnesota.

I have no problem with anyone who wishes to go vegan; we all have our dietary quirks for reasons great and small. But “Cruelty-free” is not a term we should let pass without quote marks. Small thing, I know. As one copy desk editor explained, the term comes in a paraphrase of the fellow’s remarks, so you could say we weren’t passing along the term without comment, but it’s debatable – and it certainly didn’t seem that way to me. All it takes is a few stories like this, a few examples where people get used to “cruelty-free” living large without the shackles of quote marks, and the term becomes shorthand for a truth.

Eventually, the world is finally set right; men are Males, Christian groups don’t use bad exclusionary words like “Christian,” hemp socks are cruelty free, and conversation has the nice smooth sound of lowing beasts, neither giving offense nor taking it. All is well.

Fine. Good. Now. What next shall we fix?

Indeed.