Bigotry is an ugly thing. In my country, the US, it has had a long and nasty history. From treating black people and women as second class citizens via, slavery, Jim Crow Laws, and blaming Eve for the fall of the human race in Genesis, to persecuting gay and transgender people, to barring atheists from holding public office, to demanding that people be vaccinated in order to work in some professions and attend school. I consider all forms of bigotry to be unacceptable, stupid, and cruel.
The dictionary is: definition of bigotry
“the fact of having and expressing strong, unreasonable beliefs and disliking other people who have different beliefs or a different way of life:”
Bigots are angry, frightened people who need to oppress and humiliate others in order feel important and superior. They jump to conclusions. They don’t look deeply. Their world is only as big as they are. They can’t see beyond the tip of their own noses. And most of all they don’t take into account the harm and consequences that their actions can inflict.
The latest salvo of bigotry occurred on May 2, 2019. Former President Donald Trump issued a new rule through the Department of Health and Human Services that as reported by NPR “allows anyone from a doctor to a receptionist to entities like hospitals and pharmacies to deny a patient critical—and sometimes lifesaving—care” if they “have a ‘religious or conscience’ objection.”
Do I really have to state the obvious folks? The idea that the feelings of a doctor or other medical professionals should come before the needs of a patient is beyond stupid. And although a New York federal judge rightly struck down this idiotic rule in November 2019, bills similar to it are being pushed in state legislatures throughout the country. This is mainly due to the efforts of Project Blitz, a coalition of Christian groups that want to shove their version of theology down everyone’s throat as reported in SourceWatch and the Guardian.
We have long ago decided that discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin is wrong. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson (1908-1973) signed the Civil Rights Act into law. This along with the 1954 US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka outlawed segregation. Meaning, if a business cannot deny service to a person because of the color of their skin, then a doctor cannot deny care to a person who is gay, bisexual, transsexual, or unvaccinated. But there are bigots who are determined to keep trying and they don’t even want to allow people who’s rights they are violating to be upset with them or to sue them for damages as reported here, here, and here.
As shown in this 2015 article, religious bigots claim that “they are the ones who are being bullied..It’s bigotry, toward them. It’s hatred, directed at them. It’s discrimination, against them…they are tired of being made into the bad guys…It is they, many argue, who are the freedom fighters in this debate.” Jeepers creepers, talk about being off-the-wall delusional. They want to deny people they don’t approve of health care and expect them to be all nice and happy about it. What these fanatics are doing is engaging in what Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) called projection, accusing others of what they are doing. This is also known as DARVO an acronym for deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.
Read more: Bigotry Doesn’t Belong in Medical Care