Militant response

I’m reading references to “militant secularism” now with alarming frequency, mostly in response to secularists’ courageous fight to defend our democracy in the face of a creeping theocracy.

Allow me to explain what militancy actually is: it is a church that splits in the face of expressions of common humanity and its extension of equality. (And a church that splits once will most likely split again when its adherents find it is still 
insufficiently strident). Militants are those who send death threats to politicians carrying out the will of its people as we have witnessed in France during the debate on equal marriage.

Or media commentators who warn of “an international conspiracy” of homosexuals as one did during the repeal of Section 28 here.

They are the hundreds who march behind right-wing politicians in Paris to protest against same-sex marriage, including an MP for the far-right Front 
National.

Militants are the skinheads who attacked a gay bar in Lille; the masked armed men who attacked another bar in Bordeaux and the Muslims who kicked and punched members of Femem, a group of peaceful, radical female activists.

Militants were those who 
carried out beatings of gay men during the repeal of Section 28 here and many more in France, like that of librarian, Wilfred de Bruijn who was guilty of nothing more than walking hand in hand with his boyfriend before his injuries went viral across the internet.

Garry Otton

Secular Scotland

Edinburgh