Rise of Religious Intolerance

Chris Crain over at the Washington Blade writes an interesting editorial (I thought he was leaving?) sums up aptly a point I've been trying to make:

In a speech on the five-year anniversary of 9/11, the president described our enemies as "extremists" who have perverted religion into "a totalitarian ideology that hates freedom [and] rejects tolerance." It is long past time that our activists explain to the country what we, as gay Americans, know to be true: on the issue of homosexuality at least, Bush and his conservative allies are practicing what they preach against.

Our president rails against "radical imams" enshrining their religious edicts into law, even as he calls on Americans to amend our nation's founding document to enshrine the "sacred institution of marriage" as limited to heterosexual couples only.

Now, I don't for a minute compare Bush to terrorists who seek to murder innocents, including women and children, in cold blood. But Bush is at the forefront of an increasingly powerful religious movement in America that is seeking to codify its religious beliefs in public law. Religious extremism is on the rise in the East -- and the West.

The key similarity in the rise in the East and West is the lack of tolerance for other viewpoints and the key difference is one of degree -- in some Islamic societies homosexuals are punished by death, in the West the religious right imposes their intolerance into the law.