A funny thing happened on the way to the Creationist movie: I don't know if you follow PZ Myers at Pharyngula, and normally I wouldn't post on this here, because he's not really political or involved in civil rights per se. Or so one would think.
Instead, he's a vocal atheist and anti-Creationist, and a biology professor. In today's America, being an atheist means you're a member of one of the most universally hated groups around, but normally you're not the target of civil liberties abuses, because you look just like regular people.
So it was with some surprise that I read the post on his blog just now -- it turns out that some group of loony God-botherers has made a "documentary" about how Creationist "scientists" are ignored by real ones. PZ thought he'd go to the show -- in the Mall of America. But the makers of the movie (and wait - was this, like, a premiere? In a mall?) specifically told the theater to bar him. By name, apparently.
So, OK, the theater barred him, which I find bizarre behavior for a nominally profit-oriented enterprise, but where it gets into civil liberties is that while he was standing there with his family, talking and laughing before they went on in to see the movie, the police came over and said that if he didn't leave the premises immediately, he would be arrested.
So I leave you with this thought: if America isn't turning into a theocracy, why is a vocal critic of theocrats threatened with arrest when he's not causing a public disturbance? Does anybody honestly think that even if, say, Michael Moore were to make such a near-psychotic request, that the police would threaten, say, Rush Limbaugh with arrest if he failed to leave the theater immediately? I mean, I wish that would happen - well, in all fairness, I guess I don't, since inverting the political signs doesn't make the act a positive one. Abuse of power is still abuse.
But we all know who abuses the power.
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