A journalist and advocate who rose from homelessness and addiction to serve as a spokesperson for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable was shot and killed at his home early Monday, police said.

Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times at about 1:30 a.m. and collapsed in the street after seeking help, police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Police believe the door to his Point Breeze home was unlocked or the shooter knew how to get in, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered, they said.

Authorities haven’t spoken publicly about the circumstances surrounding the killing.

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87 points

Yes! That’s exactly what you should say to Christians when they start spouting off on their racist, homophobic, or otherwise prejudiced beliefs. You’re a great role model.

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-71 points

I have done and will continue to call out racial and homophobic bigotry as quickly as I do religious bigotry.

Unfortunately, as shameful as it is, one of those forms of prejudice is supported by most of the active population here.

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59 points

What? You mean in America, the country ruled by Christians who impose Christianity on children in schools, where the majority religion is Christianity, where Christian organizations get preferential treatment by the government, where Christianity is the overwhelming majority religion of politicians, and where there is an active political movement to literally enforce state Christianity on the population, and where Christian moral doctrine is being widely used to restrict the bodily autonomy of women?? Ah yes so much Christian hate

Unironically shut the fuck up

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-54 points

Unironically shut the fuck up

You have thoroughly convinced me!

Where can I sign up for the daily hate speech against Christians? Oh, nevermind, I forgot I already have a Lemmy account.

It is unfortunate that rather than learning how to fight against their methods, you have instead decided to emulate them.

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36 points

Religion is poison.

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-35 points

It is unfortunate that you think so, there is a lot of wisdom in the various world religions.

We may be beyond the need for religion, but I doubt even that.

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35 points

“Religious bigotry” LOL

The only people who practice anything that could be called that are religious people themselves. Everyone else just wants to be left the fuck alone.

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-16 points

Fair enough. I should have called it anti-religious bigotry.

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23 points

There is a difference between attacking someone who chooses a disgusting belief system and bigotry. Any adult who remains a Christian knows exactly what the religion with the highest kill count stands for. They decide to ignore that because they get the warm fuzzies once a week for an hour.

Now go restore Roe v. Wade or you are useless to me.

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-7 points

There is a difference between attacking someone who chooses a disgusting belief system and bigotry.

Bigotry is thinking, what I believe is right and everyone who believes differently is wrong.

To point at all varieties of Christianity and say, “you are bad,” is being bigoted.

Now go restore Roe v. Wade or you are useless to me.

If you want someone useful here are some people that agree with you and will help you fight, assuming you can manage to not call their belief system disgusting to their faces:

Rev. Angela Williams, a Presbyterian pastor and the lead organizer of SACReD: Spiritual Alliance of Communities for Reproductive Dignity, told Healthline that faith leaders and religious groups that support abortion rights have been preparing for this moment for a long time.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/meet-the-religious-groups-fighting-to-save-abortion-access

Members of the Episcopal Church (79%) and the United Church of Christ (72%) are especially likely to support legal abortion, while most members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (65%) also take this position.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2018/01/22/american-religious-groups-vary-widely-in-their-views-of-abortion/

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22 points

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

You gotta take a stand somewhere. The intolerant religious zealots would be a good place to start.

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-23 points

There’s no paradox - there’s acceptable behavior and unacceptable behavior. If anyone, displays only acceptable behavior, you tolerate them - full stop. If anyone goes out of bounds, you respond appropriately to correct the behavior - full stop.

To borrow a line from /u/theneverfox@pawb.social

https://lemmy.world/comment/3754441

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6 points

If you keep advocating in this fashion you are going to start feeling very backed up against a wall very quickly. When people are routinely hurt by an institution the unambiguous defense of the people within institution as a whole claiming a similar victimhood plays on a part of human nature. What people want of you is to accept that the numbers of people claiming Christiandom to then go on to harm someone means that as someone who claims to be Christian that you should be the first voice to start criticizing your own.

Instead because you cannot separate yourself from your Christian label or other people’s frustration and pain caused by other people who do so under the flag of being “Proud Christians” your advocacy appears shallow and self serving. You and all the good Christians you defend become literary “the good man who does nothing” If facing people in your audience who have experienced trauma at the hands of your group what they want to see is that you accept that people like you harmed them and that you are different than them by being able to recognize their pain and shelve your agenda and listen unambiguously. What they are asking is for you to show you care about them and are strong enough to weather and differentiate the criticism they aren’t directing at you.

It’s a similar effect to how a lot of systemic issues around racism get held up on the feelings of the people in institutions about being implied to be racist. Oftentimes the issues never get dealt with because the conversation has to stop become all about the feelings of the person and how they aren’t a bad person. While they may not intend it that person’s feelings become the obstacle that throws up the roadblocks on people who are fighting desperately to have less roadblocks. Once this happens often enough people start to figure that that person’s feelings DO make them a bad person because regardless of their personal merits they are still in the way and having to sway every individual roadblock by taking them offside and coddling them telling them, it’s okay we know YOU aren’t a bad person becomes way too much. Thus people start getting more frustrated with the people who demand this treatment and take up their energy and they start getting more strident.

When you place yourself in that spot it’s easy to see people’s frustration as hate but it is different. They want you to be better.

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1 point

I appreciate the well-thought out and verbose response. Have an upvote!

Now to the meat of it. I am not a Christian, I am someone who is tired of some bigots getting a pass and some bigots getting their whole instances defederated. Since there is clearly a disinterest in heavy-handed moderation to get rid of the one-sided bigotry then the best recourse is open discussion.

I have no doubt that the people here who are heavily prejudiced against religion have their reasons, but that does not mean that their words are good or acceptable in an open forum. When people express their ideas in socially unacceptable ways they should be called out and down-voted, but currently they they are mostly receiving positive responses. This is wrong. It is a mark against the communities and instances they are posting those statements in.

It does not matter why someone feels justified for spewing hate, they should be called-out or at least shunned. If you want to help someone work through their hate, that is great. I just want to stop being embarrassed by it. Despite being a great concept, I literally cannot recommend Lemmy to anyone because the top comment is so often some trash about how “all conservatives are fascists” or a gay activist died “it must be a Christian.”

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-1 points
Removed by mod
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6 points

Just be sure you’ve taken a moment to understand who you’re speaking with and what you’re speaking with them about. Because in this case, any issue of bigotry has absolutely nothing to do with this drug related domestic dispute murder.

Commenters here are arguing with each other over something that has nothing to do with this case. So, it’s not that you care about the victim, you care about virtue signaling.

FWIW, the victim regularly attended an Episcopalian church. So, I’m not so sure he’d be cool with people using religion as a cudgel beneath his obituary.

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3 points

this drug related domestic dispute murder.

Is that what it is looking like now? The article was significantly sparse on details.

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5 points

Well hey maybe religious people should stop consistently hurting other humans and society in general because they think their imaginary friend would be down with it.

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-2 points

It sounds an awful like you are saying, “Well yeah, we are bigots, but we are bigots because they deserve it!”

Am I misunderstanding you?

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