Man. Alot of people with very little knowledge passing judgement and making blanket generalisations on things they either don't know anything about, or simply don't like.
What the hell happened to this place? Sad.
Ok fine, let's do this thing...
So what are you condemning exactly? The reactions of posters towards the business, towards the stunt, or towards the video? Because we can judge each of things individually on their own merits and still decry each ad every one from a pretty solid standpoint.
It's easiest to do so for the couple: they had their day in court, and lost. Maybe if they had won, one could argue that internet vitriol against them was unfounded because they had done nothing wrong. But legally, they lost. So are you against the judicial authority of the United States as a whole(in which case I assume you're opposed to the death penalty and would like amnesty for drug offenders), or is it just when it's Christians who are found guilty that you object to(in which case, your position is laughable and it'd be highly hypocritical for you to condemn anyone here)?
Reactions towards the stunt are perhaps a little harder to gauge properly, as one could make the argument that they truly mean well and did not do this as a publicity stunt. However, given the timing of what they did(see the article: gay groups were about to meet with sympathetic Christian organizations), who they sent it to(also article), the amount this couple received from donations, their past history(see article posted on page 2),and the nature of the video itself(see below for that argument), myself and many others feel that their intent is...hazy at best.
Which leads us to the movie itself. Even the title of the film, "Audacity," shows that the film is not in fact aimed at gay audiences with the purpose of letting them understand this particular set of Christians (and the narrative supports this). Rather it is to encourage more Christians with the same belief system to keep "fighting the good fight" or whatever. Furthermore, the film itself is offensive, especially considering its creator directly compares homosexuals to lairs and thieves to the actual faces of gay individuals(though I'm betting that in many cases those individuals were plants, the comparison is still offensive). Furthermore, the movie itself is rubbish by any critical standard. Too many Christian movies consider message to trump merit. As in, it doesn't matter if the film is terrible by any objective critical standards as long as it panders to the base(see: Saving Christmas, Left Behind, Christian Mingle, God's Not Dead, etc etc). Sorry, but if you want the film to not be mocked outside of the very specific audience it panders to, then it needs to actually be decent by some objective standards(for example, Birth of a Nation has one of the most vile messages you can imagine, but for its time, it was crafted extremely well from a filmmaking standpoint). And another point on this: you talk about posters here not knowing or understanding, when many of us here(myself included) have watched the bloody video.We GET IT. We just still think it is dumb. Furthermore, we also know it's "not all Christians" because even the homosexual groups are going out of their way to hold dialogue with certain churches/organizations.
Lastly, and I say this with full confidence as a Sociologist: Christians are not being discriminated against in any way here. There have been no atheist hate crimes against Christians. White Christians are actually MORE likely to climb the social ladder than most groups, so there is no institutionalized bigotry at play, either. The LEAST likely belief system a person can have and still be elected President is Atheist. Furthermore, many Christian groups have a nasty history of actually doing discrimination. See: religious argument for slavery, against desegregation, interracial marriage(and we've got examples of that stuff on audio and video as well as in written form), etc.
I tell you what though, should the day come when Christians actually DO face discrimination in the U.S., myself and my peers/superiors will do our best to fight for your rights. But until then, please stop crying wolf while punching down. It's distasteful.
