I don't get it, but you know, I "get it" that they're racist and islamophobic. But "headphones make kids gay"? Can anyone explain their line of thought on that one?

"Rabble, rabble, rabble, brown people and also headphones" is such a weird combo.

What's the negative impact to a Muslim that gets baptized? All I can think is this asshole is trying to harm another human being.

Normally I’d say they would be able to cash in on a lawsuit, but I’m pretty sure no judge these days will hear a case like this.

they might get wet. if you have not contacted the lds church they have likely baptised you in abstentia.

That's the point. He's trying to hurt feelings and stir shit up

They saw mega churches form with pastors who demand 10% of patrons’ wealth get popular and entirely avoid punishment by the governments and they fucking want in.

I'm a childless atheist, if my kid wanted to be baptized, I'd let them, I wouldn't agree with it, but it isn't my choice. If someone baptized my kid without their consent, they'd be going to meet their god.

Is there really Christian sects that don't require a priest/preacher to baptize people?

Forcing a child underwater for their culture/religion has plenty of negatives.

Well, that's probably a hate crime.

I'm atheist so to me, baptism or prayer is about as serious as someone thinking Jedi or Sith were real; annoying and disrespectful but we'll live.

But to someone of an opposing faith, forcing someone through that could be blasphemous. It's at best disrespectful, but at worse it might make them feel violated, against God, ostracized from their social circles, or what have you.

Ultimately, I feel it carries greater weight for people who believe in something, same as ripping off a hijab or forcing them to say a prayer to another God.

Historically speaking, this was sometimes used as pretext for the permanent separation of children from their parents. This is a form of genocide according to article 2.5 of the UN definition:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

[...]

1. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

That's not the worst case. The worst case is Christians using the baptism as a pretext to forcibly take the children away from their parents.

I don't think in that case the baptism is the pretext, just a step in that genocidal process. E.g. it wasn't the baptisms that caused the Spanish to torture native Californian peoples.

I think we might be having a bit of miscommunication. By 'pretext' I don't mean the root cause of the action, I mean the excuse given to justify the action.

That's what I am thinking. Religiously, it doesn't even mean anything. Islam is a bit flexible in that it allows sin/haram when forced by others (or even circumstances like health issues)

Also Christianity is an abrahamic religion AND hygiene is considered sacred in Islam. So from religious perspective, most muslims wouldn't even care.

Maybe the guy just want to waterboard foreigners and foreigner sympathizers? Most likely they want another case of "first we test-run on one minority, next we go for others."

All they gotta do is get it to SCOTUS and let the partisans partisan

This seems like a hate crime...

As you might imagine, it's crazy bullshit.

Basically some MAGA-brain influencer took a study and decided it said headphones feminize men.

Most I've come across have an exception for any layperson to do the baptism if the person's life is in danger. E.g., come up to a car accident, person is near death, ask them if they accept Jesus (or not if they're unconscious), baptize them, was the classic example I heard over and over. Now the Christian extremists in this article, I could see them saying "we're in a holy war with these Muslims and their eternal lives are at risk, therefore their lay teachers can baptize". Not that I expect them to put that much logic into it.

Check out Church of LDS Baptism of the Dead ritual. The person doesn't even have to be alive or their body present to be baptized. And at least the mormons I grew up with, any "priest" or above could do a baptism, "priest" being any male church member in good standing, at least 15 or 16 years old.

True, remember the LDS/Mormons were classified as non Christians by MAGA I thought.

Believing in Christ doesn't make you Christian apparently lol. There are other qualifications, so as putting country before God lol

Hate crimes are exactly what he is aiming for, or at least making it a real possibility in people's minds that random teachers might commit hate crimes in the name of religion. This is just another attack on public schools. It's meant to weaken people's trust in teachers just that much more. And it is not aimed at just Muslims either. I suspect that most everyone who read this immediately began to worry that this might really happen given the current state of the world. But now you are admitting to yourself that there are plenty of religious nutters out there and teaching positions. And of course you have to realize that a lot of teachers are not Christian. What in the world might be non-christians do in retaliation? Especially when you take into account that insert non-Christian belief here is so much more violent than Christians?

These people want to kill public schools, force everyone into private, for profit, secular schools. Places where they can teach whatever the fuck they want by claiming that it is part of their religion.
It's just one amongst thousands of other attacks on public schools, each meant to chip away and erode our faith in public systems.

I've heard similar of Catholics, that some don't consider them to be Christian. I believe along the line of whether faith alone or faith+works will save a person's soul.

Maybe these people just need to get really into a sports team. It feels like that sometimes; clinging to some minute detail or charisma of a player or coach, and therefore my blue team is far superior to your navy blue team, and don't even get me started on how terrible red team is.

I find it to be worse than sports teams. But it's just my experience so who knows. Let's say you're an NFL fan and your team is the Tennessee Titans. Die hard fans will rant about how shit the quarter back is. They'll say the owner/coaches needs to be fired or replaced, if a player is caught doing drugs or not showing up to training camp, drops a catch, misses tackles, gets self absorbed they want his ass gone. MAGA has gone back and forth on supporting Ukraine, back and forth on starting new wars, fumbled balls gotten caught with drugs, etc. but at the end of the day we don't hear their supporters yelling Hegseth and Rubio and Trump and whomever need to be fired. It really goes to show they arent supporting "team" U.S. or Team Republican, they are just and only Team Trump no matter if it hurts the U.S./Republicans/Conservatives/ etc

Oh, for sure it's worse than sports fandom. I was trying to express more that they have a lot of energy they are directing towards religion that has commonalities with "my blue team good, your res team bad" mentality. Energy which might be less toxic if redirected away from religion to sports.

Then again, I have been in a public space when some dingbat randomly yelled out "Roll Tide". We weren't in Alabama.

Happens all the time in the southeast U.S. especially the panhandle of Florida, aka Lower Alabama

It is a hate crime. These Christians would be crying and screaming bloody murder if a Muslim teacher taught their kids anything from the Hadith (and throwing in a lot of unironic Deus Vults while they're at it).

Cults. I fucking hate cults.

Being baptized is meant to wash your sins away but only if you WANT it to. These fuckers don't even understand the basic premise of their own faith.

Theyr just out here trying to get Muslim kids wet....

Force baptizing students of any religion is absolutely insane.

What do they think the Muslim kid is going to go into the water against his will and then out of the water as an evangelical conservative Christian who believes that Donald Trump is the son of God or something?

It's not really a hate crime to force anyone to convert to anything, it's also insane because like fuck they're going to become Christian from being forcefully baptised.

A real priest would be outraged imo