How dare you tell me that my moral outrage at frivolous lawsuits is less real than your moral outrage at frivolous prayers? The fact that frivolous lawsuits cause actual harm to real people and frivolous prayers do not (the only objective distinction I can imagine between the two) does not in any way diminish my feeling of moral outrage.

Of course, if you define "equivalent" as "desecrating an altar of worship," then no secular moral outrage, no matter how sincere and heartfelt, can ever be "equivalent," since secular ethics do not define any places as places of worship. Such a definition is, of course, another case of blatant special pleading, no different from defining "equivalent" as "violating a taboo on iconography" (by which standard it is the altar, not Pussy Riot's performance, which is the valid cause of moral outrage, by the way).

But you do defile the dignity of the courtroom by letting religious bigots use it to silence detractors.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.