The God Delusion翻译：第一章第二节（3）

If the advocates of apartheid had their wits about them they would claim - for all I know truthfully - that allowing mixed races is against their religion. A good part of the opposition would respectfully tiptoe away. And it is no use claiming that this is an unfair parallel because apartheid has no rational justification. The whole point of religious faith, its strength and chief glory, is that it does not depend on rational justification. The rest of us are expected to defend our prejudices. But ask a religious person to justify their faith and you infringe 'religious liberty'.
恕我直言，如果那些支持种族隔离的人有点脑子的话，他们就会声称允许种族混杂和他们的宗教相左。如此一来大部分反对的人就会礼敬有加，悄悄闭嘴。指责这样的类比不公平是徒劳的，因为种族隔离本来也就没有理性的基础。关于宗教信仰，它的力量和主要荣耀的关键所在就是，它根本不是建立在理性的基础上的。我们其他人有点偏见还要为之竭力辩护。但是劳驾一个宗教人士为其宗教辩护，您可就侵犯了“宗教自由”了。

Little did I know that something pretty similar would come to pass in the twenty-first century. The Los Angeles Times (10 April 2006) reported that numerous Christian groups on campuses around the United States were suing their universities for enforcing anti-discrimination rules, including prohibitions against harassing or abusing homosexuals. As a typical example, in 2004 James Nixon, a twelve-year-old boy in Ohio, won the right in court to wear a T-shirt to school bearing the words 'Homosexuality is a sin, Islam is a lie, abortion is murder. Some issues are just black and white!' The school told him not to wear the T-shirt - and the boy's parents sued the school. The parents might have had a conscionable case if they had based it on the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech. But they didn't: indeed, they couldn't, because free speech is deemed not to include 'hate speech'. But hate only has to prove it is religious, and it no longer counts as hate. So, instead of freedom of speech, the Nixons' lawyers appealed to the constitutional right to freedom of religion. Their victorious lawsuit was supported by the Alliance Defense Fund of Arizona, whose business it is to 'press the legal battle for religious freedom'.
我当时还没太到到类似的事情也会在二十一世纪发生。2006年4月10日的《洛杉矶时报》报道说很多美国校园基督教团体正在因为学校推行包括禁止骚扰和辱骂同性恋者的反歧视校规而起诉校方。一个典型的例子是，在2004年，俄亥俄州的一个二十岁的小伙子，詹姆斯。尼克松，赢得法庭准许他把印有“同性恋是罪恶，伊斯兰是谎言，堕胎是谋杀，有些事就是非黑即白。”字样的体恤衫穿到学校。校方告诉他不要在学校穿，他的父母就把学校给告了。他的父母如果依据宪法第一修正案对言论自由的保障来打官司，他们的诉讼也许会是个良心上说得过去的案子。但是他们没有：确实，他们也没法这么做，因为言论自由本来就不包括“仇恨言论”。但是仇恨只要能证明和宗教有关就不再被看作是仇恨了。所以，尼克松的律师选择了用宪法中的宗教自由条款而不是言论自由来起诉。他们所赢的官司受到亚利桑那联合辩护基金会的支持，该基金会的宗旨就是“促进为宗教自由而斗争”。

The Reverend Rick Scarborough, supporting the wave of similar Christian lawsuits brought to establish religion as a legal justification for discrimination against homosexuals and other groups, has named it the civil rights struggle of the twenty-first century: 'Christians are going to have to take a stand for the right to be Christian.' Once again, if such people took their stand on the right to free speech, one might reluctantly sympathize. But that isn't what it is about. The legal case in favour of discrimination against homosexuals is being mounted as a counter-suit against alleged religious discrimination! And the law seems to respect this. You can't get away with saying, 'If you try to stop me from insulting homosexuals it violates my freedom of prejudice.' But you can get away with saying, 'It violates my freedom of religion.' What, when you think about it, is the difference? Yet again, religion trumps all.
瑞克。斯卡尔博罗牧师，此公正在支持一波类似的基督教诉讼案，以期把宗教作为歧视同性恋和其他团体的合法辩护理由，他把这叫做二十一世纪的民权斗争：“基督徒必须站出来捍卫当一个基督徒的自由。”还是一样的，这种人如果站在言论自由的立场，可能人们就不那么同情他们了。但他们不是这么做的。这些支持歧视同性恋的法律案件是作为对宗教歧视的反诉而发起的！ 而且法律好像很买账。你要是说“你阻止我羞辱同性恋那你就是侵犯了我行使偏见的自由”，那可不行。但是如果说：“你侵犯了我宗教的自由”，那就没事。想一想，有什么不同吗？然而，宗教又一次无往不胜。