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It has long been argued that we shouldn't condemn the church for the crimes of past centuries. Even if the Bible can be used as justification for atrocities, it is argued that modern Christians have grown beyond all of that. On the surface, that sounds fair; after all, a man cannot be charged for the crimes of his forebears (although it should be noted that God himself, lacking common morality, has absolutely no problem making people pay for the crimes of their forebears, going right back to Adam's "Original Sin", not to mention the slaughter of Egyptian children for the activities of their parents). However, there are two problems with the argument that "the past should be forgotten":
Fundamentalists speak of the need to return to "traditional values", and religious fundamentalism itself is defined by its overt attempt to excise modern values from society. One cannot escape answering for the sins of the past if one wishes to return to them.
Fundamentalists claim that the mentality underlying the Inquisitions and Crusades is gone, and is therefore no longer relevant.
Unfortunately, the Crusade mentality is not gone, and the best example is the issue of premarital sex. During the Crusades and Inquisitions, the Church decided that adherence to its belief system was so important that if necessary, human lives should be sacrificed to serve that goal. Is this mentality still alive? To answer that question, I suggest you examine the AIDS epidemic in Africa.
There are an estimated 17 million people dying of AIDS right now in Africa, and the Roman Catholic church continues to use its vast missionary network to spread the word that condoms are the work of Satan! They're not the only denomination to use STDs as a weapon of crusade through criminal negligence; other groups have little to say about condoms, but a lot to say about sex education. They may not decry condoms as "immoral", but they don't want anybody learning what they're used for, do they? They want to force people all over the world to avoid premarital sex (you've heard their ridiculous mantra: "we recommend abstinence, so we don't think they should learn about alternatives"), so they withold information about simple methods for halting or slowing the spread of AIDS in the hopes that people will either obey their religion's prohibitions against premarital sex or be punished with a slow, horrible death through AIDS. There's already more than enough ignorance in the region without churches actively working to exacerbate the problem, so why do they do it? It's horrifyingly simple; they would rather prevent premarital sex than the slow, agonizing deaths of millions.
In other words, they want to help prolong the suffering of a people in the hope of coercing them to obey their rules! Just as Christ wouldn't help a Canaanite woman unless she converted, and God wouldn't spare those who refused to pledge allegiance to him, many of the major Christian churches are doing everything they can to prevent AIDS awareness in Africa for fear that the Africans might not obey their religious customs! In their minds, it's better to use AIDS as an impromptu weapon to force them to obey those customs. When people talk of how the church has come a long way since the days of the Crusades and the Inquisitions, is this what they meant? Killing those who break your laws through callous negligence and witheld information instead of fire and sword? Holocaust through disease instead of gas chamber?
Fundamentalists today may not realize it, but someday, I expect that historians will regard the AIDS epidemic in Africa (17 million dead or dying) as another Holocaust, to be added to a growing list which includes Hitler's Holocaust (more than 10 million dead), the Native American conquest and genocide (population "reduced" from ~100 million to less than 10 million), African conquest and slavery (estimates range from 15 million to 60 million dead, along with many millions enslaved and taken to America and Europe), the Inquisitions (millions dead or tortured), and the Crusades (millions dead or tortured). I think that historians will someday blame Christian sexual repression and religious intolerance for the 17 million (and more) who are dying of AIDS in Africa, just as clear-eyed history will eventually lift the veil of apologism that currently shrouds the other aforementioned atrocities. How many tens of millions more must die, before fundamentalists understand that the Crusade mentality is wrong? The scale of human suffering in Africa is frankly unimaginable. Whole families and villages are being exterminated. Fathers and mothers are burying their children and wondering how long it will be before they join them. Babies are born with AIDS and live short, pain-filled lives of constant suffering. Ignorant sufferers, who have no knowledge of the concept of viral transmission, have taken to raping virgin children because they think sex with a virgin will cure their disease. But in the rest of the world, "moralists" are patting themselves on the back for suppressing condoms and sex education because they're "fighting the good fight" against sexual promiscuity! We dare not educate them about STDs or provide condoms, right? They might engage in premarital sex! That would be much worse than just dying of AIDS, right?
The people who promote this line of thought are evil, and that isn't surprising; throughout history, any movement which actively opposed free and full education has invariably been one of oppression, and fundamentalists are proving themselves to be a fine example of that rule. The Crusade mentality is definitely still with us, since the fundamentalists have kept it alive. To be fair, many non-fundamentalist Christians do recognize the immorality of this stance. In fact, there are vocal advocacy groups within the AIDS crusade stalwart Roman Catholic church itself, such as "Catholics for Contraception" and "Catholics for a Free Choice", who have publicly criticized the Vatican for its incredible immoral position on condom use and AIDS. Unfortunately, this enlightened attitude carries no more weight with fundamentalists than it does with the Pope, and it gets little press compared to the well funded and well publicized fundamentalist movement.
It's not enough for us to merely defend humanist sexual mores; our ethical duty is to go on the offensive, and remind the fundamentalists daily that their attempts to suppress sex education and condom use in the face of AIDS are unspeakably evil. I would rather have a society of healthy people and rampant premarital sex than a society of the dead, the dying, and their grieving, broken hearted friends and families. The anti-sex crusaders disagree; they want people to choose between obeying their rules or dying slow, horrible deaths. Do these anti-sex crusaders sleep well at night? The really scary thing is that they probably do, because it simply hasn't occurred to them how totally wrong this is. When fundamentalists throw stones at atheists for "immorality", they should take some advice from their own Saviour, stop, and take a good, long, hard look at themselves first.
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