Fox News’ Todd Starnes thinks that adding two Muslim holidays to the New York City public school calendar somehow discriminates against Christians, continuing the right-wing narrative that Christianity is somehow under attack.
Starnes discussed the addition of Eid Al-Adha and al-Fitr to the public school calendar on Washington Watch with host Tony Perkins, and the two commiserated about the adding of the holidays.
“[When] it comes to Christmas and Easter, two very prominent Christian holidays, they’re not on the school calendar. They’re called ‘winter break’ and ‘spring break,’” Perkins said.
“Oh yes,” Starnes agreed. “For the sake of tolerance and diversity, that normally means the Christians are going to be discriminated against or their holidays are going to be minimized.”
As Right Wing Watch pointed out, Easter always falls on a Sunday, so it would not be listed on the school calendar since classes would not be in session regardless. Christmas, however, does appear on the schools’ holiday list, along with Good Friday and the Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur, Rosh Hashanah, and Passover.
Perkins continued with his rant against Muslim holidays, saying that “when 85 percent of the population identifies as Christian but we can’t have a Christmas holiday because it’s religious but yet we can have Muslim holidays. Something is not right there in New York City, ‘The Big Apple,’ something is rotten.”
Of course, Starnes blamed the whole thing on our Christian president.
“How many times have we seen this, where the Islamic faith is being given accommodation and the Christian faith and other religious faiths are being marginalized, not just in the public workspace but also through the Obama administration? … I think the Obama administration has created the environment for policies such as this.”
What Fox News and the GOP continually call a ‘War on Christianity’ is simply America finally trying to make things equal for all religions. Adding those two holidays did not take away from the Christian holidays that most of the country observes. They are so bigoted that any attempt to level the playing field is seen as an attack, rather than a correction to a long-standing problem.
Listen to the ridiculous conversation via Right Wing Watch.
