Arguments From Religious Conviction...Bigotry?

The issue of gay rights leads to the following dialog: If you are against homosexuality you are a bigot (the term is "homophobe"). Response: But my religion tells me the conduct is immoral. It's right there in the Bible or the Catholic Church's official catechism. Dilemma: Are these traditional religious convictions "bigotry"? Or do they give one a pass from "bigotry"?

I'm not going to answer that directly (because the question is, admittedly, a tough one).

Rather, I want to raise an analogy. What about bigotry against Christians? Does it exist? What about anti-Catholic bigotry? Bill Donahue's Catholic League is dedicated to fighting it. John Hagee recently was termed an "anti-Catholic bigot" for terming the Church "the Great Whore" of Babylon. Admittedly Hagee's interpretation of the Book of Revelation is quite novel and theatrical. I want to say "bizarre" but the whole Book of Revelation strikes me as bizarre no matter what one's understanding of it.

Yet, there is a longstanding tradition in Christendom of the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches as viewing one another as "apostate." This dynamic was more pronounced before the politically correct era of "Evangelicals and Catholics Together."

Enter John MacArthur about whom I've blogged before. He is in many ways the poster boy for evangelical or fundamentalist Christianity. And he is especially notable in that he does not let politics pollute the purity of his understanding of the Bible. His evangelical understanding is also well within the tradition of hundreds of years of reformed Christianity and thousands of years of Christendom. (Perhaps that's the biggest difference between MacArthur and Hagee). Hagee recently seemingly retracted his anti-Catholic sentiments after getting into "trouble" after endorsing John McCain. MacArthur would never do this. He avoids politics, it seems to me, precisely to avoid these kinds of dilemmas.

So I'm going to play a clip of John MacArthur's on the Roman Catholic Church. Note, his criticisms are quite harsh. But again, they are well within the longstanding tradition of reformed evangelical Christianity. Question: Do MacArthur's sentiments qualify as "anti-Catholic bigotry"? Because if they do, I'll simply note, they come from the SAME PLACE (longstanding traditional religious teachings) that both the evangelical and Roman Catholic opposition to homosexuality come from.