Irreverence isn't bigotry, because ideas and beliefs are not people.

[Humanist_Activist]

21. I don't think so, I'm lucky, at my work, I can show irreverence quite openly...

even those who claim to be Christian here don't take it that seriously, we have a lot of atheists, agnostics, and GLBT people in my workplace. We tease each other occasionally, and if we have an opinion on something, we certainly aren't quiet about it, regardless of who is around.

To give an example, one day supervisor, a coworker and I ended up talking about Catholicism. We generally don't talk about religion, at least with my supervisor, she was actually surprised that I told her I was raised Catholic, the other coworker was slightly less surprised, out of the 3 of us, I was the only non-Hispanic. My supervisor was from Colombia and my coworker from Chicago. Anyways, so we, realizing we had a common religious heritage, started immediately to make fun of the Church, express our opinions on the child abuse scandals, and basically eviscerate the Church from its most sacred beliefs to its current actions with total irreverence.

I'm sure, if an actual religious Catholic was around, they would have had their ears turned red, but it still wasn't bigoted, we weren't attacking people, but an institution and its silly beliefs.