Anything that reaches for atention, looses credibility in my book.
Point taken.
As an example, religion is being used to justify hate speech against gay people, and it is also being used to justify abstinence-only education. It isn’t that difficult to deduce from this that violence against gay people or teen pregnancies would be more common in areas with such religions.
Yeah, that does seem to happen quite frequently.
I am Catholic and I have never heard a priest say that. They talk about forgiveness in the churches I have visited. This is not to say that there are not a few wack jobs in the bunch.
It's not generally the catholics saying that. It's the same "born-again" blowhards that hate anyone who doesn't march lockstep with their veiws. (BTW, that would include catholics).