Double Standards

A minor follow-up to last night. I was reading Facebook and there was a post about religious persecution from last night, featuring the people who have been hit with fines and lawsuits for not serving gay weddings or having and stating opinions against homosexuality and losing their jobs for the mere statement of opinion. These are the people who spoke last night, to give a face to the impacts of some of our legislation.

And they are often combating the idea that "religious persecution doesn't exist."

So for this Facebook post, one of the comments said, "Yes, yes... those poor poor Christian souls who have to hide their religion, worship underground, and are persecuted daily for their beliefs. If only there could be houses of worship on every corner. Brazenly display objects of worship, say a symbol around their necks, without having it ripped off and trampled in the gutter. Maybe... just maybe some day they can have their beliefs displayed in our national motto. Oh if only they weren't persecuted so..."

To sum up: They aren't persecuted because look at all the things they have that real persecuted Christians don't have. In a very sarcastic tone, so you could probably interpret a little bit of snark to it as well.

And... the Facebook commentator is right. Christians in America are definitely not persecuted like Christians in other parts of the world. They haven't been beaten, forced out of their homes, had to meet underground, etc.

But the idea has a few problems.

1) It applies a double standard. Someone was getting on the comment author's case in the comments to his comment (track with me here) and asked if he was bitter. "No, not bitter. I just find any idea of Christian persecution in the United States laughable. They are confusing not getting their way with persecution." And replying to that, another person said, "Funny how the LGBTQ advocates are confusing not getting their way with persecution, too." Insightful. The original poster is comparing Christian complaints of persecution to Christians in persecuted countries, but failing to see that the people who are coming after the Christians, the LGBT activists, are also far far less persecuted that LGBTs in other countries. Maybe that's laughable. Maybe they should shut up and just be grateful they have so many freedoms, like the freedom to get married, the freedom to live openly with their gay partner, get symbols tattooed on themselves... etc. Why is it only Christians who have to shut up and be content with the living standards?

Well, obviously, it goes back to viewpoint censoring. Christians can be fined and verbally attacked and blasted in the media and threatened and that's ok because their viewpoint is BAD and you know it's really not that hard for them and they should really just abandon their viewpoint anyway. LGBTs however deserve to have access to all the businesses everywhere regardless of the feelings of who owns it because freedom isn't enough for them, they need total acceptance and confirmation and will suffer psychological harm and pain and suffering if they imagine someone somewhere doesn't agree with them and doesn't want to be involved with them.

How is this fair? How does one side have to suck it up and forfeit and the other side get given everything? Why does one side have to lose their rights of association and have their viewpoint get called into question and the other side gain the aggressive privilege of forcing their patronage and viewpoint on the first side?

It's a double standard.

2) It's a cop-out. Because Christians have all these benefits, it somehow negates the harms suffered to some because of viewpoint discrimination and government infringement of their rights. But these things have happened. And last I checked, this was America, and at some point in our history, we were founded on the idea of freedom for everyone equally.

So why should we stand aside and be like, "Eh, they've got it good enough. What else happens to them doesn't matter."? Do we do this for anyone else's rights? How about women? Other races? They're better off here, so why bother? No, because that's un-American. We fight for freedom and equality. We fight for the freedom of the LGBTs, but it isn't a freedom to force your business on someone, that infringes their rights of association. I covered that my last post.

But anyway, my point is that in fighting for freedom and equality, why should we just tell one group to shut up and give up, they don't get the same freedom and equality as everyone else cause they've already gotten so much.

Again, it comes down to viewpoint discrimination. Gay "rights (i.e. privileges)" are GOOD and Christians not agreeing with them and holding disproving viewpoints is BAD, so it's ok to persecute the Christians because they don't subscribe to the sanctioned viewpoint.

Which is thoughtcrime. And Big Brother is watching.