http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/amazing-coincidence-behind-todd-starnes-latest-christian-victimization-column
There are hundreds of thousands of people, worldwide, who are being oppressed and persecuted. Some for their religious belief. Most, though, because they are gay, or female, or of a minority ethnicity, or because they express a political outlook the state has deemed dangerous.
But there is no systemic or cultural persecution of Christians in this country. None. It exists only in fevered little minds with no logical basis for their own prejudices. So they just make shit up, and even enlist their children in the deception.
No less than four of the folks on my FB feed, good and well-meaning people all, posted this "incident" as the Gospel truth, all citing it as "proof" of "Christian persecution". The comments following were the standard self-reverential garbage, right down to the gratuitous Tebow reference: "Would Tim Tebow be the target of criticism if he were Jewish? Muslim? Or even atheist?"
First of all, yes, he would. But not because he was Jewish or Muslim or atheist. Hell, most people don't criticize Tim Tebow because of his Christianity. They criticize Tim Tebow because Tim Tebow thinks he's a first-string NFL quarterback, even though it's pretty obvious to anyone who pays attention that he's not, primarily because he has a wind-up instead of a release, and he's shown no real willingness or ability to change that fact.
Second, although I don't criticize anyone's end-zone celebration chops, many do. They decry the "showboating". They hate the spikes, and the goalpost dunks, and the increasingly choreographed touchdown dances. But they get strangely defensive when anyone criticizes Tebow's "altar stance", even though the implication, that somehow a divine being has favored young Tim over his opponents and given him this touchdown dispensation, is pretty damn offensive, as well as wholly and decidedly non-scriptural. Criticizing THAT, though, is seen as evidence of some social jihad.
Third, being made fun of is not "persecution" or "oppression". Again, Christians in this country are not oppressed, or persecuted, not even close. They are not having their "rights taken away from them", or being marginalized, in any sense.
But spiritual butt-hurt runs deep. They imagine any slight, however innocuous, as the equivalent of being fed to the lions. Their collective martyr complex leads them to do out-and-out stupid shit, like make up stories about "prayer being taken out of the schools" (it is not disallowed in any public school, including the one cited in this article), and even show a willingness to exploit their children in their deception, as the fuckwits in this article have done.
In a world where Malala Yousafzai is shot in the face for advocating the education of women in her country, you rabid Bible Thumpers think you could calm the fuck down for a few minutes, and maybe find a more worthy rally flag than Tim Tebow's rag-ass arm?
