Blessed Are The Persecuted

I.

As a teenager in the 90s, I spent a lot of time arguing with religious folk. Mainly about atheism and gay rights, as both were very near to my heart. I noticed an astounding trend. Many Christians considered themselves deeply persecuted.

Christians make up a large majority of the population (of the USA). They control every branch of government. At the time there were no openly atheist elected federal officials. To this day all candidates for president still have to swear fealty to some form of christian god. Christians have added “under god” to the loyalty pledge all children are forced to recite in school, and added it to our currency. There are myriad special exceptions written into laws, giving special protection and privileges to christian sensibilities and christian organizations. The claim that they were a persecuted minority was (and is) laughable. The persecuted mindset and psychology that I saw on so many occasions was crazy-making! How is this level of blindness to the real world even possible? They would use “we’re being oppressed” as reasons to defend oppression of other religions!

My own church was one of these. Regularly (on a weekly basis) sermons in church would highlight how oppressed we were. Nazi persecution–from 50 years ago, in a country on the other side of the word–was regularly mentioned. The fact that courts would often force minors to accept life-saving blood transfusions against the wishes of their parents was also frequently brought up. And, of course, there was the constant micro-aggression of being subjected to a state that requested loyalty pledges and military service of a sect that believed both are immoral. If a Jehovah’s Witness missionary was every harmed in a foreign country, every Witness across the world would know about it in a matter of weeks, as further evidence of Satan working against us.

And it turns out, this is a very important part of many Christian sects. The 1st/2nd century christians did endure a fair bit of political persecution (depending on time and area). They developed strong survival memes that directly tied persecution to righteousness. The more persecuted you are, the more it means you are doing good, and God loves you. Satan rules this world, and the more the world is against you, the more Satan must feel threatened by you. Persecution was a direct indicator of moral goodness, and that helped the religion survive under adversity.

Of course that creates a problem when your religion becomes the official religion of the empire and establishes regional hegemony. The Catholics dealt with that pretty handily over time. But the American Protestants rejected all Catholic adaptations and reverted to a mythologized “Original Christianity.” Many of those included persecution myths. So feeling persecuted was very important. If the only way you can tell that you are on the Side of Good is to be persecuted, it becomes very important to see persecution everywhere, and exaggerate it.

(note: I believe that this persecution complex has a number of very important benefits. Primarily – it causes much of American society to strongly identify with and work to defend persecuted and oppressed groups. As far as I know, all non-violent civil rights struggles have taken advantage of this aspect of American culture. Apparently, the most effective thing a social movement can do is hold nonviolent protests that then are violently attacked by their opponents (video). So being persecuted, in addition to being morally satisfying, is also politically useful.)

II.

As we know, Identity Is What It Means To Be Human. So once someone has adopted an identity that includes “Is Persecuted,” it’s important to keep that feeling. In the case of Christians, this can be accomplished by going to church and/or watching Fox News. More marginalized groups have a problem – they have not yet developed a system that assures them they are persecuted. This generally isn’t much of a problem, because there are plenty of places in our society where belonging to one of these marginalized groups still results in negative consequences and hardship.

But the wonderful thing about or society is, we have actually made progress over the last century! All the work and tears of the past decades have not been in vain. :) There are some places in our country where groups that were oppressed, sometimes violently, even fifteen years ago, are now welcoming, safe areas. Places were one would have to intentionally go forth and seek out oppression if one wanted to feel it. This is further exacerbated by how easy it is nowadays to create social bubbles, excluding all the toxic awful people from you life, and surrounding yourself only with those who are supportive and caring. This is, generally, a fantastic thing! We have advanced, and many lives are less miserable because of it. :)

But the need for persecution doesn’t go away. Being Persecuted gives one a direction in life, a goal. It gives one adversity to overcome, and an intense form of bonding with others who are similarly persecuted. It gives you a family, and mortal certitude. Reaching your goal is nice, but it is no replacement for those extremely psychologically-important things. What does one do when one finds oneself without an oppressor, while having a deeply instilled “Is Persecuted” aspect to one’s very identity?

I suppose one could shift one’s goals to now help those in areas that are less advanced. To reach out into the dens of violence and iniquity, and give aid to one’s brothers and sisters still undergoing pain and hatred. But this is hard. I don’t mean that as an insult – the freedom to spend a lot of time and money on going to a foreign place (even if it’s just into the rural areas of one’s own country) is something only a privileged few have. It requires a career that is flexible and doesn’t require you to be on-site 40 hours a week. It requires energy reserves after the daily work of job and children and family commitments is complete. It’s often out of reach for those who aren’t independently wealthy.

(plus it risks being called-out for acting like a “white savior” or “colonizer” or something. Trying to help oppressed people in another culture is explicitly judging that culture as needing improvement in ways you deem important, which is “problematic”)

There is another “solution.” Deliberate assholery.

Text reads: The A in LGBTQA does not stand for allies; and the IA in LGBTQIA does not stand for including allies; not everything gets to be about you, cishet people. 

Instructions from meme poster say: Fun exercise: Be an enormous asshole to every self-proclaimed “ally” you meet to find out who’s actually an ally and who’s just here so you’ll go shopping with them.

I share this meme in particular, because it was shared by a friend who I otherwise greatly respect. This is literally a troll meme. The instructions give it away. Because, seeing as there’s no official body that decides what the letters “officially” stand for, the part about the letters doesn’t matter all that much. The real point is to spark reactions. When I see a meme instructing people to “be an enormous asshole”, it tells me a lot about the person who made the meme and the state of their peer-group. Far more than any sort of spat over what a letter stands for.

They want to be persecuted. They are not sufficiently persecuted. So they are intentionally alienating those around them in an effort to regain that original sense of persecution.

This, to me, explains a lot of why the far left is eating it’s own. Why college campuses, the most left-leaning, pro-diversity, and safe places in our society, are also the scenes of fringe-left meltdowns that scream about persecution and the intolerance of the faculty. Why white-male and cis-het are now slurs, despite the prevalence of both both within the wider liberal community, and as supporters of the community. Too much acceptance is intolerable. If too many people find us acceptable, by golly, we’ll drive them away.

III.

It’s claimed that someone who is only an ally when people are nice to them was never an ally at all. In a very real sense, this is true. Just yesterday I bemoaned the people who are only for freedom of speech when it’s their own speech, and are happy to censor those they don’t like. They obviously never cared for the principle of free speech.

On the other hand, I think it’s just plain disgusting to deliberately attack and insult people to test their ideological purity. No one has to prove their “geek cred” to self-appointed guardians of geek culture, or their “trans cred” to someone claiming they aren’t trans enough. And often the same people who say “I don’t care about principles, I care about consequences” when it comes to violently suppressing hate speech, are those who say “Allies should support us on principle, regardless of how they’re treated.” I detest people who hide behind principle when it suits them, and abandon it when it doesn’t. I get the feeling I’m not the only one. While I’ll never withdraw support for LGBT+ rights, I think spreading this sort of troll meme is a stupid idea.

There are couples in Texas being denied adoptions right now. There a children being subject to “gay-converston” therapy. – HB 3859 was just signed into law.

“HB 3859, which will allow child welfare organizations — including adoption and foster care agencies — to turn away qualified Texans seeking to care for a child in need, including LGBTQ couples, interfaith couples, single parents, married couples in which one prospective parent has previously been divorced, or other parents to whom the agency has a religious objection.
It also can be used to harm children in care; HB 3859 will forbid the state from canceling a state contract with an agency that subjected children in their care to dangerous practices such as so-called “conversion therapy.””

Gay couples and gay kids in Texas could use aid. They don’t particularly care that some edgelord isn’t feeling persecuted enough.