My friend is Pagan, and she gave me permission to quote from her blog entry. The post was about a conversation she had with a couple that she knows that she simply calls "A" and "B". I'll let her take the stage now. All emphasis is in the original.

Now, I've known these folks for quite a while; I consider them friends. They are devout Christians, but not the hate-based kind -- they know I'm pagan, and have never given me a moment's hassle about it. Late Saturday night at the [science fiction] con[vention], I mentioned to B that we had a new bumper sticker I thought she'd like: "Religious freedom is measured by the distance between church and state."

And she said, "Well, you know, I don't think I agree with that."

I have to admit, I sort of freaked. I asked her why -- and it turns out that she's bought the whole right-wing "American Christians are SO PERSECUTED" lie hook, line, and sinker. I asked her to cite examples; she said she hears about this "all the time", but can't remember anything specific without being able to look it up. (Fair enough.) I asked her when was the last time she heard about someone losing their job, or the custody of their children -- or being tied to a fence in a howling blizzard -- for being Christian, and she said, "Well, there ARE other kinds of persecution, you know." [My husband] came in to back my arguments, and things got... sort of uncomfortable... for a while. (A, wisely IMO, stayed pretty much out of it.) We pointed out that invariably, when someone does a little fact-checking on one of these stories, it turns out that either the entire story has not been told, or that it was made up out of whole cloth . I mentioned things that have happened to people I know personally -- no FOAF stories -- when the wrong person found out they were pagan. I said that in a right-wing religious theocracy, being Christian would not save them when the pogroms came, not if they were the wrong kind of Christian (which I still believe them to be; the fact that they were at a con at all argues for that)... but by that time I'd already be dead, disappeared, or in a re-education camp somewhere being "adjusted".

So, it is clear that the various factions of the Christian far right have managed to penetrate their 'persecution' meme right into the minds of what my friend sees as the non-rabid Christian mindsets. Think about this for a moment. They don't have any specific examples, all they know is that they are being 'persecuted', and continue to believe this even after being presented with the fact that they indeed are not anywhere near being persecuted. But this is the key to their followership. If they continue to believe this, this belief makes them malleable to the far right, and that enforcement of the persecution may eventually make them unreachable by anyone rational.

My friend continues:

The whole conversation felt like a punch in the gut, and I've been a little depressed about it ever since. These are people I trusted, and they'd just indicated their willingness to support a government which will turn me into legal game. Moreover, these aren't faceless "right-wing Christian loonies". A and B are good, decent people who honestly believe that an overtly Christian government would be a GOOD thing. I'm pretty sure I understand why; they think such a government would be run by people more or less like them [emphasis mine], and don't realize that it's the hate-based faction which is grabbing for political power.

It is people like A and B who are going to deliver us into the hands of the Falwells and Robertsons. People who simply don't understand that, in supporting what they see as a Rockwell-esque "Christian America", they will end up electing a Christian Taliban. And I don't know what can be done about that. I'm a great believer in the power of one-on-one discussion to work people past their misconceptions; I've seen it happen. I wish this conversation hadn't dropped on me like it did, because I think I could have done a better job with access to references. But the betrayal aspect hit me very hard. I know there are people reading this who will understand why, from their own personal experiences.

My friend's feeling of betrayal is very real, and I have felt it too. It's hard to avoid the feeling that there's an invisible target reticule on you if you are a minority faith, or non religious.

It was the 'people like them' quote that got my attention. One of the means we can use to break through that barrier of disbelief and denial that rank and file Christians have erected is to emphasise and demonstrate as often and as pointedly as possible that the people who are feeding them these 'persecution' lines are not like them, and are in fact, manipulating them for their own ends. If we can reach out to these millions of "A's" and "B's" around the country, we can erode that illusion, and pull them out of lockstep with their leaders.

We have to deliver them from delivering us. That is the bottom line.