I just had to play ‘one of these things is not like the other’ with an old acquaintance of mine from my childhood church today. I say ‘acquaintance’, but technically she was a huge presence of my childhood that I have deliberately chosen to leave behind.
Right now it’s May (14th) and as of right now, a local Mosque, Synagogue, and church have all been vandalized at some time this month. The woman I’m discussing has been insisting over and over that the vandalism of the church was proof that Christians were just as actively persecuted as Muslims and Jews in my area, and that her church also needed gates and guards at our entrances.
Except, as I mentioned earlier, one of these crimes is not like the other. Our largest local Mosque was spray painted with threats on all doors. The Synagogue had its windows smashed and slurs sprayed on the front entrance.
Th church was targeted for being explicitly pro-lgbt. Slurs were sprayed on their building, as well as references to living in sin.
The Muslim and Jewish communities here were targeted out of hatred towards their religion. The church here was targeted by another Christian for not meeting their standards of ‘correct’ practice.
One of these things is not like the other. One of these crimes is not tied to religious persecution, but to anger at acceptance being practiced against the norm. Only one of these cases of vandalism made every headline— can you guess which one?
hint, it was the church. They almost all ignored the other two bigoted acts, but the headlines that did talk of the church wrote about homo and transphobia, not ‘Christian persecution’. Because that’s what it was. Homo and transphobia performed by another Christian— not in anyway hate for the Church itself.