Well, as you have in fact provided a civil answer, Jim, I will politely reply thank you; tho I can't quite see all the cause of your objection to the points I made. In particular, I must take up your accusation that I think some persecution worse than other, because it seems to me self-evident that some persecution IS worse than other. I don't think that the Holocaust, or Stalin's gulag s and his 1936 Moscow Trials & executions and his extermination of the kulaks, or the worst excesses of the Inquisition, are to be placed on an equivalent footing to the Irish girls prevented from having abortions, who have been adduced here, by you & others, as being 'persecuted' in tones to suggest the severity of all these persecutions are equal. You remind me of someone [Richard Bridge IIRC?] accusing me in tones of reprimand on another thread of being more hostile towards some religions than others, as if that somehow wasn't cricket.

Sorry; but I think that is just plain silly. Some religions are more reprehensible and undesirable in their effects than others; and some persecutions likewise. If that's all you mean by a 'sliding scale' then let it slide!

~M~