Gro-o-o-a-nnnnnnn!

OK, I'm obviously not getting the point over (although I'm persuaded that Bograt, as a self-confessed piss-taker and winder-up of "those twats on Mudcat", knows full well what the point is, and is simply indulging his delight in perverse, insulting role-playing), let's pose a hypothetical question.........

Q. How does persecution of one group by another, on the basis of nothing more than their religious beliefs, begin?

A. Purely hypothetically, let's suppose that one or two people who hold different beliefs, or perhaps no beliefs at all (let's call them group G) start to sneer at and take the piss out of those who have different beliefs (let's call the, for want of a better name, Group J). No problem, just a wind-up, a bit of innocent, harmless fun, eh? After a while, quite a few more people have joined G and got into the fun of all the sneering and piss-taking, and the suggestion is mooted that the people in J are somehow deficient mentally - not 'normal' or 'rational' like the 'clever', 'superior' people in G. With me so far? Recognise the scenario, in it's historical manifestations and, more recently on a certain Internet forum?

After a while, and group G has grown even further, an idea forms amongst a few of the more ambitious and outspoken G-ites that the fact that the country's economic fortunes are at a low ebb, lots of people out of work, businesses going bust etc, is all down to those fucking abnormal, irrational J-ites, whose mental deficiencies already established are so severe as to render them 'sub-human'. So, what shall us 'normal', 'rational' G-ites do about those sub-human bastards.............??

No need to go further, it couldn't happen here...........could it?

Perhaps The Usual Suspects need to read back through the stuff they've posted and think about some of the subliminal messages they give out? Whether, in their words, or the way they present their arguments, they are guilty of allowing themselves to slip into group J?

Telling people who believe in a Deity that they are somehow part of a class whose members are judged deficient by virtue of being abnormal or irrational, or holding grudges against, and calling for the forced dissolution of a whole church because of the criminal acts of a small minority of its members, sounds like the first steps down the road to persecution.

Anyone for tennis?