I'd quite agree that the distinction between persecution and lesser things which make minorities feel uncomfortable ought not to be blurred. Though there is a relationship between them. Making anti-semitic or anti-Islamic or anti-Catholic jokes, for example, isn't the same as burning down places of worship or mobbing people in the streets, and in most cases does not indicate those things are on the way. But there are commonalities in the mindset of intolerance.

And so far as I have seen that distinction between persecution and the lesser unpleasantnesses is generally recognised in the kind of stuff Musket airily dismisses in that scatter-gun post.   

Of course there have been plenty of examples in this thread of attempts to blur such distinctions by people who would evidently see genuine persecution as insignificant when the minority under attack are Christians.