In spite of our noble heritage, American history is replete with examples of real persecution. A country that aspired to freedom from tyranny from its inception turned a deliberately blind eye to the cruelly barbaric institution of slavery for nearly a century afterwards. Hundreds of thousands of the country's native inhabitants were pushed by an indifferent government onto barren reservations and left to die of disease and malnutrition while their homes were despoiled, mined and paved over. Workers who dared to unionize in the 1930's were terrorized by armed thugs hired by big business. Japanese Americans were rounded up by our government and forcibly interned in camps in one of the more shameful acts in our recent history. Today members of religious minorities such as Sikhs and Muslims have found themselves targeted by thuggish vigilantes eager to "avenge 9/11."
And then there are the florists, bakers and wedding planners:
DES MOINES – Senator Ted Cruz on Friday night drew one of the largest crowds in Iowa of any candidate this year: some 2,300 Christian conservatives, who turned out for an unusual program featuring people Mr. Cruz called “victims of government persecution.”
The eight people included bakers, a florist, wedding planners and others from several states. All of them said they had been sued, fined or fired for refusing service to same-sex couples or for expressing opposition to homosexuality. Several of them were well known to audiences of right-leaning news media.
Cruz led the event, which he had planned for a month in his futile quest to win the Iowa caucuses, presenting himself as a champion of the persecuted Evangelicals:
“We are blessed today to be in the presence of heroes. Heroes who have suffered for living out their faith.”
Seated in a chair facing Betty Odgaard of Iowa, Mr. Cruz listened as she fought back tears recalling how she and her husband had been publicly attacked after refusing to rent their wedding event space to a gay couple.
“You have endured pain, you have endured the attacks, you have endured hatred,” Mr. Cruz said, reaching out to touch her arm. A close-up of her pained face was projected on large screens around the stage.
This bawling Betty is the current poster child of the religious right. She and her husband leaped into the national spotlight after refusing to rent out their art gallery/event space (built out of an old church) to facilitate a same-sex marriage in Iowa, citing their Mennonite faith. The humiliated gay couple they shunned then filed a Complaint with the
Iowa Civil Rights Commission, noting that the law in Iowa since 2007 says that people offering public services cannot discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. A Christian legal organization called the "Becket Fund For Religious Liberty" quickly stepped in and sued the state of Iowa on the Odgaards behalf. Ultimately the Odgaards were fined $5000, which they paid, declaring at the same time they were closing their art gallery so they would never have to host a gay couple. In doing so, they became folk heroes to the religious right, casting their experience as "defending their religious faith" in the face of secular government-inspired tyranny.
Except afterwards their so-called noble religious faith revealed itself to be little more than hateful bigotry. The Odgaards went on an anti-gay tear, spearheading an initiative to erect 1000 anti-gay billboards across the country (the first was erected in Oklahoma this July). Thus they made the remarkably seamless transition from "defending" their so-called faith to forcefully attempting to impose it on others. However this hasn't stopped either of them from milking their experience into "persecution" at political rallies like Cruz's.
Another rider on the victimhood bus at Cruz's rally was so-called Christian Baronelle Stutzman, a 70 year old flower shop owner who refused to provide flowers to a gay wedding. Stutzman was fined $1000 plus 1$ in Court costs for discriminating against Robert Ingersoll and Curt Freed, who were married (without Stutzman's flowers) in 2013. Ingersoll and Freed also brought a separate suit against Stutzman, but their ACLU lawyer said that suit sought only insignificant damages.
Stutzman then entered the right wing religious outrage-churning industry, claiming on Fox News (along with her attorney) and in a possibly-ghostwritten op-ed in the Washington Post that rather than a paltry $1000 fine the business owner was facing total financial ruin.
"I certainly don't relish the idea of losing my business, my home, and everything else that your lawsuit threatens to take from my family, but my freedom to honor God in doing what I do best is more important."
She has also claimed, "They want my home, they want my business, they want my personal finances as an example for other people to be quiet."
Co-Officiating at Cruz' event was Steve Deace, an Iowa talk show host who helpfully provided the obligatory "Orwellian comparison:"
“He asked the one thing from her she could not provide,“ said Mr. Deace, who traded off with Mr. Cruz in interviewing the guests. “He went right out of there and reported her, like a George Orwell novel.”
You see, in addition to refusing to provide the gay couple their flower arrangements, Ms Stutzman also had her head ensconced in a metal cage teeming with live, ravenous rats and was forced to renounce her faith on pain of death. Oh wait..that was
1984.
And then there was victim number three, Kelvin Cochran, a fomer Atlanta Fire Chief fired for insubordination, a charge involving the writing and distribution of an anti-gay book which many firefighters in his department found grossly offensive:
Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says he fired Cochran last week for exhibiting poor judgment and insubordination during an initial 30-day suspension over the former chief’s book, “Who Told You You Were Naked.” In the book, Cochran condemns homosexual acts as “vile, vulgar and inappropriate.”
An internal investigation found that Cochran did not get the proper approval to write the book in the first place – something he disputes – and then talked publicly about his suspension against the mayor’s wishes. The probe also found that while Cochran did not treat LGBT employees unfairly during his tenure, “there was a consistent sentiment among the witnesses that firefighters throughout the organization [were] appalled by the sentiments expressed in the book.”
In Cochran's telling, however, he was not fired for attempting to foist his religious views on others at his publicly funded place of employment but rather "because of his religion."
What causes this descent into whiny victimhood among these people has been subject to some debate. Some have suggested that Christianity carries with it the seeds of an inherent persecution complex. Candida Moss, biblical scholar at Notre Dame University, argues that Christian "victimhood" and persecution is largely a bunch of invented baloney:
The persecution of Christians is the historical equivalent of a false memory, she argues. Early Christians were persecuted by Rome only sporadically, less for religious heterodoxy than for political insubordination in an empire that was draconian across the board. Early Christian writers Irenaeus, Justin Martyr and Tertullian chronicled such incidents as proof of the faith’s righteousness, laying a scriptural basis for a self-image of eternal persecution.
But it was Eusebius, bishop of Caesaria and the first important historian of the church, who “encoded the understanding of the church as persecuted into the history of Christianity itself.” His martyrdom stories and those of other fourth century hagiographers were written to shore up orthodoxy (writers used martyrs as sock puppets to denounce heretics) and drum up tourism for local shrines. These tales of persecution — full of blood, cruelty and dodgy “facts” — were enjoyed at the time, Moss writes, much in the way that modern audiences take in horror movies, and the lowbrow gore has long been justified by embarrassed exegetes as a response to the strain of persecution. Except, as Moss argues, the textual evidence indicates all these tales of persecution were composed after, not before, Christianity had become the favored religion of the Roman Empire in the early fourth century. In short, they belong to an invented tradition of victimization.
Each of Cruz's self-proclaimed victims takes great pains to declare that they are not bigots, and that this is about the freedom to live their lives the way they see fit. But when you feel compelled to exaggerate minimal penalties imposed for knowingly violating the law, or worse, making grandiose attempts to impose your beliefs on the rest of the world, the only freedom being exercised is the freedom to be ignorant. That freedom ends when it results in one group of people being turned into second-class citizens, which is exactly what the bigots showcased at Cruz's rally tried to do when they chose to use their "religion" as an excuse to discriminate.