Respectable Minorities

How big does a minority have to be to become respectable?

If you believe the propaganda of homosexuals the “fact” that 10% of people are homosexual is a dogma you have to subscribe to. To doubt this statistic is to prove yourself to be an enemy of the cause.

Why is it a cause?

If you do any statistical survey of any population you really have to cheat quite a lot to ever achieve a figure of 10%. You either have to define being a homosexual as being any person ever in a room in which some vaguely homosexual activity occurred, even if only once, or you have to do your survey in San Francisco, Blackpool or Brighton. If you use a reasonable definition and ordinary random anonymous opinion polling methods you will achieve a figure that is closer to 1% than it is to 10. Meta-analysis tends to put the figure around 3%.

Is this significant? Possibly, yes. It all depends on how big a minority has to be before people accept it as being legitimate variation rather than abnormal, deviant or pathological.

I resent homosexuals casting their net so wide that they drag in people who should not really count simply to make their numbers look bigger, so they can claim a disproportionately loud voice. But in other ways I can see why they are doing it, because there are a lot of people out there who will judge how wrong an action is by how common it is. If the minority is small it seems it is perfectly acceptable to persecute them mercilessly. This is the Christian way.

Christians in America like to make the definition of atheism narrow, excluding the apathetic and the simply disgruntled. If they make such a narrow definition they can come up with a figure for the prevalence of atheism that looks low enough to dismiss as pathological, of no consequence, small enough to persecute without guilt. This is their aim. Despite the fact that there are significantly more atheists in America than Jews you would think from the public face of religious diversity and tolerance that this was quite the other way around. The number of times you hear phrases such as "Judeo-Christian values" and the number of times one of the two or three talking heads on a television show is a Jew might lead you to guess at the number of Jews in America at 10% of the population. Even if you use Hitler's definition of who is Jewish there aren't that many Jews alive, let alone living in America.

How often do you hear anybody in America talking about the shared values of Christians and atheists? That is anathema to the American Christian lobby. Atheists have to be portrayed as a tiny minority, as deviants, perverts and incapable of good deeds, morality and sharing anything decent with decent people. George H. W. Bush wouldn't even consider them citizens.

Atheists in America are a small minority. This tactic of portraying atheists as deviants is just about possible to maintain in small town America far from any centres of learning. But in American universities atheists and freethinkers are too large and respected a minority to be treated like pariahs. Among the highest levels of academia, especially in science, atheism is not a deviant minority it is the norm. Fundamentalist Christianity is seen as unusual and suspect, while some American professors may go to church regularly there are not many who believe in the Bible literally. The more educated people are the harder it becomes for them to accept Bronze Age myths as literal truths.

In civilized countries things are different again. Outside the USA atheism is accepted as part of the fabric of society everywhere that has widespread education. Europe, and especially Britain exported its problematically religious people to America. About the same time Britain also exported ship loads of common criminals to Botany Bay. Australia has man-eating sharks, huge crocodiles, almost all the world's most venomous snakes, spiders and fish. Even some of the bloody jellyfish can kill you. In contrast America has 75% of the world's lawyers and probably the same share of the world's guns and religious lunatics. Strewth, I know where I'd feel safer, mate.

Taken across the whole world atheists are still a minority, but a much bigger minority than American Christians would have you believe. A thoroughly respectable minority.

It does not matter whether homosexuals are 40% of the population or less than 1% in my book they are a respectable minority and should be treated that way. Everywhere. The same goes for secular, non-religious, agnostic and atheistic people.

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A Soul Man?
No, I will not keep silent about Islam
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Muhammad the Plagiarist
Why is Religion Special?
Theocracy? No thanks.
Gods of the Imagination
Should we Respect Islam?
The Prophet's House Call
Respectful Silence


 

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