One of the things that you have to deal with when you're a conservative Christian in America is the incessant nattering of the secularists and their persecution complex. America is on the verge of theocracy! Gays will be herded into concentration camps with cells lined with leather and perfumed gas chambers! Or... rather... maybe not. It seems that Russian Muslims are getting a little bit agitated about the whole open homosexuality thing in Russia these days, and their "solution" to it is a lot less civilized than Pat Robertson at his most tourettes-afflicted.

Clearly, flogging the hell out of gay pride marchers is as bad as debating whether homosexuals should have legal access to the marriage system in America. Come to think of it, knowing the BDSM fetish among many gay men, this threat from the Muslims might actually cause some to seriously consider a gay pride rally in Russia. At any rate, it's object lesson in the proportionality that many leftists and secularists of all stripes have, that so many of them compare American religious conservatives with these violent wingnuts as though they are all cut from the same cloth.

Now, I wonder, if different political ideologies encourage their followers down different paths of practical application, then how can anyone seriously argue that all religions end up producing the same types of followers? At what point in time have Buddhists waged holy wars? When has it been widely accepted that Christian scripture gave average Christians, or even the institutional church, the obligation and right to convert at the point of sword and exterminate entire communities that did not convert? There is overlap in terms of peace and violence, and evil has been done in the name of scripture of all types, but longterm trends of different belief systems have been markedly different.

On that note, I should remind everyone that Christian scripture has been repeatedly violated by religious and political institutions that have tried to exploit it in order to consolidate their power. One need only examine the historical differences between missionaries operating according to Christian scripture and Islamic scripture to see what I mean.