And as long as that is your approach, you remain the oppressor.
[Note: the use of "you" past this point doesn't necessarily mean you personally. As much as white conservative Christians look alike to me, I know you're not all the same. It means people who believe as described plus anyone who abets them. Unless a person stands loudly opposed to the actions of their co-religionists, they are no less responsible. Like good cops who cover up for bad cops aren't good cops]
If I decide it's immoral to be married, can I discriminate against the single (wait, we do that in tax law). If it's immoral to live in a city, do we force everyone to move out or punish those who remain? Does everyone have to write right-handed? (Or does the minority rule and we all have to be left-handed?)
You might think those are ludicrous examples, but I think Christianity is ludicrous. The idea of believing the Bible is...I tried to think of my reaction and ended up laughing. (To be fair, the same goes for other religions as well, I'm not singling yours out.) When people complain about cults, I'm always amused - Trumpsim isn't any more or less reasonable than religion. Angry, irrational, delusionally convinced they're being mistreated, no internal logic, without evidence in the natural world...yep, just another religion.
I suppose you feel the opposite, the idea of there being no God must be unimaginable.
Well, walk a mile in my shoes. You trying to convert me is as absurd as the opposite. Think about how that would feel if i tried. Well, that's what you're trying to do to me.
The difference is that I don't give a damn what you do on a Sunday morning. I don't want to run your life or dictate your morality or anything else. You do you, have a blast. I have a lot of Christians in my life who are lovely people - they leave me be and I do the same. Maybe they think I'm going to hell, maybe they don't. But they accept what seems obvious - it's God's decision, not theirs.
My idea of a good world is one where everybody handles their own affairs. We all respect each others' rights and accept our own responsibilities. (That's why I'm not a libertarian, they're childishly insistent on rights with no consequences.) I'm not going to burn Bibles or tear down churches or put extra burdens on you for your faith. To me, oppression is others trying to run your life, persecution is trying to punish you for it.
In your world, however, the normal state of affairs is seen as you getting to run everything and dictate to everybody else. But that means your idea of oppression and persecution is just my idea of life - others trying to have their own lives without your interference. Can you set your ideology aside long enough to understand why people might not like you?
Nobody likes to be pushed around, including Christians. So why would anybody like you guys? You're the worst of bullies. Or more colloquially, grade-A assholes.
Churches paying taxes wouldn't be oppression, forcing them to pay double would be. (Which is essentially the system we have now in reverse - the rest of us fund your life.) Keeping prayer and/or the Bible out of classrooms isn't oppression as long as no other faith is allowed in. (But instead we have the opposite, where non-Christian groups are often shut out of publicly funded school facilities. If you try to say that science is a religion I will be VERY disappointed. I hope you're smarter than that.) Allowing gay marriage isn't oppression, it doesn't affect you any. (Instead we have the opposite.) Is marriage good for kids? Sure...unless it isn't. "Hey, dad beats up mom and the kids, let's force them to stay married!"
It's not gay couples giving marriage a bad name, straight ones are doing a fine job of that all by themselves.
Abortion is a more complicated question. But waving Bibles and shouting isn't the answer, we just have to decided when life begins. Once that decision is made, then the question resolves itself. (For a satirical-but-quite-serious look at what "life begins at conception" would involve, see "A Modest Proposal for Protecting the Unborn" https://medium.com/p/92e7915107c2. If we aren't going to be fully committed, then we can't do it at all.) But how come pro-life stops at birth? It's obviously B.S., more of a fundraising ploy than actual philosophy. So why should it be taken seriously?
In Missouri, there's a bill under consideration to force women to bring ectopic pregnancies to term, That's a death sentence, for mother and child both. But in the pursuit of purity, other's lives are treated as a small price to pay.
P.S. Sorry this is so long, I didn't have time to write anything shorter. And I'll probably get an article out of it.
