Mike Huckabee has been out promoting his provocative new book. In explaining his opposition to gay marriage on The View, Huckabee argued that the gay rights movement should not occupy the same moral status as the civil rights movement for blacks because blacks were subject to far more violence. I’ll let others discuss the idea that violence should be the main measure of a group’s rights claims.I wanted to dwell on another point he raised. After passionately criticizing violence against blacks, he also noted that Christians were subject to violence as well. That’s true but there’s a growing mythology in the Christian community that they’re persecuted as much as, or more than, other groups.Not really. According to the FBI, last year there were twice as many hate crimes based on sexual orientation (16.6%) as there were based on Christianity (8.4). There were also more hate crimes against Muslims than Christians and eight times as many hate crimes against Jews as against Christians. And of course this is despite the fact that Christians represent a far larger percentage of the population than gays, Muslims or Jews.Again, no persecution is justified and I understand that many Christians feel that their faith is mocked by the dominant culture — and sometimes they’re quite right — but let’s keep things in perspective.

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