I was wondering who you guys think has it harder when it comes to prejudice and hate, gays or atheists?
I happen to live in an area where I can safely say that Christians have it harder than atheists, and maybe even possibly the queer constituent (and homosexual Christians have it the hardest). I won't say this is common, because homophobic expressions are still commonplace mostly everywhere.
Round here it's virtually de rigeur to make some disparaging comment about Christianity or Christians and how out of step they are with modern values. Of greater controversy is the laws due for consideration in Parliament re: anti-discrimination and religious practice, specifically taking away the right of religious institutions to hire based on religion and sexual identity. Given that these are outdated laws that are indeed out of step with current anti-discrimination practice that most people consider to be a no-brainer. Therefore the current PM did herself a great disservice by reassuring the social conservative religious lobby that she won't stifle the right to discriminate by religion or sexuality in the new, well, "anti-discrimination" laws, and quite possibly the biggest challenge the Church in general has to face is how they're going to deal with this shift in values, and just how integral it is to them, whether they continue to insist that this is part of the immutable word of God... or not. The Uniting Church, being social moderate-liberal, has been fractured over this issue, and I've seen a resurgence in other more spiritual denominations in a reassertion of what they consider to be their rights. It's going to get messier.
But to put things into perspective, I can think of places where you would have an equally hard time (i.e. you would probably be imprisoned, tortured, or killed) if you were a) atheist b) Christian or c) homosexual: Most Middle-Eastern countries, most African countries, much of the Indian subcontinent, much of South-East Asia, North Korea immediately spring to mind.
