So,
About once a year we see “studies” released by research institutes that just happen to be run by religious organizations or conservative think tanks, that say that [Insert Minority Group A] tends to have a higher rate of suicide than those who are “normal.”
The one that sparked this response just happens to be a post saying that Atheists tend to have a higher suicide rate than Christians.
There is one factor that this willfully ignorant bastards consistently ignore when they interpret the “findings” from their “studies.”
Any time you have a group that is consistently physically and emotionally abused, ostracized, otherized, and treated in general as sub-human, you are going to have a higher rate of suicide.
Atheists, LGBT folk, Pagans, and other groups that the majority deems to be “unfavorable,” face very real persecution in this country.
And by persecution, I don’t just mean they get offended on a regular basis, or that their feelings get hurt. I mean that society looks the other way as they are attacked, physically and verbally. Society looks the other way as their homes and businesses are burned. There is an entire history of Atheists, and homosexuals being killed in the streets and the police shrugging it off and moving on. Just as often it happens in the back woods where their families aren’t even given the benefit of a proper funeral until their bodies are found months later.
For those in power who keep screaming “I’m being persecuted,” persecution is a real thing. And yes, persecution tends to lead people to be more inclined to do something stupid.
They do these “studies,” and point to them as evidence that whatever thing they find uncomfortable was obviously unholy and unnatural to begin with, while totally ignoring Human nature.
A person being an Atheist does not make them unstable or an abomination.
A person being gay does not make them unstable or an abomination.
A person being human does not make them unstable or an abomination.
A person being abused to the breaking point, being told that they are abominations, being told that they are un-American by their very existence, being kicked out of their homes, outcast by their families, abused by people that should be their friends, constantly in fear that they might be the next dead queer/witch/heathen in some assholes back pasture… THAT makes a person unstable.