The Republican Party loves to use fear of an apocalyptic doomsday scenario to scare people into supporting all Republican causes and condemning the Democratic Party as evil. One such scare tactic is convincing Christians that voting for Democrats will bring about the persecution of Christianity. Whenever the Republican news media can find a case in which a Christian doesn’t entirely get their way, they then cry to the world that Christians are being persecuted.

To cite specific examples, there have been two cases in which Christians tried to discriminate against homosexuals getting married and were prohibited by law from doing so. One was a photographer who refused to provide services for a gay wedding, and the other was a baker who refused to provide a cake for a gay wedding. Many conservative Christians, some whom I know personally, want anti-discrimination laws reversed so that Christians can refuse to provide services to gay weddings. What these Christians fail to realize however is that they are setting the stage for a mass discrimination against future Christians. Here’s why:

Christianity isn’t exactly growing in this country. Christians may be the majority now, but as time passes, Christians are on pace to make up a smaller and smaller percentage of the population. We are following the path that Europe followed decades ago. Today, European churches are museums or are being converted into nightclubs, as active Christians make up every small percentage of the population. America is likely to look the same way 50-100 years from now, with 75% of the population being atheist or agnostic while Christians represent less than 10% of the population.

If we set the legal precedent now that a Christian business owner can refuse to provide services to a wedding that does not align with the business owner’s religious beliefs, then we can be certain that someday, when Christians are the minority, that non-Christians will refuse to provide cakes, tuxedos, wedding dresses, and even wedding sites to Christians, because Christians violate atheistic and agnostic beliefs by bringing God into the ceremony of marriage. This will especially be the case if today’s Christians make a practice out of discriminating against gays while the Christians have a huge numbers advantage. It will simply be a case of revenge discrimination.

So to the Christians who say, “I’m really worried about Christians being persecuted,” I say, “I agree! So let’s create a legal system in which no one is allowed to discriminate against someone else based on a difference in religious beliefs or practices.”