Wealthy conservative Christian activists have taken over our government, and are in the process of tearing down the wall separating church and state. At the same time, Christians in the United States have decided that they should have a blanket exemption to civil rights laws, and shouldn’t even have to share public spaces with people they label sinners. In the process, anyone who stands up against their theocratic impulses is labeled as anti-Christian. Thus, I would be considered “Christophobic,” but I know it’s not accurate.

I have deep compassion and empathy for those who identify as Christian, even if I also believe that the alignment they are searching for can’t be found by magical thinking or doing what their delusions tell them to do. To understand my view, you’ll need a little bit of background though.

Most people are forced to identify as one religion or another from birth. However, there is intense pressure on teenagers to “find themselves,” and at the same time mental illness is most likely to strike people in their teens or early 20’s. This is particularly true for impressionable youth, susceptible to social contagions and mass hysteria.

When a teen tells you that they’re hearing voices that compel them to do things, and especially things that are deeply anti-social, this is a huge warning sign. Whether or not they claim that this voice comes from a Jewish zombie carpenter who’s been dead for 2000 years is irrelevant: this is clearly a delusion.

These sorts of thoughts don’t happen in a vacuum though. In all likelihood, they’ve been hanging out with other kids who claim to hear voices and talk to invisible demigods. At school, they probably have surrounded themselves with other friends who have convinced them that this is cool and trendy. There are even after-school clubs that schools are forced to sponsor, where they can all engage in this non-reality together. This reinforces their false beliefs in a form of mass hysteria and social contagion. This is called Rapid Onset God Delusion by scientists, or ROGD for short.

If an adolescent is hearing voices and talking to people who clearly aren’t there you need to get them appropriate psychological and psychiatric care; you don’t simply humor the delusion. This is why the most compassionate thing to do is to remind them forcefully that their invisible friend isn’t real, that you won’t accommodate their fantasies, and neither will anyone else.

It is unfair to other students and administrators to accommodate these individuals. It costs time, and money from already stretched budgets. It also forces reality-based students to participate in the charade, whether they want to or not, by treating these unscientific beliefs as factual and something that must be respected.

The Christian-mafia, however, is taking over our schools and doing their best to not only make this social contagion acceptable, but to spread it with after school Bible studies, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and prayers before football games. At the same time the Christian activists controlling the federal government are taking money away from schools that do not support these aberrant beliefs. In turn, they’re giving more and more money to schools that encourage these delusions and indoctrinate children into them.

The Christian cult recruits children through bizarre occult rituals. One of the largest organizations has members who believe that grape juice and bread are magically transformed into the blood and flesh of a demigod, which they then are urged to consume in a room full of chanting elders. This organization also routinely grooms children for sexual abuse, and goes to great lengths to hide this from investigators.

It is also invading our health care system. About one in five hospitals in the US are owned by this organization. People, particularly women, are being forced to receive inferior health care as a result of the beliefs they are cramming down our throats. They are forcing doctors to violate their consciences, and cause suffering and harm to their patients by refusing to provide care.

Yet somehow, we as a society are being told by the government that we absolutely must accept this. Failure to go along with these delusions, programs of indoctrination, and abuse will be punished with fines, or even jail time. Teachers who speak the truth in love to them that they need psychological care, and that the voices they’re hear aren’t real, can go to jail. But this isn’t enough for the radical Christian activists. They want even more special rights.

They want even more access to our children in schools. They want every child taught that these voices are real. They want to force children to chant along with them, and to force every parent who wants a good education for their child to send them to a school that indoctrinates children into the Christian cult, where they will be forced to participate in their rituals.

Advocates of religious freedom laws must therefore provide evidence that they are facing material harms to show the need for a coercive governmental response — a requirement they have failed to meet. Are Christians being routinely denied housing? Fired when they come out as Christian? Being told that they can only use one particular bathroom on a school campus, or forced to hold it until they urinate all over themselves, because they are Christian? Do teens in Texas drive around on Saturday nights looking for Christians to “bash” in acts of hate crime violence?

And they want even more “special rights”. Current proposals to create religious freedom laws with varying types of exemptions (such as preventing religious people from discriminating on the basis of race) would not result in fairness for all. Instead, they would penalize many Americans who believe that that if you’re hearing voices in your head telling you to do things, you need mental help. They would violate the safety of women who need medical care, the duty of doctors and other medical professionals to provide the best care possible, and the free speech and religious liberty rights of countless professionals who know the difference between reality and fantasy. Establishing bad public policy and then exempting select secular institutions is not acting for the common good — and is certainly not fair for all.

* Note: if you find this offensive, then remember that this is EXACTLY how transgender people are talked about by the religious right. Nearly word for word. The difference is, this was a work of satire because I respect the rights of other people to live as they wish. The articles saying the same about transgender people, however, are perfectly earnest in their belief that transgender people need to be disrespected and discriminated against for their own good.