rationalskepticism.org

Well in the case of the USA, atheists and gays are being constantly bombarded by hate propaganda. We have a thread devoted to the hate propaganda being deployed against atheists in the Nontheism section, and I've provided a couple of seriously nasty examples. If you're subject to the stress of knowing that the people around you are so filled with visceral hatred of you, simply because of what you are, that will have an impact upon your health. I for one would not like to try living openly as an atheist in Georgia, for example, because I know for a fact that in some parts at least, I'd be likely to wind up dead in a ditch with bits of me hacked off with an axe. Yes, the hatred is that serious, that intense, and that nasty. And at the risk of Godwinning the thread, being an atheist in Georgia gives you a taste of what it must have been like to be Jewish in late 1930s Germany. Indeed, it's not unreasonable to ask the question of when the Christofascists are going to hold their own version of the Wannsee Conference, in the light of the suppuratingly vicious eructations of people like Tom Willis, or the explicit statements by creepy Christofascist groups such as the Dominionists, who have openly and publicly declared that if they gain power in the USA, they're going to round up gay people and murder them en masse. In the case of atheists, Tom Willis has openly advocated throwing them into concentration camps. You don't have to take my word for it, you can hop over to the relevant thread in Nontheism and download his screeds - I've provided links for the purpose.

When you're surrounded by that sort of hatred, it's going to result in you producing a lot of cortisone.