I agree with this - my believe that people are shitty knows no bounds - but I do think that in the US, right now, religious justifications are a huge part of the greater movement to prevent equal rights.

IMHO, it's not so much that individual people who are doing the abuses are necessarily thinking about the Bible when they torment a kid, but that the signal that this is OK is given by (say) the national debate about gay rights, which is often framed in Biblical terms.