Hello Friend!
This week and next week I want to dive into sometime really sensitive, that I feel needs to be talked about.
I want to tackle the idea that religion has been deeply harming members of the LGBTQ2S+ community, how we as 'hetero-normative' humans can start to really witness this harm, how we can start to question religion so as to make room for our society to grow into something where ALL humans get to have their humanity respected and why having this conversation is so hard but so important.
If you are a part of the LGBTQ2S+ community - I hope this work serves as a validation for your experience - as well as a safe place to EXPRESS anything you want to express.
If you're religious and this is hard to read - thank you for reading. Thank you for contemplating these ideas.
If you're a part of both communities - I hope this exploration helps you feel less alone, and again please share your thoughts as your voice matters more than mine.
If you're not a part of either group - this can serve as a place to gather perspective and tools so we can be a support for EVERYONE wading through these muddy waters.
This is a big subject and I won't be able to cover ALL the nuance - but I'd like to start this conversation anyway, and see where we can go.
Now before we get started, if you or someone you love has experienced religious trauma, especially due to your sexual orientation, here are some resources to support you and your recovery. You are WORTHY of help and support and should not have to battle this battle alone.
Religious Trauma Institute Instagram (with links in linktree)
Religious Trauma Institute Website
Religion Shouldn't Hurt Instagram
Religious Trauma Informed Therapist Directory
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If You've Been Told Who You Are Is Wrong:
To anyone who grew up in a religion that told you that who and what you are is fundamentally wrong, bad, sinful, going to get you thrown into the pits of hell, that told you that who and what you are was a mistaken, is something to be fixed, is something to be eradicated, to anyone who was told that God doesn’t hate ‘you’ he just hates what you ARE - please allow this to be a moment of validation for you.
Before I start - I’m not a member of the LGBTQ2S+ community myself. I’m not intending to speak FOR this community in this piece, nor would I assume to KNOW what it’s like to hold any of the aforementioned identities. I love people who hold these identities. I’ve listened to many who hold these identities share of their experiences. I am here to speak WITH this community, to support their liberation, and to bring light to their needs as humans who deserve a world that’s safe for them to exist within. If you ARE a part of this community, please share your voice here. Your words, your experiences and your thoughts matter. I’m speaking as someone who was raised in the Christian church, who knows what the church teaches about non-hetero sexuality, the gaslighting that goes on when people are confronted with the very real HATE that religion has for people who hold non-hetero identities and the very real brainwashing/trauma that occurs because of religious thought. I’m speaking from the experience of being inside the cult, so to speak, and of what I know now being outside of it. The damage that is done is great and I feel it needs to be brought to light, by both those being harmed directly by it, and those who SEE this harm being done. We all need to raise our voices against hate, and that’s my intention today.
I also don’t want to SHAME anyone who’s practicing some form of religion/is Christian. I am going to get into my understanding of the deep roots of our desire to follow these kinds of teachings, and share my own personal story with how I used to be Christian, and how the damage I saw being done to people I loved was part of the reason I walked away. I’m not here to tell anyone what to believe, nor am I here to convince anyone to leave their religion or even to question it - this is simply my point of view.
To the LGBTQ2S+ community - You.are.not.broken.
There never has been and never will be ANYTHING wrong with you. Anything ‘sinful’ about what you are.
The shame and guilt that anyone who was raised in a religion that made a moral judgement on something that was fundamental to who they were, is the kind that devastates a life. Because this shame, this guilt, this level of rejection happened at a time and place in life when acceptance by authority figures = life. Rejection = death.
So to be told that we had parts of self that were fundamentally wrong and therefore were 100% going to get us rejected, abandoned, abused and shamed - both in this life AND the next, by our current authority figures/providers AND the ULTIMATE authority figure/provider - meant that we HAD to develop deep, strong, powerful defenses against these parts of self.
We HAD to hate them, reject them.
We had to learn to feel TERRIBLE about these parts so as to SUPPRESS them.
The levels to which this was traumatizing can’t be understated.
This is learning that what we ARE means DEATH - this is learning that we are an existential threat to ourselves, and that changing something so fundamental to us, that in reality CAN’T be changed - is the ONLY way to survive/be loved/be accepted.
Take that in for a moment. Being so shamed and rejected for something so deeply inherent when we are dependent upon acceptance to feel safe and secure means we are going to have some serious, serious pain ahead of us. When this happens to us repetitively as young people, it gets wired into our PHYSIOLOGY. It’s not just a mental construct we can think our way out of later in life. It’s a deep nervous system program that often takes incredible amounts of time, patience and tenderness to actually integrate and move forward from.
This learned self loathing can literally be deadly.
It’s that deep.
The reality is, it’s really, really HARD to suppress ourselves, because in real reality suppression feels TERRIBLE. But when suppression gets wired in as SURVIVAL and when expression gets wired in as death - which it DOES in our childhoods where acceptance = provision - the result is a kind of self hate that again, serves to fully cripple a human being.
Learning to re-accept these parts of self, learning to stop suppressing them, learning to express them - even in safe environments - is REALLY hard. The nervous system is going to fight against this tooth and nail, because it is going to perceive that this expression is going to lead to DEATH. The stories of guilt and shame are going to be SO STRONG, so powerful, are going to feel SO TRUE, as they try to protect the person from EVER embracing what would actually feel GOOD to them.
We have to understand that even if/when we’re adults who are safe, it’s incredibly difficult to reconcile with parts that we were told from day one make us evil, sinful and bad. The brain and body have to go through such a deep re-programming.
Now combine that with the fact that society, generally speaking, ISN’T a safe place for the LGBTQ2S+ community.
Most people who are doing the work to embrace themselves are being VIOLENTLY rejected/attacked/abandoned/abused. We still live in a culture that’s having a philosophical debate over whether certain people are deserving of basic human dignity/rights/freedoms/protections/safety. In many parts of the world embracing these parts means LITERAL death or risk of life.
Religion Has Caused MASSIVE Trauma:
Religion, at its core, has caused massive, massive trauma and this has to be aired out. It’s been the REASON legislation has been passed that makes people unsafe. It’s been the reason people have been violent towards others. It’s been the reason that so many people in the LGBTQ2S+ community live in a world with laws, costumes, norms and cultures that deeply oppose their ability to express, get their needs met, be safe and be included in the privileges of being part of a society. Both on individual levels and on societal structural levels religion has been the DIRECT CAUSE of people not having rights, not having freedoms, not having safety and not being able to love themselves or express themselves as they are.
Now, I get that a lot of people are going to say ‘well that’s not really what JESUS taught.’ ‘We’re not all like that.’ ‘We don’t reject the PERSON, we just denounce the ‘lifestyle’ choice. We ‘hate the sin not the sinner’ stuff. There’s a LOT of defensiveness around this, a lot of cognitive dissonance. Christianity often wants to prop itself up as a religion of love, of forward progress, of respect and reverence for life. It want’s to posture itself as a departure from old and barbaric ways of life - an enlightened, compassionate, heart of Jesus movement designed to make the world a better place.
But this goes against SO much of what Christianity and many Christians actually stands for, preach and believe.
I get that conversations like these are incredibly uncomfortable - because to question ONE aspect of something we hold as so sacred, all knowing, the place we go for all our answers that we NEED to believe is transcended in some way, means that ALL of it is going to come into question. I get that we can get really scared in our cognitive dissonance - if something we hold to be so sacred is objectively harmful in one way, could that mean it’s harmful in MORE than just this one way? Could it be that there’s more that isn’t right, isn’t holy, isn’t transcended in this guide for life that I’ve pinned my whole existence on? If there are flaws, how can I trust anything? If it’s not perfect, how can I know what’s right and wrong? I understand that to question ANY part, is to question ALL of it - and most of us just don’t have what it takes to do this questioning work right now.
Religion is too central to our base decision making/identity affirming mechanisms. It’s too foundational for many. Meaning there can be NO questioning. There can be NO looking at what may need to be released, looked at as old and out-dated, not divinely inspired but rather based on human ignorance. Because that would mean the stability we find is wiped away. We no longer have a blanket ‘right and wrong’ to turn to - again if we have to question ANY part, that would mean we have to question ALL the parts - and then the religion no longer fills its role as answer provider. It then becomes something WE have to question, have to think about, have to discern what is and isn’t of use and value - and that is precisely why we want religion in the first place - to make it so that we DON’T have to do those things.
The rule book that’s infallible IS the point.
We can’t question.
Because then we lose the security the book is meant to provide.
I know this is hard because religion serves so many roles for people. I know this is hard because religion has been the place people have gone to find their answers for life. The place they’ve gone to soothe the existential dread of being alive. The place they’ve gone for hope, answers and guidance when they were lost, confused and scared. Religion has been where they found community. Religion for many is where they’ve lived their whole lives. It’s been their foundation from before they were even making cognitive choices - it was the family way of life and this was wired in as truth, the way, the THING. So to see, acknowledge and admit to the very real, very DEEP harm it causes means there is going to be a LOT of twisting, turning and gaslighting - because to see the reality of harm means to question core beliefs, core stability, foundational tools for life choices. It’s going to mean massive cognitive dissonance, that if followed, would lead to a necessary dismantling of the WAY people make choices, the WAY people think, the WAY people find consistency and stability. It’s deeper than just a thing we do on Sundays - it’s the foundation upon which we’ve build our relationships, our careers, our families, is the foundation upon which we eliminate doubt, fear, decision fatigue and the way we make sense of the ultimate chaos of being alive.
I know because I’ve lived through this experience.
Leaving religion, Christianity, was one of the most disorienting experiences of my life.
I dabbled in New Age spirituality for a while after, in my transition, but even that, once the fourth wall of believing in an all knowing/powerful/Divine intelligence had been broken, there was no turning back. I’d seen too much and the weight of the responsibility I now had the awareness I carried as an individual who had to figure things out for myself was daunting - but it wasn’t something I could ‘unsee.’ Once I allowed myself to see the harm in ALL forms of organized religion/New Age spirituality - the harm based on following a doctrine with no contemplation or precedence given to its actual IMPACT on human life - there was no going back. I could no longer see the world as being Divinely guided by a higher power that knew all and had my best intentions at heart. For me, it felt too childish, too factually inaccurate. There was too much chaos, too much harm, too much societal structures set up in ways to profit some at the expense of many to believe that my life was being ‘Divinely guided’ or that there was an all knowing power we humans have access to that wants only the best for us.
It was horrifying. It meant taking responsibility for myself in ways I’d never dreamed I would have to.
It meant accepting that I knew SO LITTLE and that I was going to have to fumble my way thought this life.
It meant I was going to have to make mistakes.
Learn.
Get hurt.
NOT KNOW.
It meant relying less on what others told me, and relying more on observing outcomes.
It meant taking my perspective up and out from just my little life to looking at the whole. It meant a lot of security was ripped away.
A lot of canned responses no longer fit.
A lot of the ways I soothed myself when I saw the suffering of the world no longer applied.
It.was.hard. It took a long time. I still struggle with it sometimes - wishing I had the capacity to just believe in something simple and loving like a God who sees, loves and cares for me. The journey was rough and the life afterwards is never as secure, safe and cozy as the life before. Questioning it at all, leads to questioning all of it, leads to, in most cases, a total collapse of life as we know it.
Again, I don’t want to shame anyone who has a deep connection to religion or spirituality in general. I still have a deep connection to spirituality. I’m not an atheist. I believe there is a unifying consciousness that connects all of us - that we are one with. I believe there’s more to life than we can see. I believe in miracles/not understanding the complexity of life to a degree that there appears to be miracles. I believe in love. I believe there’s something that unites us all. I believe in a lot of things - just not an ‘all knowing’ being that created the whole universe in 7 days, who looks like man and talks like man and cares about the things man cares about. I’m not saying there isn’t something that guides, loves and even cares - I don’t know this to be true or untrue. I’m simply no longer sold on the Christian narrative.
So yeah. There’s going to be gaslighting, denial, deflection, projection and a whole host of defenses/attacks waged in order to prevent having to question what’s being brought to light here. When we talk about the very real abuses Christianity has waged against this group of people, we aren’t just talking about ‘this’ - we’re talking about the WHOLE THING.
Thus, people are going to resist. Attack. Defend. Deflect. Deny. Gaslight. Do whatever is required to NOT LOOK.
Because looking is a whole Pandora's box.
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Let's take a break here and come back to this next week!
<3
[…] If you missed it, please read part one of this post here. […]