Religion

I recently read about a young transgendered person who wishes to minister to religious LGBQT people by working against "spiritual violence" against them in religion. This person wishes to do this in a religious context. My reaction was immediate. Then I took some time to calm down and think about it. Here's what I came up with.

Would you try to help battered women or sexually abused children by telling them to carry on in the company of their abusers while trying to convince the abusers not to be abusive? Of course not! That sounds idiotic. You would get the abused person to a safe place and counsel him/herto separate himself/herself from the abuser. A child would be placed in a safer home. A battered man or woman would be sheltered and supported in developing a safer life through therapy and peer-group support. 

Most religion is poisonous for LGBTQ people. The three largest world religions are largely homophobic in dogma and action. Extremists in the three major world religions are physically violent against LGBQT people. Muslim extremists are homicidal towards openly gay men, in particular.

Religion is the problem. The insistence of a homosexual person to be religious in the face of this is frankly masochistic. Masochism is a dysfunctional mode of living in an endangered minority. It is potentially lethal. Associating with religious people as a free-thinking missionary may be a laudable value for society, but this takes a great deal of personal development away from religious toxicity. This is very different from staying in the soup and trying to judge its taste at the same time.

Now, there is much throwing around of the word "faith" among LGBQT apologists in religious circles. "Faith", as I see it, is a pseudonym for "religion-lite". Well, just as an alcoholic had best steer clear of lite beer, the wise LGBQT person should steer clear of lite religion. No matter how lite the religion, it will most likely tap into deep-rooted self-hatred, fostered by earlier indoctrination by homophobic religion. This is simply how the human brain works. Conditioning is real and has lifetime repercussions, whether I choose to look at those repercussions or not.

I believe the healthiest behavior for a young LGBQT person is separation from religion and all forms of homophobic society to whatever extent possible for several years at the very least. For the wealthy or bourgeois, this comes readily in a university experience. For the urban or rural poor, this often entails physically escaping their homeland for an accepting urban gay/lesbian community.  The difficulties of the gay runaway are great, however the travails of escaping their homeland are often a better alternative to pretending to be heterosexual for a miserable lifetime.

The gay-marriage political putsch of certain national and international gay organizations is a practical strategy toward attaining equal rights. The downside is its implied submission of LGBQT to conventional heterosexual morality. This has led to a resurgence of interest in religion among many LGBQT people. Ignorant of their own history, many do not realize they are going backwards. Those of us who actualized gayness into a social reality at great personal risk in the 1960s and 1970s in the U.S. look skeptically upon this new fascination with our oppressors, no matter what brand of "faith" they are peddling today. The best way to avoid being oppressed is to say "no" to the oppressor and walk away.