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my gender is officially classified as a sin by the catholic church

atheists who insist that all religion is bad, that religion is a mental illness, that being a spiritual person with or without religion is a bad thing-- in short, the militant atheists-- rub me the wrong way. i don't want to ever be associated with them.

religion is bad when it hurts people. religion is bad when you do not have a choice in your worship, or when it is used to control people, or when it is used to bar people from living their lives as their authentic selves. it is bad when it propagates and excuses bigoted beliefs and policies.

religion is not bad simply for existing.

lovecorekiss

Your trauma from Christianity isn’t an excuse to be antisemitic, you just suck. Judaism and Christianity are nothing alike. Just because you’re pagan now doesn’t mean you get to be a bigot.

sunshine-tattoo

and please for the love of God stop acting like you know anything about Jewish tradition just because you grew up Christian.

#I don't post here anymore but yeah

purplesparklybabe-deactivated20

so i might be stepping out of line making this post but i feel it needs to be made so yolo i guess.

i know a lot of millenials have a sort of knee-jerk negative reaction towards abrahamic religions (really mostly christianity and judaism) and i understand. really, i get it. my dad is a pastor, and he used his religon to abuse, demean, and control me at every opportunity. he regularly tells my sisters that he’s “so sad im going to hell” and other sundry passive aggressive nonsense, so trust me i get it. i understand how a certain religion can be triggering to someone.

but there is a very important point here, and i really hope you understand this.

you cannot let it make you prejudiced, and, let me be clear here, im talking specifically about antisemitism.

i know exactly whats going on in your head, because for a long time it was what was going on in my head. you hear the word “judaism” and you have flashbacks to sunday school and the old testament and all the times you sat in a church and felt personally attacked, and you associate that with judaism and jewish people because most of the things that upset you were in the old testament.

you can have your triggers, but you can’t let those triggers become an excuse to further marginalize a minority thats already attacked from literally every position of power there is. every major religion has leaders who are antisemitic, every country has a history of marginalizing jewish people, every person on the planet grows up in an inherently antisemitic world and has to unlearn that sort of toxic mindset.

and maybe this post should have been made by a jewish person, or somebody with more education on the subject than me but i think its really important that people don’t let their personal experiences with organized religion turn them into the kind of prejudiced person that hurt them in the first place.

as a romni i have a shared tragedy with jewish people, so i feel like it was easier for me to step back and be like “woah, your thought process here is super toxic and you need to stop” but i feel like a lot of white christian-raised people don’t really have that touchstone and need somebody to be like “wake up, what you are doing is wrong”

asearchforg-d

I can remove this if you want but I feel a strong need to reblog

shoutingjar

as a jew, i’m gonna add to this.

first of all. we don’t have a lot of allies speaking for us genuinely, instead of because of some sort of twisted “jesus was jewish” or “i can secretly defend my faith or politics using jews as pawns” so when y’all do it means a lot. we don’t see it much, so don’t feel bad for making this post.

second of all, the part that you didn’t know, through no real fault of your own, is that the version you learn in sunday school or from non-jewish sources? that isn’t even remotely how jews understand that source.

jews have a totally different relationship with our holy text than christians do. every jewish person is expected to know the “old testament” cover to cover then to freely access and participate in millennia of commentary and debate on it. the core book of jewish law is just a book of debates and discussions, many of which don’t even come with firm answers. and whenever it’s printed, it’s printed with centuries worth of commentary in the margins.

if you have and issue with or felt personally attacked by any part of the “old testament” i can guarantee that there are pages and pages of jewish commentary about that from the point of view you were looking for and several dozen you haven’t even considered. jews have never stopped questioning and arguing about this thing.

so when non-jews make the assumption that our religion is some sort of backwards or primitive thing based on a text they don’t care for, they are doing jews a double disservice.

i guarantee you some 1st century BCE judaen made the point that not eating shrimp because a book says to is kinda silly far more eloquently than you did, pal. heck. there’s a rabbi in the talmud who just straight up becomes a heretic.

judaism has been around and has been evolving as a culture and a religion longer than christianity has existed. it’s one of the oldest living traditions on the planet and its still growing and evolving.

gayerluke

i was going to add exactly the same thing: anything you learned about jews from christian sources, anything you learned from the “old testament” (which is obviously not our term for it), has nothing to do with actual judaism, our beliefs, or our practices. antisemitism is intrinsic to christianity, so if you expect them to tell you the truth about us, think again.

i also feel like it may be relevant to mention that this can also prevent a lot of secular/ethnic jews from wanting to connect to judaism as well. when you’re raised in a christian society, you internalize a lot of what you see & hear, even if you dont know or believe in the specific religious aspects of it.

i really only had interactions with christianity growing up, first through being dragged along to church with friends (usually after a saturday-night sleepover) & later when, through no fault of my family, i ended up at a baptist middle school for 3 years (listen, it’s a looong story). it was at this time i was also realizing i was attracted to girls, so obviously the environment was very toxic & damaging to me.

i came out of that place never wanting to have any interaction with religion ever again. i had no interest in connecting to my jewish identity on a spiritual or even communal level. christianity paints judaism as basically half-christian, only more punitive & primitive. over a decade later, when i finally began to sit down & actually learn about judaism, i found it was the complete opposite.

i’m not going to go into all the differences between christianity & judaism here (as tempted as i am), but i want to reiterate the above commenters & say: if you only know about judaism from christian sources or from a christian perspective (culturally or religiously), you don’t actually know anything about judaism. don’t associate our beliefs with what christianity taught you, because i guarantee you’ve been lied to about us your whole life.

friend-of-dorthy

Christianity and Forced Forgiveness

Dear ex-christians,

I am so sorry that you were forced to forgive that abuser, that toxic person, that one traumatic event that they told you to "Get over it"

I am sorry that you felt guilty that you were still hurting. I'm sorry you had to ignore your hurting. I'm sorry that everyone else acted like your abuser was a good person. I'm sorry for all the unanswered prayers to a god that didn't care. I'm sorry.

You have a right to feel the way you feel. Don't let ANYONE tell you otherwise.

all-things-breathing-deactivate

stop making posts about terfs if you don't even understand our basic fundamental beliefs lol. we don't believe in gender at all - we think biological females are women and biological males are men, and that is innate and cannot be changed. no terfs think that trans men are men, we think they're women who are pretending to be men either because they're trying to identify out of their own oppression, because they hate their bodies and the sexualisation of said bodies, or because they've read too much yaoi and now think they're gay men. where did you get the idea we think trans men are man? show me some screenshots because i'm bewildered by your thought process.

Here is where I answer a similar anon I received about terf beliefs on the sex absolutism (for the answer you were looking for)

So in high school I couldn't understand why people were transgender. I grew up in a super strict religion that my family strictly adhered to. I won't get into that. When I was around 14, I was transphobic. However, I was starting to come to the realization that I was bisexual.

You see, I never considered myself homophobic. Be that because I had always secretly suspected I liked girls, be that because I empathized with the ostracization and isolation, I don't know. I didn't consider myself homophobic, but I suddenly realized I didn't support transgender people the way I supported gay people when I was confronted with the fact that a schoolmate of mine was trans.

In elementary school, I knew this person as someone who identified as a girl. In high school, this person was slowly becoming more male-presenting and began using male pronouns. I was incredibly confused. I refused to use the correct pronouns, even at the behest of friends and other classmates. I said callous and cruel things about why I wouldn't use this person's preferred pronouns. (I did reach out years later and apologize to this person).

Something interesting happened though. Maybe it was the Pulse shooting. I was struck with the realization that I could be at a gay bar and killed, and that's how my family and church friends would find out that I'm bisexual. I know it would lead to them immediately condemning me and rejecting me post-humously. I almost wanted to believe it would lead to some grand realization that me being forced to hide who I am led to me acting in secret and unwittingly falling into danger. That hate kills as quickly as love saves. I heard friends of mine say that they were happy the shooting happened because it meant there were fewer gay people in the world. I thought to myself "That could be me. I could be dead before they know it's me, and they'd be happy I was gone."

They will never understand me, and they will never fully love me because they don't me and they hate who I am. And I realized that's what I was doing to trans people. I didn't understand them because I wasn't like them. Because of that transphobia of mine, I became like the people I feared, like the people who hurt me. I realized it doesn't matter what I understand. It matters more for me to be empathetic than hold myself apart from people who've gone through a journey I haven't walked.

I don't want to be the reason someone hides. I don't want to be the reason someone is hurt. I don't want to be one of those people who contribute to the depression, anxiety, bullying, and hate that leads to many transgender people to self-harm, or even commit suicide. I don't want hateful people, bullies, aggressors to feel comfortable around me. Because it doesn't matter if I understand someone's "thought process", anon. It doesn't matter that I understand someone's identity. There will always be people who don't understand me. There will always be people who don't understand you.

The options we have aren't "believe someone's gender" or "do not believe someone's gender". The options we have are "contribute to the mental illness, trauma, and predatory behavior transgender people face" or "do not contribute to the mental illness, trauma, and predatory behavior transgender people face". You know, I did eventually come out to my immediate family. One parent told me they would pray for me. One parent told me I don't really like girls, I just think I do because it's a feeling I have. One sibling had called me disgusting. One sibling theorized that it's because of my trauma, that women feel safer to me than boys. None of it changing who I am, all of it making me want to continue living in secret, continue hating myself, abusing myself and hoping it will trigger a change in me.

Is this who I am to others? I hope not. I hope I am never this person to a trans person again. Empathy comes first, then listening, then understanding. But I gain nothing if people who are hurting die due to someone else's hate. I gain nothing if someone is living in fear and shame. I gain nothing by turning trans people into a million little me's, the version of me who was desperate for someone to say "I know you can't change what's inside you, and that's okay. It doesn't make you bad."

I've gained some understanding in the past few years. But I don't need to understand someone to know what I want to contribute - and it's not more pain. There's enough pain. What unites LGBT+ people isn't that we experience physical or romantic attraction in a way other people think isn't cishet, it's that we all need a safe haven, a community where we can breathe, be believed, and be accepted. Because the world isn't ready to offer that for us yet. But we aren't a part of the world, are we? They pushed us out. And I'm not going to push out anyone else who's looking for that acceptance. It isn't worth adding a name to a truly devastating statistic (you can see the facts and statistics in the initial link above).

valor-selfships

You know what? This is an excellent rebuttal to this. Sometimes, “believing” that trans people are xyz (we are but like that’s not really the most important thing to us at times) doesn’t matter. What matters is: are you going to be cruel to other human beings or are you going to be kind?

OP chooses kindness and for that I respect you. I also respect how you changed yourself for the better. Bast bless you!!

exvangelical

they cannot stand the idea that someone actually, wholeheartedly believed what they taught and then walked away. they had to have must not been a “real christian” (no true scotsman fallacy) or they must have “wanted to sin,” usually an embarrassing sexual sin (ad hominem attack).

i was the kid who brought my bible to school and yelled at my peers for saying “oh my god.” i was sold out for jesus. don’t you dare try to demean my experiences and research into the faith that i was traumatized by, that it cost me so much to leave, and will continue to cost me.

i didn’t leave christianity for fun. i left because it was the only choice.

pyrotechnicss

Makin aesthetics to cope with my religious trauma

littlemissfallenangel

If your only identity is "christian, aspiring homemaker"....honey aim higher

littlemissfallenangel

The only good thing to come out of this post was a hell of a block list of christians who don't know how to stay the fuck off posts not meant for them.

Also who are gross af about someone having a different religion than them, but that's not surprising.

rjalker

Stop fucking acting like all religions all over the fucking planet are just as evil and racist as christianity as though christians don’t do everything they fucking can including literal genocide to stamp out the religions of others. You people are literally just fucking being racist. Not all fucking religions are christianity. Pretending that all religions are just as racist and just as culpable in literal genocide as christianity is fucking evil.

lgb-positivi-t

thingsfromthedirt

limbo-rock

These kinds of portrayals of sacred Catholic figures often spooked me as a kid... 😭

hell-propaganda

God is so loving and merciful that he’ll torture people for all eternity without even giving them the freedom of death

lostinthevoid28-deactivated2022

In mass today, the priest kept talking about how there is no real happiness without god. I hate that idea!!! catholics will always tell you that “oh your happiness is fake, you’re not really happy” well i don’t wanna fucking die anymore, so yeah i’d say im pretty damn happy now

newsfromstolenland

Hi white athiests! Quick piece of advice:

Your "all religion is evil" rhetoric (usually based on your encounters with Christianity) is harming religious minorities.

What do I mean when I say religious minorities? We're not necessarily a minority in numbers, rather we have been marginalized and oppressed on the basis of our religion. Specifically I'm talking about Muslims and Jewish people, but this can apply to other religions as well.

When you align all religions together as evil and oppressive, you are lumping us in with our oppressors and further marginalizing us by vilifying our faith.

You're not superior for being an athiest. You're not incapable of islamophobia or antisemitism.

newsfromstolenland

evewasright

Superstition kills people.

You are responsible for your beliefs and the way you act on them. Belief doesn’t exist in a vacuum; your behaviour affects other people.

You may have a “right to your beliefs”, you do NOT have a right to harm people based on them. Dangerous procedures, denial of medical care, ‘exorcisms’ and misinformation kills people.

At that point, I don’t give a fuck what you believe. If you willingly spread misinformation and put your need to be right above all else, you have blood on your hands.

People’s safety supersedes your opinions.

yourdarkestheart

Is it just my family or are most Catholics staunchly anti communism? My father has said point blank that “all [forms of] communism is evil”.

Why doesnt Jesus’ doctrine of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked extend to the government? Why is it up to the individual, when a society of taking care of it’s citizens would be more in line with his teachings??

Sound off in the comments I’m genuinely curious

apostate-in-an-alcove

It’s funny because when the Catholic Church introduced or at least really started pushing Catholic Social Teachings (I think it was in the 1930s), a lot of Catholics accused the Church of becoming Communist. A lot of Catholics, especially conservative ones, are anti-communist and anti-socialist, even though their own Church has official teachings that denounce capitalism as being evil and against God because capitalism violates the dignity of the human person. Those same teachings also state that Catholics have an obligation to social justice and get involved in politics in order to ensure that the rights and dignity of human beings are protected but you’ll never see a traditional or conservative Catholic raise a finger when faced with the oppression or marginalization of their fellows.

Like practically all Christians, they cherry pick what they like about Catholic doctrine and throw out what they don’t like, even though the conservative ones are far more likely to accuse you of doing that then to acknowledge they themselves do it. I can’t speak for Catholics in Europe but anti-communist or anti-socialist sentiments among Catholics in North America seems to stem from propaganda and a lack of education of what socialism, communism, and capitalism are. These people can never give a proper or even a somewhat correct definition of those terms and any nuanced understanding of them yet they spout all kinds of nonsense about them with the upmost confidence.

templepriest-motherfucker

like….i specifically remember that the catholic catechism was pretty fucking explicit about 1) not supporting any one economic system because it wasn’t their concern/their place and 2) having an entire separate bullet point stating it wasn’t pro-capitalism

mozzy-o

Okay but here’s another part: when the state takes over meeting the needs of the people, it removes power from the church, while simultaneously removing the *high and mighty* feeling the better-off church donors get from being SO GOOD and donating to get the most Jesus points. Hear me out on this-

The reason people historically flocked to churches was because many NEEDED them to provide community and resources that were lacking. The church was all powerful, it had ANSWERS, but it also had meals and provided shelter under certain situations. When science and the state start providing those things….. well you can see how that’s a problem for the obsolete megalith (esp. the one that is used to raking in donations for golden goblets and holy art and giving out a pittance to the poor - if someone else can do it while actually giving the people a survivable quantity to live on)

Similarly - the people in the church community who DO have money/means are used to getting off on being SOOOO GOOD, being the MOST GIVING and gaining social standing through earning the most holy Jesus points and looking good in their community. If everyone is giving and getting an even amount, or if they’re FORCED to give a certain percentage (instead of just making a big show of donating the most cookies to the bake sale) they DONT LIKE THAT because it removes their power and ability to be holier-than-thou

Just thoughts…..

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