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DailyKOS, There’s A Religious Problem. [1]

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Date: 2022-09-11

Let’s be honest: how many of you clicked that title expecting me to be slamming on the religious right?

Sorry to disappoint, but that’s not what this is. It’s about a different religion problem—the one here, on this site.

In the last year, I have felt more and more unwelcome here because every time I read the comments, someone is in there being horrible about religion. Any attempt to correct misconceptions or ask that we not tar all religious people with the same brush turns into “well the Bible says [insert awful thing here]!”

Okay?

News flash: the Christian Bible was codified 1700 years ago. The Tanakh was fully compiled on paper about 2200 years ago, from earlier oral tradition. I would hope it would be clear that many people who find these to be their primary religious texts are capable of basic thought, and recognizing the flaws inherent in the text. Claiming we can’t is in the same vein as me saying “you defend the Constitution? Fuck you, psychopath, nobody defending a document that explicitly legalizes penal slavery has anything worthwhile to say.”

Within 24 hours of me starting on the draft of this diary, I was accused of belonging to “a psychopathic religion” because I explained how Jewish worship at the Temple was performed—IN THE 20S CE. Every single day I see people flinging such vitriol over religion that I am starting to feel unsafe on DailyKOS. There’s a difference between personally subscribing to a set of religious beliefs and using one’s religious beliefs to forcibly harm others, but a lot of people here seem to have forgotten that.

I have to wonder how the atheists on this site would feel if I called them cruel, delusional, psychopathic, stupid, as a whole. As in being an atheist makes you cruel, being an atheist makes you stupid. Somehow I suspect they’d accuse me of bigotry—but it’s okay, I guess, when they’re flinging those same words at people for having the audacity to believe in a god or gods. (And yes, there are people here who just use the term “religion,” neither knowing nor caring that there are over 10,000 religions in the world and many involve people who are genuinely oppressed. Just ask the Navajo, who had to get a special legal dispensation to be allowed to practice.)

This site is rapidly becoming exactly like the right wing, but bashing from the other side. It’s okay to be antisemitic and Islamophobic as long as you’re doing it in the name of yelling about Christofascism, I guess.



I doubt anyone has gotten this far. This is mostly a vent diary and I’m sure plenty of people are already down in the comments insulting me and yelling about why I’m wrong, if recent comments in other diaries are any indication. But if you happen to still be here—

BY DEFAULT, my religion states that the well-being of the gestational parent (not their life, their well-being—physical, mental, financial) is always to be placed above the fetus. BY DEFAULT, my religion states that queer people are persons with dignity and deserving of respect (although how that plays out across movements varies). BY DEFAULT, my religion states that we should love each other, take care of each other, provide welfare for the poor, and be good stewards of the planet. And BY DEFAULT, my religion states that we should question, argue, and “wrestle with” our holy book—that it ISN’T easy to look at what’s in it and say “yeah, this is okay” and that, in fact, we’re not even supposed to (there’s an entire story about that, the binding of Isaac, and if you’ve only heard it interpreted through a Christian lens you’re probably wondering what I’m talking about, but the common interpretation is that Avraham FAILED and it’s a warning against blind extremism).

I should not have to fight through a wall of browbeating by people who supposedly agree with me in order to fight to retain and expand my rights. Nor should anyone. Stop tarring all religious people with the same brush when you mean Christofascists. I assure you, they want me fucking dead. I don’t need to hear it from my supposed allies, too.

It needs to stop.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/11/2122155/-DailyKOS-There-s-A-Religious-Problem

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