PZ notes that atheists and gays “often find themselves fighting on the same side in battles against the Religious Righteous.” Indeed, and also some wrangles with the let’s-all-get-alongists, who want to unite with absolutely everyone…except those pesky atheists or those pesky gays.
Butterflies and Wheels
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….Or indeed those pesky disdained-minorities-of-any-kind who insist on not shutting up and minding their place.
I’m quite proud of how some atheist organizations are participating in Gay Pride, too, these days, sometimes even by marching in the annual parade. You wouldn’t think it from all the H8 coming out of Christianity, but some of the more blatant outside support for LGBT people during Pride had been coming from local Christian churches and church groups.
And I always detest how a few bigoted Christians (including, yes, the U.S. president) get to pretend in court and in the media as if they own Christianity. They do not. There are actually many Christian churches that support marriage equality–too many in the sense that it is allowing religion to determine the discourse on both sides. I guess I feel like atheist groups have long needed to get their voices heard more on this important issue to counter the religious narrative altogether, and I’m really glad to see they are doing just that.
Does anybody know where you can view the correlations between Atheism and being gay (surveys, meta-analyses), I would be surprised if there wasn’t one.
I should add that I am an Atheist and Gay – it isn’t all that rare.
Shane: “I should add that I am an Atheist and Gay – it isn’t all that rare.”
It shouldn’t be. While I’m not gay, I spent years in the church trying to convince people that being gay and being gay and being in a relationship were not in any sense contrary to what Christians were to be. I was a member of, and then chair of two so-called “task forces” intended to throw some further light on the problem that Christian belief caused for those who wanted to welcome gay people into the church. It was not always a losing proposition, but we never got general approbation — and that was in a fairly progressive Canadian diocese. Now I just wonder why people bother. What is so important about belonging to the church and being part of what is, almost indelibly, a homophobic institution?
While I agree with Aretina that there are many Christians who support gay marriage, and the acceptance of gay people in ministry, the Bible still remains with what can only be interpreted by anyone who is in the slightest extent conservative in a homophobic direction. The same goes for women. The Bible is deeply misogynistic, and so long as the Bible is taken as sacred text, will continue to be so. The misogynists and the homophobes may not own Christianity, but they can have a pretty good strangle hold on it, if they emphasis the literal meaning of texts.
That’s something I knew and should have considered. It’s weird, though, how so many gay and bi men overlook all the hatred and violence commanded against them by God himself in the texts and instead focus on things like “God is love” and how Sodom and Gomorrah wasn’t really about how terrible men who have sex with men are if you strain your reading of it and so on.
Cf the whole Jim Wallis-Sojourners train wreck, and Chris Stedman’s wrongheaded take on it.
Disappointingly I was not raised in a household that was Christian and ‘Liberal’. My parents are still deeply homophobic and my father particularly still believes that Homosexuals should be executed – I told them I was an atheist when I was reasonably young and they were not accepting and I think it would be step too far to also tell them that I am gay. Thankfully some of my family members have also recently ‘come out’ as atheists which does help. I should add that I live in the U.K., there is still a large amount of discrimination based on sexuality despite what people believe.