On Religious Prejudice…
On my mind this morning: religious prejudice.
Yesterday I got into a debate with a set of ultra-religious folks about gender identity. The debate started out with a question about thoughts on a child who identifies as the opposite gender from a very young age and then wants gender reassignment surgery around the time of puberty. The person asking the question was a mutual child of the church we had been indoctrinated into as children, and the majority of the people answering the question were people who also attend or attended said church.
Unsurprisingly, there were many one-line responses that essentially called any behavior diverging from the stereotypical norms “the devil’s work”. One person said any feelings a child may have are just “excuses [to be gay]”. Several people stated that it was acceptable for a girl to like boy things, but unacceptable for a boy to like girl things. Someone suggested that these people were mistakes and must have been made by satan because “God doesn’t make mistakes”. A couple of people suggested that anyone feeling these things needs to “have the spirit of the devil removed” by prayer, and one person said that church intervention would “cure” these feelings.
Even though I was raised with the same beliefs as these people, it was still an eye opener to see the certainty and vehemence with which these folks presented their beliefs.
It was great to be able to actually phrase rebuttals to these arguments: as a child, I was to be seen and not heard. My opinion meant nothing. Not that my “wrong” (yes, I was called wrong, a liar, confused, person with no beliefs/nihilistic, etc by a few people who were upset that my viewpoint was so different) opinions meant anything to them anyway, but it was still good to speak my mind.
What made me sad about the debate was that so many people were willing to judge others based on nothing other than their own religious beliefs. They spoke of righteousness, they spoke of God’s Word, holiness, they spoke of good and evil. They said that only God could judge our hearts and only Jesus can save us, but then they said that anyone who doesn’t have the “right” feelings for his/her physical gender was controlled or influenced in some way by the devil and “wrong” for feeling any differently.
I kept at it, up through to the end of the debate, wherein one fellow could not stand being contradicted so started in on some really random attempts at insulting my intelligence. It was weird, and I felt embarrassment for him. Everyone else dropped out of the debate at that point, because it became quite awkward.
The prejudice against any beliefs other than what was taught in church was clearly visible. I was surprised that a few people stuck it out and the whole discussion didn’t dissolve into name calling and rebuking.
But, I feel like it was a good debate – I learned that there are still many things that need to be changed in our world and interactions, and I realized just how many ideas humans hold dear which are based solely on what other humans have told them.
I understand that it takes a long time for people to discard or even realize the prejudices that have been ingrained in their minds from birth, but it is still somewhat frustrating to see it in action.
Strange experience, to say the least, but I learned from it – that’s what matters.