Wednesday, April 5, 2023

Transphobia within Christianity

"the performed terror of any deviance from the most aggressively stereotypical 1950s gender roles that the Christian right engages in ... Bleeds into their terror about gender identity, the existence of transgender people, LBGTQIA+ acceptance, but also Quiverfull and Trad Wives and garbage like the pseudo military men's prayer camps and Ministries and...The level of fear and anxiety doesn't explain the hate and violence, but the two go hand in hand." — Thomas Lecaque, 13 March 2023, Twitter

Teddy Wilson, August 30, 2022, tweets: For those that may have recently encountered the term “gender ideology” in right-wing media, the term, which has been increasingly adopted by the U.S. far right, originated from the Vatican in the 1990s in response to Cairo Conference (1994) and the Conference on Women (1995).

That last tweet links to "Showing love and compassion, teaching the truth: confusion of gender ideology." Lily Nguyen Dunkle, The Catholic Virginian. March 17, 2023.

Erin Reed tweets: The global and ongoing genocide of transgender people continues, today in Russia. The Russian govt is reportedly approving an outright ban on all gender affirming care, for all ages, and all legal transition. Terrifying, and absolutely what Republicans want here in the US.

Reed linked to this story: "In further blow to Russian LGBTQ+ community, lawmakers move to ban gender transitioning procedures", Dasha Litvinova, Associated Press, LA Times, June 14, 2023. That story says: "Senior lawmaker Pyotr Tolstoy, who is among the bill’s sponsors, has said it is intended to “protect Russia with its cultural and family values and traditions and to stop the infiltration of the Western anti-family ideology. Russia's LGBTQ+ community has been under growing pressure for a decade as President Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church embarked on a campaign to preserve what they deem the country's 'traditional values.' * * * The only option for those seeking to transition through medical care or changing their gender in documents would be to leave the country, according to human rights lawyer Max Olenichev, who works with the Russian LGBTQ+ community. ...there is little doubt it will pass because about 400 members of the 450-seat house signed it, including the house speaker and the leaders of all political factions. The independent Russian news outlet Meduza reported that such a massive show of unity has happened only three times before under Putin, most recently when 385 Duma members signed on to a bill last year to ban 'propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations' among adults. That initiative was quickly rubber-stamped, and by December 2022, any positive or even neutral representation of LGBTQ+ people in movies, literature, or media was outlawed. The bill severely restricting trans rights came just a few months after that."

Speaking of leaving the country, there's help for trans people leaving the countries where it's becoming unsafe..."

2023: Support for Christian Nationalism

The darkest blue states have up to 60% support or sympathy for Christian Nationalism.

map showing where there's public support for Christian Nationalism

Source: PRRI, American Values Atlas, March–Dec, 2023

Early 2024: Introduced anti-LGBTQ laws

The darkest purple states have introduced 16 or more pieces of anti-LGBTQ legislation within the first two months of 2024.

Do you see a similarity in the map?

The ACLU is tracking 471 anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S.

That's where we are

weeping stone statue

Also, this opinion:

someone on Bluesky on Dec 21, 2023 notes Peter Magellan's statement that whether 'the individual's body plan is designed to produce eggs or sperm' is 'without definition' how sex is defined. The Bluesky commenter says that 'this creationist-adjacent definition appears nowhere in biology (or anywhere besides Twitter).'

"Transphobes talking about science is no different than learning about evolution from a creationist. The idea that there are only two sexes, two genders, and they must be complementary but opposed is white christian nationalism steeped in racism, colonialism, and misogyny. Reject it everywhere. Honestly this is why I resent scientists and science journalists who’ve bought in. The people who’d throw a fit if the NYT ran a piece about how maybe Earth really is 6,000 years old, but accept manufactured trans controversy from the same zealots who want a homogenous, patriarchal, christian world. We know many organisms - including us - aren’t sexually binary, and are capable of changing sex characteristics. We know white oppression has tried to squelch gender variation at every turn, throughout history. So the idea that gender or sex is binary and immutable? It’s racist, fundamentalist rot." (Bluesky 1, 2, 3)

I don't actually care who believes what kind of Christianity is 'real Christianity'

"the dismissal of authoritarian Christianity as ‘fake’ Christianity only serves to reinforce Christian hegemony by perpetuating the equation of ‘Christian’ with ‘good’ in the common imagination... " -chrissy stroop www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/stop...

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— Talia Lavin (@swordsjew.bsky.social) October 12, 2024 at 11:16 PM

If there's one thing I could get every single well-meaning Christian to understand, it's that "real Christians are X" is an explicitly religious argument that depends on religious truth claims. And when you ask non-Christiana to accept that, you're demanding that they accept your religious claim.

— Charles L. Richter is his own thing (@richterscale.bsky.social) October 12, 2024 at 11:28 PM

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