#religious fundamentalism

[cookinguptales]

So I’ve been enjoying the Disney vs. DeSantis memes as much as anyone, but like. I do feel like a lot of people who had normal childhoods are missing some context to all this.

I was raised in the Bible Belt in a fairly fundie environment. My parents were reasonably cool about some things, compared to the rest of my family, but they certainly had their issues. But they did let me watch Disney movies, which turned out to be a point of major contention between them and my other relatives.

See, I think some people think this weird fight between Disney and fundies is new. It is very not new. I know that Disney’s attempts at inclusion in their media have been the source of a lot of mockery, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that as far as actual company policy goes, Disney has actually been an industry leader for queer rights. They’ve had policies assuring equal healthcare and partner benefits for queer employees since the early 90s.

I’m not sure how many people reading this right now remember the early 90s, but that was very much not industry standard. It was a big deal when Disney announced that non-married queer partners would be getting the same benefits as the married heterosexual ones.

Like — it went further than just saying that any unmarried partners would be eligible for spousal benefits. It straight-up said that non-same-sex partners would still need to be married to receive spousal benefits, but because same-sex partners couldn’t do that, proof that they lived together as an established couple would be enough.

In other words, it put long-term same-sex partners on a higher level than opposite-sex partners who just weren’t married yet. It put them on the exact same level as heterosexual married partners.

They weren’t the first company ever to do this, but they were super early. And they were certainly the first mainstream “family-friendly” company to do it.

Conservatives lost their damn minds.

Protests, boycotts, sermons, the whole nine yards. I can’t tell you how many books about the evils of Disney my grandmother tried to get my parents to read when I was a kid.

When we later moved to Florida, I realized just how many queer people work at Disney — because historically speaking, it’s been a company that has guaranteed them safety, non-discrimination, and equal rights. That’s when I became aware of their unofficial “Gay Days” and how Christians would show up from all over the country to protest them every year. Apparently my grandmother had been upset about these days for years, but my parents had just kind of ignored her.

Out of curiosity, I ended up reading one of the books my grandmother kept leaving at our house. And friends — it’s amazing how similar that (terrible, poorly written) rhetoric was to what people are saying these days. Disney hires gay pedophiles who want to abuse your children. Disney is trying to normalize Satanism in our beautiful, Christian America. 

Just tons of conspiracy theories in there that ranged from “a few bad things happened that weren’t actually Disney’s fault, but they did happen” to “Pocahontas is an evil movie, not because it distorts history and misrepresents indigenous life, but because it might teach children respect for nature. Which, as we all know, would cause them all to become Wiccans who believe in climate change.”

Like — please, take it from someone who knows. This weird fight between fundies and Disney is not new. This is not Disney’s first (gay) rodeo. These people have always believed that Disney is full of evil gays who are trying to groom and sexually abuse children.

The main difference now is that these beliefs are becoming mainstream. It’s not just conservative pastors who are talking about this. It’s not just church groups showing up to boycott Gay Day. Disney is starting to (reluctantly) say the quiet part out loud, and so are the Republicans. Disney is publicly supporting queer rights and announcing company-supported queer events and the Republican Party is publicly calling them pedophiles and enacting politically driven revenge.

This is important, because while this fight has always been important in the history of queer rights, it is now being magnified. The precedent that a fight like this could set is staggering. For better or for worse, we live in a corporation-driven country. I don’t like it any more than you do, and I’m not about to defend most of Disney’s business practices. But we do live in a nation where rights are largely tied to corporate approval, and the fact that we might be entering an age where even the most powerful corporations in the country are being banned from speaking out in favor of rights for marginalized people… that’s genuinely scary.

Like… I’ll just ask you this. Where do you think we’d be now, in 2023, if Disney had been prevented from promising its employees equal benefits in 1994? That was almost thirty years ago, and look how far things have come. When I looked up news articles for this post from that era, even then journalists, activists, and fundie church leaders were all talking about how a company of Disney’s prominence throwing their weight behind this movement could lead to the normalization of equal protections in this country.

The idea of it scared and thrilled people in equal parts even then. It still scares and thrills them now.

I keep seeing people say “I need them both to lose!” and I get it, I do. Disney has for sure done a lot of shit over the years. But I am begging you as a queer exvangelical to understand that no. You need Disney to win. You need Disney to wipe the fucking floor with these people.

Right now, this isn’t just a fight between a giant corporation and Ron DeSantis. This is a fight about the right of corporations to support marginalized groups. It’s a fight that ensures that companies like Disney still can offer benefits that a discriminatory government does not provide. It ensures that businesses much smaller than Disney can support activism.

Hell, it ensures that you can support activism.

The fight between weird Christian conspiracy theorists and Disney is not new, because the fight to prevent any tiny victory for marginalized groups is not new. The fight against the normalization of othered groups is not new.

That’s what they’re most afraid of. That each incremental victory will start to make marginalized groups feel safer, that each incremental victory will start to turn the tide of public opinion, that each incremental victory will eventually lead to sweeping law reform.

They’re afraid that they won’t be able to legally discriminate against us anymore.

So guys! Please. This fight, while hilarious, is also so fucking important. I am begging you to understand how old this fight is. These people always play the long game. They did it with Roe and they’re doing it with Disney.

We have! To keep! Pushing back!

#disney #ron desantis #gay rights #lgbt #queer #lgbt history #queer history #homophobia #florida #us politics #religious fundamentalism #christianity #long post #god that should cover all the pertinent tags and content warnings phew

[aftabkaran]

Help us by spreading information

#iran #mahsa amini #religious fundamentalism #feminism #social justice

[hussyknee]

I know some dickheads have now decided that Judaism is the "bad, violent, terrorist religion" and Islam is the "good, peaceful" one, which is only to be expected of white people, but how much of an issue is it currently? Like I've seen some USAmericans sharing how the Islamic faith shapes Gazans values and perseverance (good) except with that distinct white hippie "I'm about to imprint on this like the world's most racist duck" vibe (bad), but I didn't think they're already turning on Judaism in numbers.

Do they realize that Christianity is also the same kind of comfort to Christian minorities in Asia and Africa? That it was Buddhists that genocided the Rohingyas in Myanmar and Tamils in Sri Lanka? That Hindu fundamentalists are even now trying to ethnically cleanse Muslims in India? How Hindus and Christians are terrorized and persecuted in Pakistan? That Muslims have a history of persecuting and ethnically cleansing Jews too?

Really tired of asking y'all to be normal about people's religions man. There's no religion that's inherently violent or exceptionally peaceful. It's just like any other ideology that becomes a weapon in the hands of ethnic power. Interrogate power, not religion, and respect people's belief systems insofar as they aren't in your business.

Edit: I've amended the "long history" of Muslim persecution of Jews because it might be misleading in the current political climate. Zionism and antisemitic Arab nationalism are twin births resulting directly from Christian colonization, and Islamic empires tended to actually be more tolerant of other religions compared to Christianity, especially Judaism, which was considered a sibling religion. Antisemitism wasn't ideologically entrenched in Islamic tradition. It's simply that ethno-religious power will lead to ethno religious domination and intermittent cleansing of minorities, and Islam is no exception. Humans be humaning always.

#Edit: please boost the edit #why can't white people just be fuckin normal for once #tbh this site was so weird about Judaism that it felt almost culty #I had several crises about whether I was being antisemitic before I realized no I'm just reacting to the idealization-demonization binary #that seems to be all western leftists know how to do #white queers are the worst about this #and now some of the asks I've been getting gives me the impression that the west thinks ''Islamist'' is some kind of dangerous cryptid #y'all attach insane levels of importance to people's choice of headgear #the only common denominator of all the Muslims I know is their fixation on biriyani idk #a lot of white lefties just want to use religion to distance yourself from your white privilege #same reason as why communism is so attractive to you #y'all want to share in a legacy of oppression because it's easier than self-reflection and unlearning #antisemitism #anti Zionism #Islamphobia #philosemitism #white queers #western leftists #racism #religious fundamentalism #genocide #religious violence #knee of huss

[audhdnight]

Can we talk about the fact that cult psychologists and those who study the history of cults will always specify that “cult” has no hard definition? Because the more I learn about the way the most destructive cults operate vs the way that a lot of churches operate, the more I think the only reason they specify that is because invoking a true definition would also describe the Christian church (and other organized religions). They can’t say “hey this pastor and his congregation are a cult” because that’s “religious discrimination”. (I put that in quotes because Christians love to say how oppressed they are, saying genuine criticism is infringing on their freedom of speech and right to practice religion and as someone who grew up in it, I am so fucking tired of it.)

#religious trauma #religious indoctrination #religious fundamentalism #cults

[k-wame]

-🌈The Where True Love is Movement 🏳️‍⚧️ @WhereTrueLoveIs ‘#lgbtqia’ · Jun 2, 2023 via Twitter

#politics #happy pride 🌈 #pride 2023 #twitter #trans #nonbinary #transgender #queer liberation #lgbt #Igbtq+ #lgbqia #queer rights #queer solidarity #pride colours #descent into fascism #right wing politics #fascism #religious fundamentalism #electoralism

[pratchettquotes]

As far as Polly could tell, Igors believed that the body was nothing more than a complicated kind of clothing. Oddly enough, that's what Nugganites thought, too.

Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

#polly perks #igor #the nugganites #monstrous regiment #discworld #terry pratchett #belief #body #identity #selfhood #science #scientism #religion #religious fundamentalism #similarities #a complicated kind of clothing #oddly enough

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

April 9, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 10, 2024

Yesterday, former president Trump released a video celebrating state control over abortion; today, a judicial decision in Arizona illuminated just what such state control means. With the federal recognition of the constitutional right to abortion gone since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, old laws left on state books once again are becoming the law of the land.

In a 4–2 decision, the all-Republican Arizona Supreme Court today said it would not interfere with the authority of the state legislature to write abortion policy, letting the state revert to an 1864 law that bans abortion unless the mother’s life is in danger. “[P]hysicians are now on notice that all abortions, except those necessary to save a woman’s life, are illegal,” the decision read.

The court explained: “A policy matter of this gravity must ultimately be resolved by our citizens through the legislature or the initiative process…. We defer, as we are constitutionally obligated to do, to the legislature’s judgment, which is accountable to, and thus reflects, the mutable will of our citizens.”

The idea that abortion law must be controlled by state legislatures is in keeping with the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. But it’s an interesting spin to say that the new policy is protecting the will of the citizens. 

The Arizona law that will begin to be enforced in 14 days was written by a single man in 1864. 

In 1864, Arizona was not a state, women and minorities could not vote, and doctors were still sewing up wounds with horsehair and storing their unwashed medical instruments in velvet-lined cases. 

And, of course, the United States was in the midst of the Civil War.

In fact, the 1864 law soon to be in force again in Arizona to control women’s reproductive rights in the twenty-first century does not appear particularly concerned with women handling their own reproductive care in the nineteenth—it actually seems to ignore that practice entirely. The laws for Arizona Territory, chaotic and still at war in 1864, appear to reflect the need to rein in a lawless population of men. 

The 1864 Arizona criminal code talks about “miscarriage” in the context of other male misbehavior. It focuses at great length on dueling, for example—making illegal not only the act of dueling (punishable by three years in jail) but also having anything to do with a duel. And then, in the section that became the law now resurrected in Arizona, the law takes on the issue of poisoning. 

In that context, the context of punishing those who secretly administer poison to kill someone, it says that anyone who uses poison or instruments “with the intention to procure the miscarriage of any woman then being with child” would face two to five years in jail, “Provided, that no physician shall be affected by the last clause of this section, who in the discharge of his professional duties deems it necessary to produce the miscarriage of any woman in order to save her life.” 

The next section warns against cutting out tongues or eyes, slitting noses or lips, or “rendering…useless” someone’s arm or leg.

The law that Arizona will use to outlaw abortion care seemed designed to keep men in the chaos of the Civil War from inflicting damage on others—including pregnant women—rather than to police women’s reproductive care, which women largely handled on their own or through the help of doctors who used drugs and instruments to remove what they called dangerous blockages of women’s natural cycles in the four to five months before fetal movement became obvious.

Written to police the behavior of men, the code tells a larger story about power and control. 

The Arizona Territorial Legislature in 1864 had 18 men in the lower House of Representatives and 9 men in the upper house, the Council, for a total of 27 men. They met on September 26, 1864, in Prescott. The session ended about six weeks later, on November 10. 

The very first thing the legislators did was to authorize the governor to appoint a commissioner to prepare a code of laws for the territory. But William T. Howell, a judge who had arrived in the territory the previous December, had already written one, which the legislature promptly accepted as a blueprint.

Although they did discuss his laws, the members later thanked Judge Howell for “preparing his excellent and able Code of Laws” and, as a mark of their appreciation, provided that the laws would officially be called “The Howell Code.” (They also paid him a handsome $2,500, which was equivalent to at least three years’ salary for a workingman in that era.) Judge Howell wrote the territory’s criminal code essentially single-handedly.

The second thing the legislature did was to give a member of the House of Representatives a divorce from his wife. 

Then they established a county road near Prescott.

Then they gave a local army surgeon a divorce from his wife. 

In a total of 40 laws, the legislature incorporated a number of road companies, railway companies, ferry companies, and mining companies. They appropriated money for schools and incorporated the Arizona Historical Society.

These 27 men constructed a body of laws to bring order to the territory and to jump-start development. But their vision for the territory was a very particular one. 

The legislature provided that “[n]o black or mulatto, or Indian, Mongolian, or Asiatic, shall be permitted to [testify in court] against any white person,” thus making it impossible for them to protect their property, their families, or themselves from their white neighbors. It declared that “all marriages between a white person and a [Black person], shall…be absolutely void.”

And it defined the age of consent for sexual intercourse to be just ten years old (even if a younger child had “consented”). 

So, in 1864, a legislature of 27 white men created a body of laws that discriminated against Black people and people of color and considered girls as young as ten able to consent to sex, and they adopted a body of criminal laws written by one single man.

And in 2024, one of those laws is back in force in Arizona.

Now, though, women can vote.

Before the midterm elections, 61% of Arizona voters told AP VoteCast they believed abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while only 6% said it should be illegal in all cases. A campaign underway to place a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights on November’s ballot needs to gather 383,923 verified signatures by July; a week ago the campaign announced it already had 500,000 signatures.

It seems likely that voters will turn out in November to elect lawmakers who will represent the actual will of the people in the twenty-first century. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #women's rights #reproductive health #reproductive rights #MAGA authoritarianism #religious fundamentalism #Arizona #States rights #anti-woman

[commiepinkofag]

New school board president sworn in on a stack of frequently banned books

*A stack of queer books

Beyond Magenta, by Susan Kuklin Flamer, by Mike Curato All Boys Aren’t Blue, by George M. Johnson Lily and Dunkin, by Donna Gephart The Bluest Eye, by Toni Morrison Night, by Elie Wiesel

As she was sworn in to another term on the Central Bucks school board Monday night, Karen Smith placed her hand not on a Bible, but a stack of frequently banned books. “I’m not particularly religious. The Bible doesn’t hold significant meaning for me, and given everything that has occurred in the last couple of years, the banned books, they do mean something to me at this point,” Smith said Tuesday. She wanted to make clear “the commitment I’ve had to fighting for the books, and for our students’ freedom to read.”

#banned books #book bans #school board #religious fundamentalism #puritanical nationalism #church and state #queer history #queer #trans #lgbtq #lgbqti #lgbt #2023 #2020s

[datamodel-of-disaster]

The most insane thing I ever saw:

A webshop that is "closed" -as in, unusable, can't even browse- on Sunday. For religious reasons.

...

Given that this is a Dutch shop, I'm guessing fundie Christians. But like...

THE INSANITY.

#clearly they're like “why are you online you should be in church contemplating the lord” #I am really pissed because I wanted to buy something there #that is really hard to get elsewhere #but I am so not comfortable giving money to religious nutjobs #religious fundamentalism #fundie #fundie christians #dutch bible belt #what the actual fuck #im still reeling like #what the fuuuuuuuuck #disaster thoughts

[mbrainspaz]

I’ve been watching more queer movies and tv to catch up on stuff I missed and something I’ve still never seen in media are realistic religious fundamentalist parents in an lgbtq story. Every time it’s a story of estranged children the parents always come around to accept their queer kid in the end like “oh I guess I was the silly goose all along.” Could never be my parents.

#lgbtq+ #personal problems #bad parenting #religious fundamentalism #fundie parents

[cookinguptales]

are you forreal acting like youre some wise elder because youre 30? 😭 saying shit like "i thought people would get the context bc i lived back then" and "the early 90s were a different time" as if you lived it. your bio says you're 32 so you were born in 1990 at the earliest. you would've been a toddler when this was happening 💀💀💀💀💀

I'm acting like I knew these things because I knew these things...? And yes, I'll be 33 in a couple weeks so that time period checks out. When do you think I would've been in the target age group for the Disney movies that were coming out back then? Like, really do some math on when my relatives would have been most concerned that I'd be exposed to Disney movies. Do you think maybe it might be when I was 5-6 years old? You know, in 1995-1996 when Disney was first putting these policies into practice?

Like I'm genuinely glad you didn't have to grow up in a situation where you had to know about these things from a young age, but I did. I grew up in a family where my grandmother was a bigoted Sunday School teacher who went to Disney and abortion protests, my uncle was a pastor who preached intolerance from the pulpit, and my grandfather became legendary for his homophobic comics online.

I learned what being gay was from reading those comics when I was a child. Like -- I'm talking a seven- or eight-year-old child. Comics about HIV and AIDS and how gay people were going to kill us all by transmitting those diseases through mosquitos, if they didn't sexually assault everyone first. I didn't know any different because my parents, while less bigoted than their parents, still wouldn't allow me to consume media about gay people. They never even talked about them. That means that when I started puberty and started realizing I wasn't like the other kids, I had to start unlearning all that myself. And every morning on the way to school, I had to listen to my dad listen to talk radio about how people like me were ruining America.

Indoctrination often starts from a very young age, and like -- again, I'm happy if that's not a life you had to live. But I'm not sure why you're acting like it's an unbelievable one. Lots of people have lived that life, and my notifications have been full of them for the past 48 hours. I can't say I'm surprised that so many exvangelicals with shitty childhoods are on tumblr, but I've been saddened to hear the same story over and over and over.

I'm not sure what your story is, anon, but this seems like kind of a pitiful chapter in it.

#replies #cw: #christianity #religious fundamentalism #homophobia #disney

[aftabkaran]

The reason the protests have overtaken the country is because patriarchy is the foundation of today’s regime. They know it, the people know it. Without patriarchal rule a religious autocracy is impossible.

#iran #mahsa amini #religious fundamentalism

[haggishlyhagging]

In the past decade in America, and throughout the world, there has been a resurgence of fundamentalist religious activity, or at least an increased focus on it in the media. Fundamentalism, in any Western religion—Christian, Judaic, Muslim—means a strict literalist interpretation of, and obedience to, the words of some ancient text(s) considered divinely inspired, coupled with a zealous desire to make the world correspond to these texts, i.e., "God's Word," "God's Law." In a mid-1970s poll taken by one of the popular presses, 50 percent of the Americans interviewed agreed with the statement that "all the world's troubles are caused by the Devil." And in 1980 Americans installed a president who, in public statements, seems to be stating his belief that half the world (the other half) is composed of beings who intentionally will "evil." With this upsurge of fundamentalist ontology has come increased media reports of "satanic cults" and sensationalized television dramas of such cults and related "ritual killings" in America. Undoubtedly, there are "satanic cults" in the United States, composed of both silly and dangerous people. But it must be pointed out that there is no historic record of mass killings by satanists anywhere, at any time.

The world record for mass killings is held by Christians.

-Monica Sjöö and Barbara Mor. The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering The Religion of the Earth.

#monica sjöö #barbara mor #satanic panic #anti christianity #religious fundamentalism

[littlethingspileup]

Thinking about fundamentalist Christianity, as I often do, on the drive to work today, and I suddenly hit by the subtle ways that Christianity discourages the idea of bodily autonomy.

When I was 7 years old, I wanted to get my ears pierced, as many children do. When I asked my parents for permission, they directed me towards the Bible for my answer, stating that some people thought the Bible forbid people from modifying their bodies with tattoos or piercings.

Diligent Christ-child that I was, I read the scriptures they gave me, and justified my decision for earrings by recognizing that the verses I had read had been about modifying yourself specifically as a mourning ritual.

I got my earrings, but I lost the feeling that my body was my own.

It's a common theme of religion, the idea that your body isn't your own. That your actions aren't your own. That everything you do, everything you feel, is from, and for, God.

This idea has wormed itself into my head so deeply that I have only just now realized that it still influences my mindset today. This idea is the foundation of why I've allowed people to use my labor, use my time, use my BODY in ways that aren't true to me.

It is only now, that I have recognized it as a zealot's wound, that I am able to wind it out from its deep crevasse in my brain. Be gone, thought. Plague me no more.

#religious fundamentalism #religion #religious trauma #healing #ex fundie

[miraclesandlove]

Please think about this when you are an (evangelical) fundamentalist Christian:

When you say that Catholicism and Orthodoxy is from the devil and that there is the antichrist... Who do they worship? I mean, really...? When you say they worship the devil there, why do they pray to God, why do they believe in the Trinity of God? Do you want to say that God is the devil? I doubt it. So I remind you to be careful who you call the antichrist and the devil. You could falsely claim God to be the devil...

#religion #exvangelical #ex evangelical #ex fundamentalist #evangelical #evangelicalism #evangelical christianity #religious fundamentalism #fundamentalist christianity #conservative christianity #christianity #god #jesus

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

1. Definitely took “-Studies” rather than “-Science” at college.

2.

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv18.pdf#page=13

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cv19.pdf#page=18

#Eric's Electrons #wokesplaining #white guilt #white savior #western feminism #third wave feminism #black on black #prayer #religion #christianity #religious fundamentalism #Karening #scientific progress #science #religion vs science #science vs religion #social menace #religion is a mental illness