With Trump in office, the religious right and their supporters are hungry to push bills which would allow them to discriminate specifically against the LGBTQ community on the grounds of religious freedom. No matter how they sugarcoat their aspirations, we are staring at the following as a potential future:
The sad thing is that we've see this sort of thing so many times in the past:
Of course in the case about "religious freedom," some would say things are different. They point to anecdotal evidence of people supposedly losing their business for choosing not to serve gays (although those telling the story sugarcoat the situation by saying the business owners were "refusing to betray their personal religious beliefs") or claiming that the gay community is deliberately "targeting Christian businesses."
These claims are lies but they are powerful lies because they not only cater to people's fears and egos, but they also offer a good excuse for people who in their hearts know that they are practicing discrimination and know that they are wrong for doing so.
In truth, religious freedom has become a bastardized weapon to remind the LGBTQ community that we are supposedly inferior. It's the last desperate weapon of people whose entitlement have been justifiably ripped away by the courts. When they realize that maybe God doesn't hate homosexuality as much as they claim He does or that the queer community isn't as depraved as they have believed, they create barriers to these truths and imaginary constructs which serve to strengthen the sturdiness of their bubbles. When the queer community fight to destroy one bubble, they construct another.
This mess about religious freedom is simply the latest construct and it will be destroyed sooner or later. But in the meantime, isn't it sad to see people are so determined not to learn from the past that they eagerly repeat the mistakes of the past?
The sad thing is that we've see this sort of thing so many times in the past:
Of course in the case about "religious freedom," some would say things are different. They point to anecdotal evidence of people supposedly losing their business for choosing not to serve gays (although those telling the story sugarcoat the situation by saying the business owners were "refusing to betray their personal religious beliefs") or claiming that the gay community is deliberately "targeting Christian businesses."
These claims are lies but they are powerful lies because they not only cater to people's fears and egos, but they also offer a good excuse for people who in their hearts know that they are practicing discrimination and know that they are wrong for doing so.
In truth, religious freedom has become a bastardized weapon to remind the LGBTQ community that we are supposedly inferior. It's the last desperate weapon of people whose entitlement have been justifiably ripped away by the courts. When they realize that maybe God doesn't hate homosexuality as much as they claim He does or that the queer community isn't as depraved as they have believed, they create barriers to these truths and imaginary constructs which serve to strengthen the sturdiness of their bubbles. When the queer community fight to destroy one bubble, they construct another.
This mess about religious freedom is simply the latest construct and it will be destroyed sooner or later. But in the meantime, isn't it sad to see people are so determined not to learn from the past that they eagerly repeat the mistakes of the past?
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