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Religious Tolerance

I didn’t comment immediately after the Christchurch shooting because it triggered a heap of stuff and I needed to give it a day or two to settle. As is my want, my comments are usually outside the status quo, so I don’t want to appear insensitive in any way.

Firstly, the whole thing is horrific at every level and trying to convey anything meaningful through my words is kinda lame really. Simply put, I’ve been in tears for the people affected. And don’t get me started on things like white supremacy and the mental illness that creates such sick paradigms.

All people, no matter their beliefs, are beautiful and “sacred”, deserving of love, compassion and respect. End of story.

However, religion is an entirely different matter and we are faced with the task of whitewashing our religious differences and glibly saying we must respect everyone’s beliefs and co-exist in harmony and respect, or face the fact that our beliefs actually do embrace the possibility of justifying horrific actions. To sort this out effectively, requires a lot of unpacking.

Islam, as represented by your everyday Muslim, is described (or has been re-branded) as the “religion of peace”, and for these millions of people, all they want is to live their lives in peace – as we all do! Christians too make similar claims.

But there are facts – “elephant in the room” type facts.

Islam has never been a religion of peace – ever – under any circumstances (except to, perhaps, other Muslims and even then there is an extremely brutal justice system that is hardly one of a “peaceful” religion). It has shed endless rivers of blood. It conquers and destroys with cruelty and viscous hatred and bigotry.

But let’s not forget that Christianity is also guilty of this, as are most of the major religions. This includes Judaism. In fact the three Abrahamic religions have released more horror on this world than any other force.

But before you jump on me, I absolutely recognise that there are millions of people who live within these religious constructs and despite what they are taught at any level, just want to live peaceful lives.

So we have a massive disconnect here. Many would say we shouldn’t include the extremists and activists in the equations as they don’t represent the vast majority. But the fact is, they are there, and their influence is huge. They have guided these mammoth institutions throughout the centuries more than any “peaceful majority”. Let’s face it, would you really want to live in an Islamic state?

Let’s be grateful that at least in “western” countries the laws are such that we don’t allow overtly violent and abusive religious expressions.

Christianity is only peaceful because of those who embrace the simple teachings of Jesus (don’t get me started on Paul). Those who like to weave the Old Testament scriptures into the picture have a deep sense of God’s wrath and violence (yes, there are many doctrines and theological ideas that try to piece it all together with varying degrees of success). But the same is also true for Islam. Muhammad’s teachings are clearly contradictory in terms of being peaceful and embracing all nations, and committing various degrees of horrific genocide on the infidels. To get the type of religion most Muslims like to live by requires extreme cherry picking and juggling of scripture.

Same with the Jews.

Same with Christians.

Islam is one screwed up religion, seriously! And to think otherwise is to be naive.

So what do we do with all this? My heart is to help people be truthful and realistic about what they believe and why they believe it. Are our beliefs really based on being “peaceful and loving”. Does our core religion, as laid out in traditional doctrines, allow for unconditional love, compassion and empathy with every other person on the planet? Are we even willing to look at the issues, or are we happy to just pretend the problem doesn’t exist?

We can ignore it to a huge degree, which is what the various movements towards religious tolerance encourage. Live and let live. Your beliefs are yours, and mine are mine and if we accept that we’ll get on just fine… until another group realise that their scriptures and fundamental teachings don’t embrace this in the slightest. And so another round of brutality, bigotry, hatred and terrorism starts.

Of course I support the efforts for religious tolerance! Its all we have so far that resembles anything like a solution. But it’s time we “grew up” as a species and looked at exactly what we get from religion and how ours benefits humanity as a whole.

Truthfully, religions only reflect the hearts of those who created them, and that’s not always a pleasant reality. All religions are cultural constructs, with the potential for peace or horror, just like humans, strangely enough.

There is a better way!

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The problem with triggers

Yesterday the Auckland Pride Festival board announced the Police will not be allowed to march in the parade in uniform, and if they wish to participate it must be in t-shirts or fancy dress.

The backlash was swift and brutal and continues to grow with calls for a boycott of the parade.

There are issues of internal politics and how the wishes of a tiny minority can hold the rest to ransom. But that isn’t the crux of the matter.

It comes down to trying to help people who are “triggered” by things that cause mental distress. For some LGBT people, the presence of police causes this because they have had extremely traumatic experiences with police abuse. It makes total sense, and my heart goes out to these people. We are all very familiar with instances of abuse by a tiny minority of “bad cops”.

But here’s my take…

I get triggered by religious stuff – seriously! When I see a cross I can feel a churning and anxiety inside, and it always throws up memories of my experiences in church and conversion therapy. When I see religious organisations marching in the Pride parade, I get the same reaction, even if they are in t-shirts and are obviously loving genuine LGBT inclusive organisations! If I had my way and followed my gut feelings I would try to get them banned from marching.

But I recognise that the whole problem is mine. I’m the one getting triggered by my experiences. It’s my responsibility to face the issue and take full responsibility for it and be brave enough to work through my problems – NOT project them on to other people and demand they “disappear” so I can feel comfortable.

So, going back to the parade, the reactions of the vast majority of people is that the police are 100% supportive and work hard to protect us. Sure, we all get that twinge of anxiety when we see a cop in the rear view mirror, or walking towards us on the street, but that’s something we all recognise and dismiss as our own problem. If we discriminate against the police because a handful of people are basically projecting their fears onto to the rest of us we are not doing anyone a favour.

I daily face my triggers, but never do I demand that people stop doing something because it triggers me – and of course, this has nothing to do with abuse in any form, which I will address in no uncertain terms!

So to all you beautiful LGBT folks who are genuinely triggered and don’t feel safe seeing police in uniform – I get it! I really do! I genuinely feel compassion and empathy for you and support you 100%. But that support is towards your healing and growth into personal wholeness. I won’t actively trigger you, but neither will I shelter you from triggers, because avoiding them will never, ever bring the peace we crave.

It’s time to “get real”, and that can be bloody hard. It can hurt and cause distress, but in the end we have to face it. For me, no matter how much I get triggered by my own abuse issues, I refuse to demand others change to pander to my problems. I will speak out against religious abuse, I will present alternatives to the prison of religion, but I have no right to expect religious organisations to conform to my expectations.

We are one glorious species of amazingly complex creatures. Let’s work together, recognising that rejecting others because of our own fears builds division – not unity.

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Religious freedom?

The big debate is currently around people having the rights to exercise their religious beliefs – freedom of speech basically. But the real issue isn’t our rights to exercise our faith so much as questioning the veracity of those beliefs in the first place.

Let’s face it, if I was a Satanist wanting to introduce religious education into schools and petitioning government to make live animal sacrifices legal…. well we all know how well that would go. “But it’s not the same thing!!” we cry “everyone knows Satanism is wrong and evil”. Really? Technically, it’s a religion, and has the same legal rights as any other religion. So why shouldn’t they be free to exercise their “firmly held religious convictions” and be free to openly discriminate against Christians?

The questions we should all be asking are around the belief systems themselves. We should be looking at why any religion discriminates against another human for any reason. We need to dig deep into religious culture and question the veracity of every belief and how they affect our society. We have to have the guts to challenge beliefs that damage and divide – beliefs that create pain, suffering and abuse. To ignore these questions and blithely grant the status of “religious freedom” to Christianity (or any other religion) is to be complicit in the damage caused!

So lets have the guts to be honest and upfront. Let’s challenge those beliefs and expose them for what they are instead of wasting time around people’s rights to express them.

In saying that, I’m not calling for some Christian hate campaign. On the contrary – we’ll never get anywhere by simply fighting and discriminating against religious beliefs. The key – as always and in all things – is love, patience and empathy. That’s not the same as tolerating a destructive belief – it’s standing up to them with facts, reason and patience. If we mock and belittle those beliefs we create bigger barriers and lose any hope of speaking truth.

It’s a narrow road we walk when trying to simultaneously bring truth and love to humanity. We must be strong enough to say no, but also compassionate enough to bring understanding and break the walls instead of making them bigger. Our common humanity, love and compassion for ALL must come before, and/or be the basis of, any religious beliefs. If not, those beliefs should not get any freedom of expression to the rest of the world. Believe them of you want, just don’t expect to have any rights to inflict them on others.

We can do it – if we are prepared to cut to the real issues with bravery and compassion.

Live loved!

 

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Division in the ranks

The term “LGBT community” is an immensely broad brush stroke that tries to define all the variations of sexuality and gender humans experience. We are often obliged to add more subgroups into the term to embrace everyone) LGBTQIA etc. The list keeps growing as we all desire our own label to communicate exactly who we are to others.

This is a normal human reaction to life. We love labels!

But there’s a problem with labelling in regards to sexuality and gender. We are all, every single human on the planet, somewhere on the sliding scales of sexual identity/expression and gender identity/expression as well as physical gender attributes. There simply aren’t two people who experience exactly the same identifications and expression. The following chart explains the basic spectrum for all humans. While not perfect, it does give us the basic idea.

The significance of all this is obvious – labels are almost redundant and quite often, counterproductive, creating misunderstanding, rejection and division – despite our best intentions to find our own unique niche.

Ideally (and yes, I’m an idealist), we should all have the freedom to simply be who we are, whatever that looks like. Don’t get me wrong, we do need some way of identifying ourselves so that we can find friends and communities we can relate to. But there is a lot of bigotry and judgement that goes on, even (or especially?) by others who identify as being on the spectrum.

Drag queens, cross dressers and trans women often don’t see eye to eye. Butch lesbians and trans men get into spats. Asexuals feel left out. And of course, the attitudes towards the flamboyant feminine gays by masculine gay men can be disgusting. I even found a group that call themselves G0ys (that’s gay with a zero instead of an a). These guys identify with the idea that we are all on a spectrum of sexual attraction, but they actively denounce anyone who doesn’t fit their “look and behave like a straight male” paradigm and have extreme opinions about the evils of anal sex. Sadly, just another bunch of people who, while trying to create a broader acceptance for the male sexual continuum, have created deeper bigotry instead.

My dream is to slowly lose the LGBTIQwhatever label as we learn to accept our uniqueness. Let’s stop denigrating others because we don’t understand or they “aren’t like us”. There’s enough of this in all areas of life without it affecting those of us who have to battle for the right to simply be who we are.

I’m “gay”, I’m only attracted to men, I express myself as reasonably masculine but have some aspects of the feminine psyche that “soften” me (damn those jazz hands). But that doesn’t mean I want to be pinholed as a bear or whatever silly sub-label you want to dump on me.

I’m Jim.

I love and respect every human equally, and I accept that no two people are at exactly the same point on the spectrum of gender and sexuality. We are bigger than the stereotypes!

 

 

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Popper’s Paradox

Free speech,

Tolerance,

Unconditional love…


 How do these things work in reality?


 In 1945 the philosopher Karl Popper proposed the paradox of tolerance.

In a nutshell he said “if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant”, or to paraphrase that: we can only survive by being intolerant about intolerance.

As we all know, white supremacy and all it’s ugly variants are making headlines and empowering those who secretly embrace those views to speak out. There’s also the current political mess in Australia over gay marriage, where conservative christians are doing all they can to stop it.

So where do we draw the line on free speech and religious freedom?

We have to draw it somewhere, or our society will become victim to it and we will loose those very freedoms!

The balance is in how we confront them. If we use “violence” (physical, vocal or in any form) we are playing the same game, and when confronted in this way, the intolerant simply dig their heels in and use the opposition to fuel more intolerance.

Respect for their humanity is key. To recognise that we could be the same if we’d been raised in a different environment is a sobering thought. It’s a learned trait, something we aren’t just born with. So compassion and empathy is the key to any communication, bypassing the rhetoric and reactionary thought processes and focussing on understanding why people are like this.

At the risk of being overly simplistic, it comes down to a lack of love. They never experienced the type of unconditional love themselves that breeds self worth and empathy for others. They are broken and angry, but instead of looking within, they are lashing out at the rest of us.

But they still have to be stopped from spreading this disease, and that’s where we have to draw lines. Although love is the only “cure” for these people, we still have to deal with the affects they are having on our society.

The alt right issue is pretty obvious, but the christian right style of bigotry, especially towards LGBT people is more complex because of the religious freedom problems. And that opens a very large can of worms because it will eventually confront all religions on issues of bigotry and tolerance.

Perhaps it’s time we stop being afraid of challenging people’s belief systems?

We can do this with love and patience without compromising our stand. They believe they are doing the right thing, so we have to talk to their hearts, bypass the religious rhetoric and present compassion and empathy for the broken as our motivation.

We also have to remember that for most christians it’s a case of “the bible says so”, and that’s a tough nut to crack. But with the same level of compassion we can help them to understand that their views are in error, as have been so many christian opinions over the centuries, that had to be adjusted and morality, ethics and science outgrew the ignorance of ancient culture.

We must be strong but loving – compassionate but without compromise – draw the lines but help them gently step over them. It’s hard work, but if we can step back from our own reactionary thought processes we will be able to exercise the love they need to see in action.

 

 

(Originally published 24/8/17 on Jim’s Awesome Blog)

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