#every queer religious person i've talked with has had incredibly interesting things to say and i wish that queer religious people were

[queerorthodoxy]

I love queer religious people, the world needs our perspective and experiences. The world needs you.

[hillbillyoracle]

I know you're probably busy but could you share more things that might seem like common knowledge about US religious fundamentalism that you feel don't get talked about enough?

I can't speak to religious fundamentalism generally. I can only speak to my experiences personally with Christian fundamentalism.

I also have trouble knowing what is and isn't common knowledge until it comes up in conversation.

I guess, given the wild responses I've gotten on that post, I want to inspire some nuance and empathy.

What I want people to know is that however you try to simplify Christian fundamentalism - these people are evil, they're heartless, etc - you will be wrong and you will not make a lick of progress.

--

So to preface what I'm about to say, I am trans and queer and realized it fairly early on. I also know that adults around me picked up on it before I fully did and were generally not accepting.

With that being said, I fucking loved church growing up.

My average week was going to church Sunday morning and then again for Sunday evening services. I would pretty much always go to Wednesday evening youth group and when Bible Bowl was in season, I usually had practice one evening a week with competitions every few Saturdays. Sometimes there were fellowship nights at restaurants in town or service projects with my youth group.

Some weekends there were conferences - usually about purity or some other aspect of fundie doctrine - and I'd load up in a van with a bunch of other people and get to stay overnight in some city hotel to go to them. In the summer, I usually went to anywhere between 2 and 5 church summer camps.

And I want to be clear here that I had many deep and moving spiritual experiences while with the churches that I attended (we moved some). I have so many lovely memories of being just so intensely present with this group of people I spent the better part of my non-school time with. One very directly wound up leading to my interest in Buddhism after I left which is my core spiritual path to this day. So there was very much something real to it.

The reasons I say this is because it was my world and nothing outside of it has come even close to the social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual needs it filled for me. I've now spent about half my life outside of the church and I don't think there's been a day that's gone by where I haven't missed some aspect of my life in the church.

My experiences with the trans and queer community pale in comparison to what I was getting from the church. You can't understand how incredibly fulfilling it can be if you've never experienced it.

When people look at fundies and dehumanize them - call it a cult, call people sheep, call them evil, can't imagine why any human would so who ever would must not be human - they miss that there exists in these churches a critique of our communities that is incredibly valid: our communities just kind of suck.

There exist some exceptions but like what about the rest of us? Most of our communities - and I'm talking the ones we build on and offline, not just local - they don't have much programing, people are far more lackadaisical about showing up and putting in effort, people are very reactive and treat friends as disposable, very little is spent on deeper spiritual and intellectual topics. People are deeply lonely and for good reason.

When you're asking someone to leave these churches, you're often asking them to leave places where they are getting many more of their needs met than on the outside. And that is setting aside to ongoing displays of penance that so many people online especially demand when someone finally breaks away. You're asking them to do what's right for a lot less.

And I'm not saying that's wrong - I'm saying that's incredibly hard to do and you should honor how hard and complicated that is to do by not simplifying it or dehumanizing them as people.

Let complicated things be complicated.

Let complicated people be complicated.

I'm not sure if that's anything like what you were looking for but it's where my mind was at just now so I hope it's something.

[officiallanxichen]

2, 8, 20 for book asks!

2. top 5 books of all time?

rating this by "books i love or that had a significant impact on me as a person" and not necessarily by "best books of all time"

1: The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemesin. yes I know this is 3 books but it's just SO good i love nk jemesin she's a queen an icon a legend

2: Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. i can't say why i love this book because it's a spoiler for the book but it's just. so good. so incredible.

3: Same Sex Marriages in Premodern Europe by John Boswell. i talked about this in my lexi ask but this book made my little high school brain Explode when i first read it! it was a super early work that talked positively and academically about queer people in history and it's so excellent

4: Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien. see broken earth trilogy for my defense of this being 3 books in one but i love LOTR i first read them when i was 9 (yeah. i was a freak) and it's just so special to me

5: The Once and Future King by T.H. White. i am aware this is a controversial one re: being a good arthurian adaption but also it has a special place in my heart <33 i've read it religiously every year since i was 11 because i'm a weird little autism man

8. what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

hmm this is a good question! I think it was probably an amelia bedlia book but I honestly don't remember 😭 technically i think the first book i "read" myself was a one fish two fish red fish blue fish bath book adaption but i just memorized it from my parents reading it to me

20. what are things you look for in a book?

quality queer representation, an engaging and complex plot, and really good worldbuilding!! i have a really hard time finding books on my own these days because i'm always scared that books that look interesting to me will have some sort of weird homophobic moment or like. gratuitous sex. but i'm always happy to accept reccs >;)