The long term effects of homophobia by Christians

[Underseer]

Let's speculate about this.

The rightist media and evangelical preachers have spent enormous time and effort demonizing homosexuals, working their followers into a fine froth over the topic.

We are at a critical moment in history. The public's attitudes about homosexuality are changing very rapidly. The fact that Christians were so vocal about homosexuality did not negatively affect Christianity before because the public had a fairly negative opinion of homosexuals. Now that the public's attitudes are changing so rapidly, the past words and actions of Christians are seriously going to come back and bite them in the collective butts.

They can't retract what they said. They can't retract what they did. And because they worked so hard to make their followers hate and dehumanize the GLBT community, they can't stop their followers from continuing to say and do awful things about and to the GLBT community.

There is a precedence for this, you know.

Remember when all those baby boomers turned away from Christianity and started exploring other religions, especially nutty new age spiritual movements and religions from the far east? While I may be wrong, I think that movement away from Christianity was caused in large part because people used Christianity to justify opposition to the civil rights movement, and also used Christianity to justify support of the Vietnam War. When the public's opinion on those topics shifted, Christianity ended up looking like the bad guys.

This time, something is different.

This time, Christianity is already reeling from the whole New Atheist business. In modern industrialized western nations, people are streaming away from Christianity, and it is becoming more and more socially acceptable to criticize Christianity. People are now more familiar with the arguments used to support Christianity and the fact that those arguments don't look so good when held up to the light.

Sure, the overall population of Christians is increasing worldwide because third world Christians are having babies faster than first world Christians can deconvert to nontheism, but in the West, they were already bleeding members well before the sand shifted under everyone's feet on the GLBT issue.

So now we have another event in which Christian support of a political/social issue could cause large numbers of people to turn away from Christianity at a time when Christendom was already bleeding away members.

So what will be the overall effect this time? What will be different in the near future when compared to all those hippies leaving Christendom in the past?

Personally, I think the flow of followers away from Christianity is about to increase, although I have no idea by how much.

 

[Keith&Co.]

They can't retract what they said. They can't retract what they did. And because they worked so hard to make their followers hate and dehumanize the GLBT community, they can't stop their followers from continuing to say and do awful things about and to the GLBT community.

There is a precedence for this, you know.

There's another precedent.

The Mormons used to have a particularly vile outlook on blacks. But then one day the President got himself a vision and the church became better aligned to public opinion. It was like they took off the rubber mask of Ol' Man Jackass and revealed they'd been Tommy Tolerance all along.

Most sects of Christainity don't quite have a claim of instant revelation from On High, but i suspect many will quietly retire the old guard and loudly present the Under New Management standards of welcome.

 

[Valjean]

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win"
--Gandhi

 

[Underseer]

They can't retract what they said. They can't retract what they did. And because they worked so hard to make their followers hate and dehumanize the GLBT community, they can't stop their followers from continuing to say and do awful things about and to the GLBT community.

There is a precedence for this, you know.

There's another precedent.

The Mormons used to have a particularly vile outlook on blacks. But then one day the President got himself a vision and the church became better aligned to public opinion. It was like they took off the rubber mask of Ol' Man Jackass and revealed they'd been Tommy Tolerance all along.

Most sects of Christainity don't quite have a claim of instant revelation from On High, but i suspect many will quietly retire the old guard and loudly present the Under New Management standards of welcome.

Maybe, maybe not.

Sure, Christianity suffered for opposing civil rights and supporting the Vietnam War, but in the end, conservative Christians doubled down on all that stuff in the form of the conservative movement as we know it post-Reagan.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I think the largest reason most people still cling to Christianity is the idea that morality comes from religion. Now, despite huge amounts of special privilege, Christianity in general is showing everyone that this simply isn't true. The harder they fight the gays, the more members they lose. The more children they rape, the more members they lose. The more pastors that get caught (literally) with their pants down, the more members they lose. Thanks to the Internet, everyone sees these things now, almost in real time. Also with the Internet, you can fact check your pastor while still sitting in the pew. The result is similar to what's happening with the republicans, and considering how close the two are to each other, it's not surprising. Those that remain are the crazy ones. Combine that with the fact that religion is losing the battle on virtually every front, and you get an increasing amount of wild vitriol and crazy behavior. They may be losing, but we have to keep the pressure on, because they can still do a lot of damage before they're defeated.

 

[ideologyhunter]

I wish I was as sanguine as you guys on the withering-away of religion. Maybe it's a consequence of living in heartland America, but I think the state of faith is still robust -- I meet so very few freethinkers, and I'm living in Ohio, north of I-70, which is sort of the dividing line in this state. It's like our Mason-Dixie line. North of I-70, you're thinking of doing something. South of I-70, you're fixin' to do it.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

I think that the only real effect will be that Christianity will change with popular opinion and in a couple of generations, 99% of the population will forget that it ever opposed homosexuality in the first place. Remember the massive war that Christianity had against artificial insemination? Neither does anyone else even though a large number of the preachers railing against the evils of homosexuality just took some of their daddy's old sermons and changed a few words around.

Churches used to be against equal rights for women, racial integration and all that other crap. There are a few churches right now who are welcoming and accepting of homosexuals and in a couple of decades anyone arguing about the historical homophobia of religious institutions will have those pointed out to them to demonstrate how people of faith were on the forefront of the societal move to accept gays and the rest of society just followed their lead and this part of history will be rewritten the same way that the similar parts have been.

As much as churches try to claim that they dictate morality, they really just let the opinions of their members decide what it is that eternal and unchanging moral positions happen to be on that day. As the opinion of the membership changes, the opinion of God changes along with it. It's not always going to be as quick and blatantly funny as the Mormon example, of course, but it's always going to happen.

 

[doubtingt]

They can't retract what they said. They can't retract what they did.

They don't need to retract what they said and did because people have short memories and are ignorant of most of what happened prior to their last tweet.

Not to mention they get help in ignoring history and the current bigotry and intolerance of religion from the media. For example, the media caresses and praises everything the new pope does and says despite his continued bigotry and continued harm of sex abuse victims.

What will hurt religion in the US is if it continues its same rhetoric of the past. IF they change their rhetoric, people will ignore the rhetoric and actions of the past.
After all, only people seeking to delude themselves about reality are going to adopt or retain religion anyway. The immoral intolerance of their religion is just one of many things they will delude themselves about.

 

[Kharakov]

As the opinion of the membership changes, the opinion of God changes along with it. It's not always going to be as quick and blatantly funny as the Mormon example, of course, but it's always going to happen.

Are you saying that religions, people, and other institutions have made mistakes and were slow to realize the mistakes they were making even though people told them?

I have never seen something like that occur in reality. Everyone instantly realizes that they are being irrational, because after all, irrational thoughts are automatically dismissed without any effort or analysis, especially when they are entangled with someone's core beliefs.

 

[Shadowy Man]

As much as churches try to claim that they dictate morality, they really just let the opinions of their members decide what it is that eternal and unchanging moral positions happen to be on that day. As the opinion of the membership changes, the opinion of God changes along with it.

Just imagine if Christians were still trying to follow all the rules in Leviticus.

 

[Underseer]

I think that the only real effect will be that Christianity will change with popular opinion and in a couple of generations, 99% of the population will forget that it ever opposed homosexuality in the first place. Remember the massive war that Christianity had against artificial insemination? Neither does anyone else even though a large number of the preachers railing against the evils of homosexuality just took some of their daddy's old sermons and changed a few words around.

Churches used to be against equal rights for women, racial integration and all that other crap. There are a few churches right now who are welcoming and accepting of homosexuals and in a couple of decades anyone arguing about the historical homophobia of religious institutions will have those pointed out to them to demonstrate how people of faith were on the forefront of the societal move to accept gays and the rest of society just followed their lead and this part of history will be rewritten the same way that the similar parts have been.

As much as churches try to claim that they dictate morality, they really just let the opinions of their members decide what it is that eternal and unchanging moral positions happen to be on that day. As the opinion of the membership changes, the opinion of God changes along with it. It's not always going to be as quick and blatantly funny as the Mormon example, of course, but it's always going to happen.

Except that their own actions make it harder to sweep this one under the rug.

People remember all the anti-gay laws they've been proposing and sometimes passing in the last couple of decades.

After decades of brainwashing their followers, their followers are still out there right now saying and doing horrible things. Just recently, the Duck Dynasty idiot was all over the news, and he won't be the last public figure to get in the news for using Christianity as justification for saying horrible things about the GLBT community.

They worked very hard to whip up their followers into a frenzy of hate on this topic. That's what's going to make it hard for them to change gears.

After all, they never entirely shifted gears on the civil rights issue. They just learned to cloud their racist claims behind careful language about "political correctness," but they're still out there making the same bad arguments about racial minorities.

They're still making the same bad arguments about the Vietnam War.

If they still haven't succeeded in switching positions on civil rights and the Vietnam War in all these decades, how long is it going to take them to switch positions on GLBT issues?

 

[dx713]

As much as churches try to claim that they dictate morality, they really just let the opinions of their members decide what it is that eternal and unchanging moral positions happen to be on that day. As the opinion of the membership changes, the opinion of God changes along with it.

Just imagine if Christians were still trying to follow all the rules in Leviticus.

Nah, Jesus went there and made all those rules outdated and optional... Except, of course, the ones that help control people like those about hierarchy or those about sexuality, or those that people like because they give them outsiders to fight...