Gay Atheists Need to have a Gay Atheist Agenda
We need to go after the Anti-Gay Christians and have a global approach and not an individual approach.
Recently I did a protest with the assistance of a local atheist group. Before the protest I met up with them and discuss things like what is organized atheism going to be in 2030? Or if Christianity stopped existing or became insignificant, what would you do? What I learned was that these were questions that hadn’t been thought of and that they were focused on the fights of the past. Not entirely, most nearly entirely.
Mostly they are ex-Christians and they provide moral support for each other, being that they are in the Dallas – Fort Worth area, also known as the Buckle of the Bible Belt, this is a worthy activity.
I have also joined some Facebook atheist groups including a Gay Facebook atheist group and observed what Gay atheist do. Largely it is the same as what the straight atheists do. There is a little difference in the agenda in that the homophobia of Christians is somewhat more emphasized. However, I have observed straight atheists also point out the homophobia of Christians.
Mostly the many absurdities of Christian religious belief are endlessly pointed out. I think this activity has some value. Many of these atheists have to deal with religious family members and it appears that there is an ongoing rhetorical struggle going on. So, something shared about the logical incoherence of Christian doctrine has some value.
I suggest to Gay atheists that hanging up the phone after explaining to relatives that you will do so in the future when they insist on annoying you would be a great benefit. You need to get tough with family members that continue to annoy, they aren’t going to change, and because, as I hope to show in this essay, there are better uses of your time.
Most of the discussion about atheism is internal to communities of atheists. The discussions of the absurdities of Christianity are between atheists who have already realized these absurdities, excepting when it is with family members where, as mentioned, they aren’t going to change and you are wasting your time.
SUGGESTIONS FOR GAY ATHEISTS.
Gay atheists need to move from an individual agenda to a collective agenda and have a specifically Gay atheist agenda that is more than arguing about the folly of Christian theology.
Set a Goal
Gay atheists need to start thinking about Christianity as a Gay community problem and what they can do about it, what strategy should they have, and have it written down. They should look at the presence of Christianity in society as a problem and its presence in the Gay community as a problem. It should be more than a personal issue or a general philosophical discussion about Christianity and religion. The goal should be to knock them down. Reduce their ability to persecute us.
Gay atheists need to not worry about being called divisive by the Democrats, or neoliberals, or other moralizing sentimentalists. We have a right to defend ourselves, and their agenda isn’t our agenda or really for the good of the Gay community. Since the modern Gay liberation movement has started in 1969 to now, 2022, it has been 53 years and Christians largely haven’t wised up, and if anything, intensified their hostility in many places in the world. When some Gay person starts pouring out the syrup of sentimentality and blathering cliches, we should ask how many years does that person expect the Gay community to wait? (My answer is zero years.)
Operating Policy
Have a written plan with numbered action items for the Gay atheist community to go after Christians. There should be a general operating policy. Yet, it is 2022, and despite the fact that Gay atheists endlessly complain about Christians and their homophobia there isn’t a plan to go after them. I will publish some items as a starter to get others thinking about what should be the plan and policy of Gay atheists.
It should be an ongoing discussion among Gay atheists about what the plan might be, what the operating policy might be.
Publicize Christian malfeasance: Whether it is causing outbreaks of Covid, anti-vaxxer arguments, sexual scandals, financial scandals, or other malfeasance Gay atheists should be sharing news and information broadly in all types of social media.
The violently anti-Gay Korean Christians’ reputation has gotten a real beating since they were the cause of several Covid-19 outbreaks. Here is a link to an article about it.
The title of this article is, “The Christian Apocalypse in Pandemic-Stricken South Korean.”
https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/articles/christian-apocalypse-pandemic-stricken-south-korea
The Gays in Korea don’t seem to have been involved in making the Korean public aware of this. I don’t know though. Certainly when Christians are involved with malfeasance we should make sure it is widely known as possible.
When Christians ask for assistance, bring up their policy of persecution every time. For example, Christians ask for help whenever some government persecutes them some place. These same churches might be persecuting Gays here in the United States or hope to be persecuting Gays. We should point out this contradiction. Some of these groups also advocate that the United States shouldn’t support Gay rights overseas. I have a link to a post about this at the end of this post.
Know who is your opponent and who isn’t. Buddhism actually doesn’t believe in Gods and doesn’t have much of a record of homophobia. American atheists tend to look at all religions based on their experience with Christianity. Taoism also doesn’t have much of a record of homophobia and there is even a temple for a Gay Taoist God in Taiwan. Also, there are still operating temples to local Gods in many places in the world.
Understand that Christians are the enemies of these religions also. These other religions without a built-in anti-Gay bias are potential allies. They feel threaten by Christianity also.
Accept that some people will always be religious. Some people don’t think in terms of logic and rationality and there is little possibility that they ever will give up religion. They might not be Christian in the future, but they will be something.
The percentage of Americans who are Christian is dropping rapidly in all age groups. Looking at polls as a historian I find it astonishing. That doesn’t mean they are becoming atheists. There are more atheists now, but the percentage has just increased from about 5% to 15% if I remember correctly. What is happening is that people are just becoming spiritual, not atheists.
For atheists, do what you can to gain adherents, but don’t invest all your effort in that. Beyond a certain point you are wasting your time. It might be that atheism has done as well as it has in America because American Christianity has been so obnoxious.
What Gay atheists can do instead is to encourage those social forces that lead Gays to either atheism or religions that aren’t anti-Gay and discourage Gays being involved with anti-Gay religions.
The problem of Gay Christians.
The Gay Christians have built into their agenda a begging for acceptance from straight people in a religion with a long history of persecuting Gays. Inherently they will have to practice an assimilationist politics where they claim that they are just like the other straight Christians and advocate Gay people should act like straight people and conform to Christian ethics and sexual morality.
It also involves twisted contorted leaps of logic to make Christianity not to have homophobia built into it. These arguments don’t fool anyone except those who don’t want to be persecuting Christians. They are accepted by certain Protestant denominations in the United States, some of which are dying out. Generally, globally, Christians don’t accept these logical contortions and are virulently anti-Gay.
Gay Christians along with other liberal sentimentalists always bring up a “true Christianity” when the vicious prejudice of Christian groups is pointed out. This “true Christianity” doesn’t exist in the historical record.
What Gay Christians do is protect Christianity at the expense of the Gay community.
Gay Catholics are always trying to point out that some statement by the Pope or other Catholic represents some type of progress, but caution us that the Catholic Church moves slowly, so to make it seem like some infinitesimal shift is actually significant. I suggest the Catholic Church should start moving fast so they don’t get kicked in the butt.
Gay Christians are obstacles to a strong Gay community policy to fight anti-Gay Christians. They may want to turn the other cheek and other Christological shenanigans, but the Gay community needs to fight anti-Gay forces.
What is really fundamentally bad about Gay Christians is this.
Gays are part of the universe and its creations.
We exist and that comes first. It is up to Christians to justify themselves to Gays, NOT Gays to justify their existence to Christians.
It is up to Christians to figure out how Christianity can exist in a universe where Gays exist, not for Gays to figure out how they can fit into Christianity.
Of course, this is the opposite of the beliefs of Gay Christians. For Gay Christians it is a struggle for them to fit being Gay into Christianity. Fundamentally Gay Christianity undermines the Gay community.
Gay atheists need to organize to point out the role of Gay Christians in undermining the Gay community.
What Else
I am sure that a broader Gay atheist agenda exists beyond these items. I think if we put our thoughts together, we can come up with many things to do.
Conclusion
Let’s start taking concrete specific actions to go after the anti-Gay Christians.
Let’s not spend that much time to convince people to be atheists. Either they will come to that conclusion on their own or they won’t. It doesn’t appear to be something of which you can convince people. It keeps us from doing what we need to do.