This time I’m gonna speak my mind about religion. Since the dawn of time people have been more than obsessed with the belief of something more powerful than us. It is in every human right to believe what ever it is someone wants to believe. Across millennia religion has taken many forms and the gods morphed into several shapes, sizes and colors. But one thing remains constant. Religion, like the leaders of the same, oppresses human ideologies and the sense of self belonging.
I was raised catholic until the age of seven when some strange people knocked at my front door. they came in and talked to my mother who had been crying for the past days because of the fights she had with my father. These people promised hope and redemption for all the sins my mother believed to have committed. It was there and then that she became a Jehovah's witness and dragged me along with her to a downward spiral.
I remember genuinely being interested in the beliefs of this strange yet similar religion. Stories of a mighty God and angels were my bedtime fairy tales and I remember admiring these creatures. As I got more curious I researched about ancient cultures and found to my surprise there were many gods in the past. That people believed in a world where the universe was ruled by not one but many deities.
My believes started to change as I noticed certain things about this new religion I came to despise. For instance me and my best friend at a time were separated because we were coming to puberty and we weren't allowed to play as much as we used to. And when her mom and mine found out I had sillily asked her to be my girlfriend the play dates and permissions to go out became extinct.
The years passed and my character developed more. I consider myself a person with strong morals and beliefs and my sense of integrity and self esteem are diamond hard when someone tries to break me. I became a teen and found myself lost like many others. A normal process of the human psyche when we as people try to find ourselves and establish a sense of belonging to the community around us. For me this development was shattered when both of my parents in their own lost ways switched religions and became modern day Christians.
I still remember the fucking empty words of the pastor in charge. “We are not a religion. This is simply a way of living.” I had never hear Jesus’ name used in vain so many times as the brief three years I had spent forced to be in church. I remember being confused and eventually giving into whatever my parents and the pastor wanted me to do. I was slowly becoming an empty shell for God’s will.
Something in me changed one day. I grew tired of the constant fight for freedom of speech, and expression. The so called non religious ways in which i seemed to be trapped in finally proved too much for me to simply take in and decided to rebel against my church and my own family. Things like friends and music and movies and holidays that I once had were slowly dwindling and I had it.
I remember the face of both my mother and the pastor from church when they sat me down to talk to me about my absence from the previous services, my lack of interest in leading the youth group, my sudden change of attitude towards my fellow “friends” (the pastors daughter and a few others) and my stubborn ways of defying my mothers will when it came to going to church. When I finally spoke their jaw fell to the floor.
One, I had no interest in leading the youth group simply because I saw no point in wasting more time with people that were so egotistical and two faced stabbers who liked to talk shit behind my back. Two, why would I want to go to church when praying to god was not gonna get me an A in all my classes and graduate with honors and place myself in one of the top universities of the country... And number three, why would they want to force me to give up my will when it’s all I had to define who I was? I did no drugs, I never brought trouble with me. I was simply done with the bullshit.
My personal journey away from religious oppression has left me scared in ways I still cannot comprehend. But one thing I’m sure of I will never follow another mans version of god. All this background story brings me to the main topic for this blog. In recent years the gay community has been growing strong and more accepted but religious opposes are still a dangerous threat. Perhaps the most noticeable were the declarations given by pope Benedict. He referred to the gay community as undeveloped human beings with no sense of morality. Further he alleged that gay marriage was a threat to the very institution of marriage itself. I don’t know about you my readers but I personally find these accusations silly and quite empty. As if made by an uneducated person whose power has gone way over his head.
"This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself,"
"The family unit is fundamental for the educational process and for the development both of individuals and states; hence there is a need for policies which promote the family and aid social cohesion and dialogue,"
Weather you believe in God, Jesus, Gaia, or supreme beings such as aliens or an atheist. Never give up and never fall to the oppression of religious leaders. Because once you do the only thing you lose is yourself. The gay community does not need more followers, the world does not need more followers. We need free minds who want to make a change.
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