I'm Judging You (18 page)

So again, what is so holy about “traditional” matrimony? Not a damb thing. Straight marriage has cracks that are so large people fall through them and don't know how to get out, so we might as well give gay marriage a chance. They can't fuck it up as much as we already have.

But let me guess: now everyone will be confused about who and what they want. Now that there are so many options, what will people do? Will they marry animals next? Yes, because preferring a certain type of human genitals means you are totally ready to jump to bestiality. Everything is stupid and nothing makes sense. I am embarrassed for the levels of idiocy that people stoop to.
But what about the children?
They will be fine, too. They will grow up and decide for themselves if they are attracted to people with penises or vaginas. They will hopefully learn that what is important is that they make their own healthy choices and that they're happy. Stop hiding behind children, because they come out pure, and we teach them hate.

And straight men, please know that all gay men don't want you. I promise. You assume that being gay means you ain't got no standards. I am pretty sure that they have requirements for interest in a person beyond the requirement that they have a penis. Many of them wouldn't even freak you with someone
else's
penis, so you can relax, bros. Some of you really assume that you're better catches than you are. There is no Council of Gay Men in existence that plots how to prey on straight men and turn them out.
Or is there?

If you're not a fan of homosexuality, then don't be a homosexual. If you don't support gay marriage, then don't get gay-married. Stick to straight marriage. If you think being gay is wack, then don't be gay. That's about it. Everything else, you can shut the hell up about. What you should also do while shutting up is not be a prejudiced jackass to people who do not identify as the same sexual orientation as you. And stop saying something is “gay” as a way to denigrate it and cut it down to size. That is dumb, everyone!

People are being ostracized from their families, friends, and communities for being gay. Lesbian, gay, and queer youth have higher rates of suicide than their straight peers because they are living in a world that tells them they are defective in some way. Trans men and women are being killed without consequence because of ignorance that is so atrocious that people fear their very existence. Anti-LGBTQ beliefs are not just a nuisance; they are deadly. Until we deal with them, talk about them, and commit ourselves to no longer excusing them, we will continue to endorse the deaths of people who dare to feel love that cannot be placed in the boy-girl, man-woman, or gender binary box.

People in the LGBTQ community are not the only ones who lose because of homophobia. We all suffer for it, because society's greatest skill is othering people and oppressing them, and one type of bigotry only perpetuates the presence of other kinds. Accepting homophobia in society says that it is okay for hate to fly freely. It also tells a large proportion of the population that they are not good enough to exist without disapproval, disdain, and even violence. It hollers to the abyss that who you love can make
you
unworthy of love, and that's heartbreaking. We gotta get our shit together, man.

 

13. #FixItJesus #BindItBuddha #AmendItAllah

I am a lifelong Christian, and ever since I can remember, I've rocked a gold cross around my neck. It's sort of a faith-based security blanket for me. I was raised in a family that was held up by a pious grandmother who woke every morning at 3:00 a.m. to pray. She was a priestess in her church, and she did
not
play with her God. If you ever slept with Grandma in her bed, you'd be so mad when she woke you with her passionate whispers in the middle of the night, but you had to deal, because nothing was going to come between her and her supplication.
Amen, saints?
Yes.

To this day, I am a firm believer that her prayers cover me. I feel like God listened to her for real. Maybe it's because we went to church services that were so lengthy, God was probably like, “Look, I get it. I love you, too. Go home already.” We'd be there so long we had to pack a picnic basket full of snacks so our stomachs wouldn't start speaking in tongues in the middle of the service. I really got some good naps in those services, too. REM sleep in a pew is pretty comforting as long as you have a shoulder to drool on. Good times.

When Grandma died, the sisters of her church insisted that they dress her for the funeral themselves, not some mortician. They figured all those hours spent in worship deserved some VIP treatment. I miss her dearly.

I believe in God, Jesus Christ, and angels, and I'm just getting over my fear of the dark because I've always been afraid I'd see a ghost one day. Don't judge me. Okay fine, judge away.

Anyway, I read my Bible every day (on my phone app, because: technology). I can quote my favorite Psalms (especially 91: “he who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty”). I feel like I am a product of God's grace. My point is, I love Jesus, and Jesus loves me, too, as this little light of mine shines. I am a person of faith, and it is an important part of my life. However, being a person of faith has not stopped me from being critical of religion. I am in it and I am of it, but I side-eye it from time to time. Why? Because religion has been one of the most powerful and often detrimental institutions in our world, and its abuse has been responsible for much of the hurt we experience. This is why I must judge us, for using religion as a tool of mass control, discrimination, oppression, and hate-mongering for so long.

You know one of the most ridiculous things about super-religious people? Some of us have the nerve to think that our religion is the one that's “right,” or better than everyone else's. Whether we're Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, our faiths follow most of the same tenets: Do good. Love your neighbor. Pray to a higher power. Don't be Satan's minion. In one way or another, we all also believe in some magical, floating being (posse optional) and some rules that attempt to teach us how to be better people, so that we can get into an ideal place where the sun shines all the time and your shoes will never hurt your feet; I call that place heaven/nirvana/Idris Elba's bedroom … Pick whatever works for you.

So the fact that we think OUR magical floating being with special powers and great hair is more valid than the next person's is absurd. People be all: “OMG! Prophet Muhammad was NOT real. Jesus Christ was, though.”

Okay, how do you figure? How can you prove one and disprove another, when they're basically different forms of the same symbol? Our hypocrisy is so real outchea! The only deity I will make fun of is whoever Scientologists worship, because they broke the mold with that alien they pray to. I'm the worst. I am part of the problem. Always.

We will even invoke history to try to disprove that someone else's magical being ever existed. Unfortunately, historical accuracy only matters when you're not looking in the mirror, because (white) Christians swear up and down that Jesus was a white man with blond hair and blue eyes. Didn't the Bible say he had hair of wool? Maybe he was rocking a Jew-fro, since he was actually Jewish. How did y'all come up with this Jesus who has hair that's been flat-ironed so straight, I'm left wondering what anti-frizz spray he used? Was that how he used the myrrh oil the wise men brought him on his birthday?

Truthful representation only seems to count when it benefits the people who want to use Jesus as their mascot. (I prefer my Jesus with an afro, by the way.) The fact that most of the imagery of Jesus is of him being fair-skinned and blue-eyed with straight hair is kinda racist. The widespread use of White Jesus has helped white people uphold racist doctrines as they insist that the holiest man ever to walk this planet was one of their ancestors. It makes it easier to justify oppressing people who look different when you can say Christ was just like you
—
history, logic, and accuracy be dambed. These, apparently, are the times when people take the Bible with a grain of salt. Sure, the Good Book actually gives a physical description of the Son of Man, but why pay attention to that when folks can use him as an enabler of their oppressive shenanigans?

Maybe that's why Islamophobia has been a thing amongst powerful Christians over time. Could it be because the Prophet Muhammad is accepted to be a brown man? I'm just saying, because there is a far-too-pervasive idea that Islam looks like terrorists in turbans. Sure, there are a handful of people, out of a
billion
who practice Islam, who might wage war and jihad in the name of Allah, but what about the millions of people who have committed crimes and identify as Christians? We don't accept them as representing God and Jesus Christ when they do it. Come on, Christians!

We have used our beliefs and the name of our specific magical floating being to behave like dust buckets, therefore defeating the purpose of following a religion to begin with. If the goal of believing in a higher power is to show us that we are all connected, we are all here for a reason, and we are all part of something greater than us, then why do we use our holy books to justify hate? We have created systems of persecution based on passages in the Bible and Qur'an. We have started wars in the name of Jesus and Muhammad, as if they sent us on a mission to ruin everything nice. We've sat in the ivory towers of our religions and used these doctrines to kill millions of people over centuries, all around the world, and that is an everlasting shame.

We proudly wear our religious identities on our sleeves and timelines, shouting them from rooftops and Facebook posts as loudly as we can, condemning those who don't believe as we do. Being a person of faith should be less about talking, and more about action, specifically: living a life based on love. We are too busy saying what Christianity is to actually live the principles that instruct us to serve humankind and treat each other with compassion. I cannot speak deeply on Islam, Judaism, or all the other religions that I am not a part of and have not studied, so I'll lob most of my critique here at Christianity. I throw most of my side-eyes here at my fellow “Christ followers” because I've seen how we operate up close and personal, and sometimes, it's not pretty.

There are more than seven billion people on this earth, and it would be silly if we all believed in the same things, the same doctrines, or the same God. We can't even get everyone to agree that the sky is blue. It is okay for us to diverge in our faiths (or lack thereof), but respecting our differences seems to be too much for some people. Christians have sent missionaries to indigenous societies to convert them because, again, their Jesus and their God are the only ones they think are valid. Surely, people who have had their own deities for centuries must be grateful to be told how wrong they've been doing it. And while they're there, those who came to “save” them might have destroyed cities and killed innocent people, and then forced the rest to bow to their will. Things fall apart (shout-out to Chinua Achebe!) because Christians can't just worry about themselves and instead want everyone to join their club. Joseph's stepson gotta take the wheel, be a fence, and hold my stubborn mule. He can be MY (and your) Christ and savior, but why do we need to force Him down everyone else's throats? It is appalling how people can eradicate entire cultures because: different.

Oppression and religion are not supposed to go hand in hand, but here we are leaning on holy books to denigrate groups of people and do all types of hateful things, like decimate their cultures. How does that line up with any of Christ's doctrines? Jesus might have told you to evangelize His word, but He surely ain't ask you to kill innocent people in His name. He didn't tell you to go around the world using His name to subjugate people of color and uphold white supremacy. Jesus was probably a man of color Himself! Come on, Saints and Aints.

Christianity has been used to persecute anyone who is not a straight white man, so I guess it makes sense that the Jesus used to represent it would be Aryan-nation proper. Not only is Christianity often a tool of abuse of Black and brown people, but it also helps perpetuate the denigration of gay people and women. The hypocrisy of Bible-thumping is in its selective attention to certain things while ignoring other parts just for the sake of supporting your argument. The Old Testament, especially, has been used to defend and enable homophobia, as if that same section isn't full of rules that most of us do not pay attention to (
see
: chapter 12).

The book of Genesis says that we were all created in God's image, so the idea that God could be a woman is comforting. There's something incredibly powerful in imagining and settling in the possibility that God is a SHE. Yet people are so quick to reject the idea that God could be a woman, it's mind-boggling. We are made in God's image, right? So what makes you think the only image of US—all humanity—is as a man? Especially since women are the vessels that bring forth more life. If we are a reflection of God, then every time we look at each other, we would see Him/Her/Them, no? Yes.

There's power in believing that there's God in each of us, because if we are made in His/Her/Their image, then aren't we all like good Horcruxes for God, because a piece of Them is in us? I mean, I think so. Man as the default representation of God is a patriarchal idea and has been used to shape how society treats women.

Yep, religion's role in sexism cannot be overlooked. Misogyny in religion is deeper than the flood Noah had to row through on his ark. Christianity's story of creation says women came second, so treating us like second-class citizens is engrained into the values of billions of people around the world. We've had a bad rap sheet since the beginning of time: the first sin was committed by woman (Eve), and she convinced man (Adam) to disobey God, so the things that women uniquely suffer from are said to be direct punishment for that. We were condemned to pain in childbirth, Aunt Flo, and to be ruled by men. It's not our fault that Adam didn't know how to make decisions for himself. In fact, if we were able to trick Adam into eating the forbidden fruit, why should he be trusted to lead us? NAWL. He couldn't lead a Skype meeting.