Theocracies use holy texts to discriminate against women, LGBTs, and foreigners. Our top three world religions’ texts are full of discrimination against these groups. In fact, it is openly used as justification for that discrimination.
Religion facilitates erroneous rationalization of the attempts to remove basic rights from others. It prevents people from living in peace as a community and within their own lives. It forces entire groups of people to work tirelessly to create and preserve rights that should be available to them already.
Many of our religions treat women as subhuman property rather than the part of the human species that gives life to every one of us – a position that deserves respect. Many of our world’s countries have so drastically restricted the rights of women that they are not allowed to attend school to earn an education, drive a car, be seen in public without a male family member, hold a career, or even speak their own thoughts. In each instance where this gender-based bigotry is enforced, it is always attached to a religiously based belief system.
Religion also treats the LGBT community with disdain, even to the point where some countries prescribe death as a punishment for not following that religion’s definition of what sex should look like. The problem with this is that homosexuality can be found in many species, not just amongst humanity. Anyone who has done their research knows this. Unfortunately, religion has not caught up to this reality. Although homosexuality has existed for millennia, religion still persists in fighting what comes natural to much of nature. Is it a god that gave us permission to interrogate and murder people based on sexual orientation, or is it the people who wrote our religious texts and simply did not understand or agree with that part of nature?
Sadly, our religious texts have been used to discriminate against a vast assortment of people, including, tribes, minorities and foreigners. People outside of a religion’s belief structure or cultural background have been tortured, enslaved and stripped of their human rights – all in the name of a god and the religion that god represents.
Religion gives followers justification for treating others who are not like them in inhumane ways. It enables our world to perpetuate the cycles of hatred towards others and justify our efforts in restricting the happiness of our fellow human beings.
After reading Michelle Goldberg's excellent book, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, I started thinking about the goals of the Christian nationalist movement.
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