LGBTQ+ Rights and Religion

NO. Cuba is a Marxist-Leninist socialist state. China is a strange mix of Maoism, capitalism, and corporatism. North Korea is a Juche country, which is an ideology created by the ruling class of North Korea that is totalitarin with only loose ties to its Marxist-Leninist past, but with all references to that past, and, indeed, socialism and communism removed.

Sort of, yes. (It's debatable how "communist" they actually are). {and ninja'd!) That doesn't change the fact that they're also atheist.

edited 14th Nov '13 12:57:12 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Since there's clearly no way of escaping this topic, how does one define an atheist country? By that same definition, would the US be a Christian country, despite having a considerable population of non-Christians? Because there are non-atheists in China, at least.

edited 14th Nov '13 1:02:26 PM by Morgikit

Also, Cuba has been improving on the queer liberation front. In 1979 they legalized it, which was almost 30 years before Lawrence v Texas, queers have been allowed to serve in the military since 1993, and the right to change your legal gender has been around since 2008. They still don't recognize gay marriages and don't have legal protection against discrimination, but they are doing better than many US states.

EDIT: Also, the current president's daughter is leading the charge, in this respect, by actively campaigning for queer rights.

edited 14th Nov '13 1:08:01 PM by deathpigeon

Ones that enforce state atheism, usually by actively suppressing religion.

That's a ridiculous standard to use; state atheism is a political doctrine, not a requirement or 'tenet' of atheism itself. It also disregards countries with a substantial proportion of nontheists (such as France, Sweden, Germany...) and the fact that many, if not most politically-inclined atheists support secularism.

edited 14th Nov '13 1:24:57 PM by Snipehamster

If we call countries where the majority of the population are atheists atheist countries, then we would be forced to conclude that America is a Christian country.

Or we could conclude that countries are countries, and that they contain diverse demographics, rendering labels such as 'christian' or 'atheist' or 'white' or 'female' as absurd.

You can't judge an entire belief system (or lack thereof) by the actions of politicians.

To shift back to the topic at hand, 'atheism' in and of itself, cannot be the direct cause of oppression. Unless you start with the idea that theism is all that stands between mankind and barbarism, there's no logical chain that links from 'No god' to 'Therefore we should beat down theists/gays/etc'.

edited 14th Nov '13 1:33:20 PM by Snipehamster

The atheism in those countries is more due to the people in charge not wanting any large groups who can go against them than ideological reasons though. The cause and effect is basically flipped round.

I'm not going to pretend there aren't homophobic atheists. But try looking at it this way. Christians who are homophobic will point to the Bible and say "because God says so". Muslims who are homophobic will point to the Quran and say "because Allah says so". Etc. Athiests who are homophobic...what sacred book do they cite? What deity are they trying to appease? Odds are they will look to the same secular excuses other groups use. "It's gross." "It's not natural." "They have AIDS." "They molest children." Nothing to do with a god or the lack of a god. You may as well say secularism is homophobic.

No, they are atheist because of Lenin's interpretation Marx's work that concluded that a worker's state would necessarily be atheist. They tend to be repressive and officially atheist (though, in Cuba's case, the repression tends to be overstated and, while they are certainly repressive, I'd consider them on par with the US), but the official atheism isn't caused by the repression and certainly contributes to the justification of the repression, just as Christianity tends to be used for here in the US.

And pointing to the holy book is just as much an excuse as what atheists come up with. They are not homophobic because they are religious. They are homophobic and they are religious, then they use their religion to justify their homophobia. It works the same with homophobic atheists. I'm not saying secularism or atheism are homophobic. I'm saying that secularism, atheism, and, indeed, religion can be used to justify heteronormativity and homophobia, rather than any of them being homophobic. And, indeed, they can all be used to fight against oppression against queers and for queer liberation.

"Oppressive and atheist," does not mean, "oppressive because atheist." You can be oppressive regardless of your race, gender, religion, culture, political beliefs, economic circumstances, or sexuality. Bigotry is in all of us.

Hatred and cruelty are what separate us from the animals, after all.

Fire, air, water, earth...legend has it that when these four elements are gathered, they will form the fifth element...boron.

Okay, the more I get into this debate, the more confused I am. What is the point of this?

Not really

1st link NSFW

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Religious texts state "the creator of the universe says this is how to behave", and can be interpreted (with little difficulty) to condemn minorities and their life choices. Please point out how atheism (there's*

no god) or secularism (religion and government shouldn't overlap) can justify the same.

edited 14th Nov '13 1:52:29 PM by Snipehamster

I'm trying to show that neither religion nor irreligion are intrinsically tied to either the oppression of queer folk or their liberation and, indeed, can both be used to justify both, so we shouldn't focus too much on religion when it comes to combating their oppression but find allies where we can and advocate queer liberationist strands of both religion and irreligion over oppressive forms of them. Also, the domain of this is more complicated than many make it out to be and the simplified view of things hampers progress toward queer liberation.

To quote myself form before:

Indeed, many people find no difficulty in interpreting their holy book to justify heteronormativity. People tend to find confirmation for their existing prejudices all around them and queer liberationists find no greater difficulty in interpreting their holy book to support queer liberation as well. Similarly, homophobic atheists will find no shortage of excuses for their oppressive behavior and beliefs within atheism, even though there isn't really much there on that subject in atheism at all.

That particular reasoning is unlikely to hold up, because anyone who says homosexuality is a reaction to oppressive religion will be directed to youtube videos of two stags fucking.

And that stops the people today who claim it is unnatural? Irrational justifications will remain irrational.

Was someone suggesting the opposite?

The same question.

edited 14th Nov '13 2:04:59 PM by Morgikit

Thank you. It's possible for atheists to be irrational too.

People were more rejecting

that claim than the one you were quoting.

edited 14th Nov '13 2:06:55 PM by deathpigeon

This is a blatant generalization. Christopher Hitchens, for one, has been criticized by his fellow atheists (including arch-angry atheist P. Z. Myers) for his Islamophobia. Replace "atheist" and "atheism" in your passage with "Hindu" and "Hinduism" and you'll see what's wrong with it. Because atheism isn't a religion. It is a property of beliefs about religion. This is why you can have atheist Buddhists. You can have belief systems that demonstrate atheism as their most salient trait, and the state/leader worship you saw in much of the U.S.S.R. certainly qualifies, but that doesn't make atheism a religion.

Elfive and Snipehamster said what I wanted to say about atheist states.

I would like to hear any hypothetical atheist justification for heteronormativity and homophobia that meets either criteria of a) being explicitly atheist and no just secular/theism-independent, or b) not begging the question (much homophobic propaganda is incredibly circular in its logic, a religious homophobe can insert "because God" at some point in the equation, but an atheist can't).

EDIT: Okay, it is entirely possible for atheists to be homophobic and irrational, and ending religion won't end homophobia. Fair enough. Those arguments do not justify conflating atheism with religion, making generalizations about atheists, or misrepresenting how actually atheist reasoning works.

edited 14th Nov '13 2:10:40 PM by RadicalTaoist

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

I wasn't intending it as a generalization. I was intending to use it to show that people are already using atheism as an excuse for oppression. Indeed, I am an atheist myself, and I certainly wasn't intending to say that I was an islamaphobe, though, if I am, I would appreciate being called out on it.

And the second part makes it on topic to a thread that is about discussing the intersection of religion and queer liberation.

Many religious people beg the question when using religion to justify queer oppression. Regardless, I gave an example of how it could work that fits those justifications:

Fails criterion b), arguably fails a) since it could be easily adapted to a non-Christian religion - or indeed, any religion could claim that homosexuality was a response to That Other Religion.

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

This is a nonsensical argument. But moreover, it's not even relevant. I asked for an example of an argument that could stem from atheism or secularism. Setting aside the 'homosexuality as reaction to religion' false premise, neither atheism nor secularism contain, even implicitly, the suggestion that any/everything that ever resulted from religion is bad or immoral.

edited 14th Nov '13 2:21:43 PM by Snipehamster