Bishop Gene Robinson: How Religion Is Killing Our Most Vulnerable Youth

Started by MasterMischief, October 19, 2010, 04:57:40 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MasterMischief


Jude

1)  Religion also preaches that sex outside of marriage is bad and wrong yet when people engage in such they're often elevated amongst their peers -- and rarely (if ever) met with disdain if they are male.  This tells me that people aren't bullying others on the basis of religious points of view, they're doing it because of societal attitudes and other inclinations.

2)  The real problem here is bullying and lack of social support for teens.  It doesn't matter why a teenager kills themself for it to be a tragedy.  Whether they do it because they were bullied for being gay, transgendered, ugly, overweight, or socially awkward, it's never OK.  How about we focus on the larger problem instead of a microcosm of it?

3)  I really wish the article would actually give some statistics about how widespread of an issue LGBT suicide is.  He talks about it being quite common, but I truly doubt that when it's normed for the population it's even that large.  Not giving out the relevant data while making baseless quantitative judgments gives a false perspective that serves as the basis of his narrative; I have to wonder if he has an agenda against organized religious attitudes towards sexual morality for that reason.

There wouldn't be a problem with that -- I do believe that most religions get sexual morality wrong -- but taking the problem of bullying and make it into another issue entirely weakens my sympathy for his case.  It's dishonest.

Noelle

I'm also skeptical of just how large the role of religion is in directly influencing kids to bully others. I'm curious to know where they get their attitudes towards gays -- obviously if it's from their parents and their parents get it from the more conservative parts of religion, then it can be more pointed, but I'm not so sure how many high schoolers are so deeply religious that their actions come straight from what they learned in the Bible so much as it is just general social influence/peer pressure. Nobody thinks about why they call negative things 'gay' -- hell, most don't even stop to consider the nuances of being gay, except that they might've heard it from an older brother/sister and do the automatic "omg gross" that most dipshitted (pre)teens do. Even I felt the same way once without understanding why except everyone around me was also saying "omg gay = gross". We're talking about a demographic of virtual lemmings here ;P

The article makes a few good points but ultimately I think the title is just a little too exaggerated for my tastes. The article itself does a fair job of stating that religion is not the main, or only cause of discrimination, just a contributing factor, and even clearly points out that there are churches who are adopting a progressive stance on the matter.

Though I may not be completely on-board with its general content, I do like the note that it ends on -- that those religious who are tolerant of gays need to step forth and make their stance more prominent so others know they won't let this go on from the sidelines anymore. It's direly important to appeal to the perceived "enemy" on the perceived "other side", because then you really do start to get tangible outcomes, such as more openly vocal support where it matters. It's not enough to preach to the choir. Persuasiveness, not blind zealotry is the way to go, and churches aren't immune to trend or pressure. If they begin to see the tide change around them, it may very well help bring them over to side with gays, which is precisely what we're going for.