#I’m a cured Catholic I have no love for the church or most organized religion but this was really very poorly done

[helltothenaw]

Midnight Mass was certainly a rich white man masturbating about his White Dude Atheism. Ffs.

[mandysimo13]

Sorry I’m late to the game! For the Hozier ask: Take Me To Church, To Be Alone, and Talk please! (Also sorry if you’ve been asked any of these already)

Hey @samioli, I haven’t done any of these so thanks for the ask! 

Take Me To Church- Are you religious?

Not in the slightest. I went to catholic school for 12 years and that was enough to cure me of organized religion. Now, with that being said, I’ve studied a lot of the abrahamic religions (hard to avoid in catholic school) as well as other systems of belief and have sort of cherrypicked the stuff that seems to align with how I think we should treat each other. And one of my besties is jewish and I like to go over to her family’s house for passover and Hanukkah cause omg jewish food is amaaaazing 

To Be Alone- Do you prefer other people’s company or your own?

I like to be around other people. I’m an extrovert and find other people’s presence comforting. Even if we’re just sitting around near each other and not talking but sharing space. 

Talk- What’s your best friend like?

I’m fortunate enough to have 3 people I can call best friends. 

One is a madwoman who is probably my soul sister. She is my fandom friend, my chaotic alignment, a person whom I can truly, 100% be ridiculous with and know I’m not gonna be judged in anyway. She’s got this bog witch vibe that’s been hilarious to watch come into being. If there’s a reason I end up in jail for doing something absurd, rest assured, she started it. 

One is a lovely, sweet woman who has been there through some of the roughest patches of my life. She’s supportive, loving, generous, and always a shoulder to cry on. We got to live with each other for a brief time and it was nice to come home to someone like her. She’s had a kid now and I’m so excited to be her kid’s Cool Aunt. 

One has been around for AGES. I’ve known her longer than most other people in my life and it’s just real easy to be around her. She has a grounding energy with a hint of mischief and has an excellent sense of humor. I can come over to her house and it feels like mine, too, with the way I’m welcomed. And she’s got 4 kitties that I can cuddle and it’s wonderful. 

Thanks for these, love! 

[jswdmb1]

Jesus Just Left Chicago

“You might not see him in person

But he'll see you just the same...

You don't have to worry 

cause takin' care of business is his name”

- ZZ Top

Like most people, I avoid the topic of religion.  Not because I am uncomfortable discussing it, but because most everyone else is.  I also don’t do it because getting into a conversation about religion has virtually no payoff.  Most folks are set in their beliefs, and that’s fine by me so why waste the time and aggravation going through my beliefs when the other person doesn’t care.  The only problem with this approach is that not everyone feels the same.  Some like to share their beliefs and I have been provoked into discussions when I don’t agree.  What my stance is on the topic, I’ll share in a minute, but I want to first share why I am bringing it up in the first place.  It has to do with another taboo topic, death, which I have been grappling with a bit lately and the events of the weekend caused even deeper reflection on the subject.  

Even though it has been a couple of years, I think my subconscious is still processing the deaths of my dad and mother-in-law.  Before I go any further, if my essay to this point has made you uncomfortable, my ramblings on death aren’t going to make it any better, so you may want to stop here.  Anyway, while I have accepted the loss of them both in many ways, the part I have not been able to get over is their actual act of dying.  I think that aspect hit me particularly hard because I was present for the removal of their bodies after they died.  I wasn’t actually with either when they expired, which I think made it worse.  I think at least in that instance you can witness their passing and gain closure to the extent it can be achieved.  Simply seeing a dead body does not provide such closure.  If you have never been in this position (and I hope you never are), it’s hard to explain what it feels like, but it’s not like an open casket wake because you just see the person in their natural state and it’s harder to take that way.  Worse, is that the image sears into your brain and becomes your everlasting memory of that person.This is pretty deep stuff, and I chose to often make the thoughts go away with a stiff drink (or two, or three) and defer the wrangling with my emotions.  Once I went sober, I began to work on the issue, but it is too big to handle and I would still push it away.  Problem is that it keeps creeping back and the last couple weeks have been a particularly bad stretch.  

Within one month the birthdays of both will have passed along with my parents’ 50th anniversary sandwiched in between.  It got me back to thinking about them both more and more, but unfortunately it kept coming back to those last images I had of each.  Finally, last week, I really started letting my mind go where it needed to go.  Without going into details, I spent a lot time reflecting on their deaths and the aftermath I witnessed and did it by reading how others I am familiar with have died. There is a particularly macabre and wickedly fascinating website called findadeath.com that goes into the details of the deaths of celebrities.   While I agree that this is a weird and creepy way to spend some time, seeing that famous people end the same way as the rest of us made me somehow feel a little better about what I saw with those close to me. As a matter fact, compared to the horrible deaths of many celebrities (side note: if I ever get famous I won’t go near a bathtub ever again), we were fortunate that our loved ones died peacefully.  This really hit home with the tragedies in El Paso and Dayton this weekend. I can only imagine how difficult those scenes had to be for those that were there on the scene and in the aftermath.

How this all connects, I promise I will do soon, but I should probably mention at this point that I do not believe in organized religion of any kind.  I was raised Catholic, but nothing about that religion is congruent with my actual views on life, so I spent most of my adult years drifting away until I just quit all together.  When people hear that, they automatically assume that I am an atheist.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I most certainly believe that a spirit guides this vast universe.  I  just don’t agree that we are necessarily that important in the grand scheme of things. The universe was here a long time before we came along and it will be here long after we are gone.  To assume that the human race is key to the whole thing seems foolish to me.  That doesn’t mean that I don’t believe the spirit intervenes once in a while.  At a minimum, I believe that certain individuals have been inspired to make a difference.  People like Buddha, Mohammad, and Gandhi in the east, or Abraham Lincoln and Dr. Martin Luther King in the west.  Obviously, Jesus fits the bill better than anyone.  

Clearly, Jesus was a man of compassion and did his best to show others the way, but I think it’s fair to say his message wasn’t too popular at the time.  Often, I think (as many do) about how he would react to the issues of modern day man.  Specifically, I wonder how he would feel about the subject of guns and how they are used by us to kill one another. I think it would be an interesting sermon, don’t you think?  If he were here, right now, and saw what happened this weekend, is there any way he wouldn’t immediately condemn the main vehicle for this death and destruction which are guns?  And as bad as those two events are, it is nothing compared to the senseless gun violence that happens in cities like Chicago every day.  I just cannot imagine any other reaction by him than utter disgust that we would not just allow such weapons to exist, but encourage their production and use.  

And what would he think of those who lead us that neither condemn the use of such weapons to inflict mass suffering or even seem terribly bothered by it?  And don’t you think he would have a bit of a problem with the organized religions that fully endorse these same candidates turning a blind eye to their support of guns (along with a host of other mean-spirited planks on their platform).  My guess is that he would go back to the temple and throw those money-changing tables over again because the whole thing is sick.  It certainly made me sick to hear the news of this weekend’s events when I have been doing everything I can to understand death in the first place.  Now we have people willingly seeking death out in the most violent way possible and basically getting a free pass to do it by supporters of guns.  It’s disturbing on every level.

I promised that I would connect all of this, and I think I may have failed. These are massively deep subjects and tying them all together is an impossible task.  Worse, I am not entirely sure that finally confronting my experiences and feelings about death has done any good.  Maybe it is something we simply are not supposed to understand. For now, I’ll try to put it back on the shelf and take it down another time when maybe I am readier for it. What I can’t ignore is the senselessness of guns in this country and the callous support of them by the Republican party (let’s just call them out here, don’t know why I am avoiding it) and the religious organizations that endorse their candidates (I’m looking at you Catholic Church).  I guess for now we will have to rely on grass-roots support of parties/candidates that agree that guns are a problem and want to something about it.  I will also continue to show my disgust with organized religion, specifically the Catholic Church, by actively renouncing any association I have with them.  It may not make me popular with my family and friends that are still strongly Catholic, but I don’t feel as if I have any other choice.

I’m guessing nothing in this post will make me very popular. Certainly, it is not the feel-good stuff you typically see in social media, but I never promised any of that in this forum.  At a certain point, after seeing such horrors like continued mass shootings, it needs to be acknowledged and I can’t stay quiet anymore.  Politics and religion may be the third rails of our society, but they shouldn’t be off-limits when certain factions are directly responsible for the not just the allowance of death machines but the active promotion that enables their proliferation.  You may not agree with everything I write, but hope we can at least agree that needless deaths should be avoided at all costs.  If so, please at least consider the topic of gun violence and where the candidates and organizations you support stand on the topic.  If you think they are part of the disease and not the cure, then speak up, especially if you are a Republican. Ask why they feel a need to allow these weapons to legally exist and how that position is in any way supporting the public good they have been entrusted with. Also ask your church leaders why they would openly support politicians that facilitate the breaking of the 5th commandment in the worse way possible. Until that pressure is applied, nothing is going to change, and I don’t think we can live with that.  And if you are not sure if you should get involved, ask yourself a popular question that has become a cliche: What would Jesus do?

Peace, Jim

[gnostic-heretic]

the amount of people that reblog uncritically pro-religion posts from explicit homophobes is... kind of scaring me, to be honest. same goes with posts encouraging chastity/abstinence misunderstood as pro-asexuality posts that are actually pro-purity culture and against the sexual freedom of women in particular.

i’m all for live and let live when it comes to religion. i know many religious people and while they have questioned me on my choices, i’ve stopped questioning them back at all because it’s a sensitive topic that usually ties to people’s understanding of their life and themselves, and unless you are using it to hate on me, or trying to convert me, i don’t mind (and i do love researching on religion and spirituality myself so i am not biased in the way of considering religion to be “nonsense” or anything). 

but i’ll have you consider why the people around you might be scared/uncomfortable when it comes to religion or of chastity culture especially in an environment like tumblr which is full of younger lgbt people. as long as your practice and ideas go personally, individually, that is fine, but you can’t come at me and say that religion has absolutely nothing to do with homophobia. especially when it comes to christianity this claim makes me uncomfortable. there are christian denominations built upon the whole concept of not being homophobic and i am aware of it, but that’s not what i am talking about here! i’m talking about less niche, more mainstream sects. let’s talk catholicism for example, just because it’s the one i’m most familiar with, and because a lot of the op of those posts are catholic blogs.

the stance of the catholic church on lgbt people is clear: homosexuality is a sin, “ssa” an illness, something to be cured with either abstinence/chastity (notice this) or forcing yourself into a straight relationship and marriage. transition is self multilation and trans people are considered abominations.  now, you may say, not all catholics. but all catholics do or should refer back to the church for spiritual guidance. and what is the church encouraging? what ideology is the church enforcing? i am tired of the idea that religion and homophobia are not linked. i’ve seen my cousin, whose uncle is a catholic priest and mother an important church congregation head, struggle with her identity and having to live with the hatred and vitriol that her own mother and uncle are directing at her. she is almost 30 years old and can’t live her life openly because she is too scared of how the people in her life, mostly fervent catholics, will react. i’ve seen a man of the same congregation taking his life- and when everyone around him was talking about how senseless it was, he had such a good wife and child and a perfect life, right? it turned out that he “used to swing the other way”. i wish i was exaggerating and making this up- but when that lady at my cousin’s house said this, the atmosphere in the room was so heavy, and my blood froze in my veins. i knew exactly why this man had killed himself now. i’ve seen my State, my government, refusing to pass laws that would make life easier for lgbt people like me because the catholic lobby is so strong in italy that even progressive forces are afraid to go against it. gay people have civil unions since 2016 (we are one of the last states in europe to allow them) but no equal marriage, no adoption, no right on their child if it’s not biologically theirs, and there are institutionally funded campaigns that advocate actively for taking away the few rights we have. and trans people can legally change the gender on their birth certificate, but only after passing through a hell of medical gatekeeping, incompetent doctors, and taking the fact that yes, we transitioned, to court, but only after a major sex organ is removed- and the latest trend for the italian catholic politicians is to advocate against what they call “gender theory” and “the abomination that is sex change”.

does this not ring a bell for you? is this not a valid motivation to be uncomfortable with religion, especially for young lgbt people who likely have personal experience with this?  is people’s skepticism and resistance to this topic really just a lack of empathy to rain on our parade and make you, personally, sad? or is it something else entirely.