Your Religion is Killing Me

Last Sunday, under towering trees swaying in a bathwater breeze on a lazy morning, I got into a friendly debate over brunch.

One of my favorite couples came over for eggs and orange wine. We caught up on life and chatted about innocuous topics — what we were watching, what we were reading, and what we were working on — but then it happened. The topic of politics lurked on the edge of our conversations until it slithered into view. Before we knew it, I was in a heated debate over Easter Sunday and International Transgender Day of Visibility with my friend’s husband. He and I don’t shy away from sharing our opinions, so our spouses left us to joust, hoping we’d be done by the time they came back outside with refills.

“They’re afraid of us,” I joked.

For those of you not in the know, it started in 2009, so if you just heard about it this year, it’s because it was not, in fact, designed to piss you off.

But this isn’t about that.

It’s about what came after. You see, my friend is a Christian. I’m a former Christian turned agnostic. I say agnostic, because being an atheist inspired the loneliest feeling I’d ever felt, like a tumbleweed blowing unpredictably across the desert.

After growing up with something to believe in, and somewhere to go when I died, I just could not survive in the dark depths of nothingness. I needed hope and I needed to be okay with not having all the answers. So that’s where I left it — I did not know. I neither believed in God’s existence, nor any other higher power, nor any evidence to prove one didn’t exist. I simply believe I don’t know and may never know, and that religion is man-made.

Although I found no reason to believe in a higher power, I also found no reason to be 100% absolutely sure I was correct in feeling like a happenstance — like some utterly meaningless accidental thing in the vastness of the universe. If life is so rare, then surely everything on Earth is incredibly special regardless of our beliefs. People are generally too smart for their own good as a species, and we need to feel there is a greater purpose to life. If we can ponder our own existence, we can ponder our own death, and that is too scary to do alone.

My friend, and debate partner, became a Christian later in life — or at least a believer. He was baptized at 33. He’s a moderate Republican, the kind extremists call a RINO, I guess. When did being a moderate — as in moderating your beliefs towards a center — become a bad thing? That I also don’t know. He’s a big, loving guy who makes everyone feel welcome, so our debate woke me up to a real problem in our society. Christians feel attacked, not because they are being attacked, but because their faith is being used as a weapon.

My friend was truly feeling singled out and attacked for his Christian beliefs, not by a single person, but by everyone.

I asked if he thought that maybe the negative reactions to Christianity were based on the extremism that has grown around the Christian Nationalist movement? Having been a Christian myself, I felt like there were more visible people cosplaying a Christian than actual Christians.

He gave me an example of losing a longtime friend over politics that still bothered him. His friend was gay in the 80s — a time of great pain and momentum for LGBTQ communities. This person declared that anyone who voted Republican, could get out of his life. My friend reached out to question why he would cut off so many people from his life over politics, it wasn’t received well, and they never spoke again. Standing before me, he felt conflicted over this loss. He didn’t want to believe it was his fault. It was the fault of some conspiracy to get us to hate each other when no hate between each other existed.

Both can be true, but we humans don’t like that, I guess.

I told him honestly that I had been willing to cut people out of my life over certain hotly debated political issues. I also admitted I regretted it to some degree. I mourned that loss too.

I told him when Roe v. Wade fell, and Christians lit up my social media feeds with celebration, I wanted to tell every one of those people to fuck off forever. I did feel hate.

Then one of those Christians reached out to me privately. They hadn’t been celebrating. They wanted me to know, although they had a hard time with abortion and wished it were not needed, that celebrating like others in her community, felt tone-deaf. She cared about the unborn, but equally cared about women. She admitted to wrestling with the hypocrisy in her own heart — a very human thing to do. She acknowledged her being pro-choice was rooted in her privilege. She felt making abortion illegal didn’t solve anything, but it certainly did create more problems. Forcing birth solved nothing.

I immediately thought: now that is a Christian.

But those are not the Christians in our government. Those are not the people screaming from the rooftops about their faith and how this nation needs more of it.

Only one of the Christians in my circle shared sympathetic sentiments publicly or privately about abortion after Roe. The rest were silent or incredibly vulgar about it. Reposting memes telling women they should die during childbirth if they had to. It was their duty to die to bring life into this world.

I blocked that person online. I couldn’t see her posts anymore. She’s not the person her reposting would lead you to believe. She is in reality, a loving grandmother with many granddaughters. I wasn’t going to let myself hate her over the absentminded sharing of an agenda larger than us both.

Today, in my home state, a place my own grandparents were proud to call home, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a 160-year-old abortion ban. A near total ban on abortion from 1864, a ban that also criminalizes doctors. Arizona became a state in 1912.

All the justices behind this decision were Christians appointed by Republicans.

One had to recuse himself after reports surfaced that he called abortion “the greatest genocide known to man.”

Guess he forgot about WW2 or what happened in Rwanda. Guess he isn’t worried about any current conflicts.

I often wonder how my grandparents would feel about all of this if they were still alive, then I feel thankful I’ll never have to know.

Back to my friend, the Christian, the one who felt attacked for his religion. He didn’t answer my question — whether the negative reactions to Christianity were based on the extremism. He wasn’t extreme. He believed women should have the right to govern their own bodies. He’s an ally to the LGBTQ community. Those extreme examples I gave were not the norm. He didn’t believe they were, even as he debated me about the purpose of International Transgender Day of Visibility, that they chose the day to purposefully coincide with Easter. He felt like it was personal.

But it wasn’t and it’s not.

It is never personally about you. It’s personal to someone else.

The attack on abortion isn’t an attack on me, a woman of childbearing age. International Transgender Day of Visibility wasn’t about how a Christian holiday would coincide with it in 15 years.

It’s all about a narrative. Who controls the narrative? What can we do to change the narrative? How can we influence the narrative?

The goal to change a narrative can be positive or negatively motivated.

Christianity is influencing the healthcare decisions women, and their doctors, can make. It might not be your brand of Christianity doing it, but if you feel attacked for your beliefs, it might be because you’re lining up alongside the metaphorical firing squad. You get hit by crossfire not realizing your side shot first. It’s a negative influence.

International Transgender Day of Visibility is raising awareness of the discrimination faced by transgender people worldwide, and boy did they ever this year. It’s not taking anything away from Christians, not even Easter. There is nothing to fight back against, as your Christianity remains unchanged by this day of awareness. It’s a positive influence.

I cannot say the same for the Christian influence in politics. It’s taking everything from me as a woman. The unintended consequence of a near total abortion ban is that women will die. Women will be denied life saving healthcare when it has nothing to even do with abortion. Women I know, who had complications during pregnancy that resulted in the need for medical intervention, wouldn’t be guaranteed access to that same life saving care if it happened again. Christian nationalism dismantled their right to it.

My friend brought up the topic of trans women having rights to something over a biological woman — this was a murky topic. I admit, I bristled at the idea. I know it’s being used to influence me. It’s the idea that women are so low, that even a man who becomes a woman is above her. Like before we have the first female president, we should have the first trans president … and so on.

But who is pushing these ideas on us? It seems to be coming from a conservative effort to control the narrative. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. The point of bringing it up was to draw a parallel — first they came after Easter and then they came after you. But the only group taking away my rights, in reality, are Christian politicians.

My friend was arguing the left had become as extreme as the right, something I don’t feel is true to the same degree. I acknowledge the reality of both sides becoming so extreme they meet back up again — afraid of the same institutions, but no, I don’t believe the majority of the left were extremists. I then asked if that wasn’t always the reaction to extremism? That it inspired extremism in response? We agreed it was.

This led to a discussion about NPR and where we get our news. I was being criticized a bit by someone repeating an obvious conservative agenda — that you can’t trust the media. Another attack I will not give into. There is journalistic integrity. It’s not found in prime time entertainment, but it exists. Journalists are dying for it right now. Too many journalists are dying.

He felt NPR represented who democrats used to be, not the extremists they have become. I said that I’ve been listening to NPR since I was a Republican — meaning that it stayed relevant to me through my political evolution. I’ve been a Republican, an Independent, and a Democrat. My 20’s were for figuring out who I was, and NPR aligned with all those versions of me, so no, I will not give into the idea that it is not in good faith delivering balanced news. I was always searching for the middle myself.

I recently read that most people get their political news from friends who are more engaged than they are. It’s one of the reasons I stay engaged. They are not consuming news or politics first hand, they are letting their peers decide for them. Personally, I find that terrifying.

I don’t want to cut people out of my life because they are Christian or vote Republican. I shouldn’t feel like their vote or their religion is killing me, but here we are. It is killing women like me.

I want to ask my own father, a life long Republican who loves me, if he would vote for something (in support of a political movement) that could kill me. If it comes to a choice between your politics, or the lives of women, will you stand by me, dad? Or do I have to separate your actions from your intentions, so I can go on feeling loved?

This is why people cut you off. This is why you get cut off.

You made someone feel unloved and unworthy of fighting for.

If we are doing it to each other, no one will win. Its never a win if you end up isolated.

There are Republicans in my life I love, and I am not giving up on them. Please don’t give up on me. I know you love me too.

My friend, the Christian, apologized for not knowing International Transgender Day of Visibility started in 2009. It’s okay, I didn’t either, but I did google it when a bunch of angry people popped up in my news feed. He lamented the media again. It was their fault. He said neither side, CNN nor FOX News, talked about it starting 15 years ago. I said I didn’t know whether or not they had, I didn’t watch. He said they wanted us to fight. I said that I guess it worked.

I honestly enjoy debating with him. I’m not going to cut him off for saying the wrong thing. What we say to each other pretty much always brings us back around to center. It gives us a peek into the other side. If he gives up on engaging with me, I lose. If I give up on him, he loses. We become isolated in our echo chambers.

Even when we disagree, it’s a good challenge for us. That’s how I remember it being with everyone … before.

Now I get repeatedly pushed to the political cliff and am forced to choose, do I jump off into madness?

What if we all jumped?

Then we would all be mad, I guess.