I take issue with those who frame LGBTQIA2+ Rights as being against religion or anti-religious. As a Black transgender woman who is ordained clergy in the Christian Church Disciples of Christ, I find it problematic when faith and religion are positioned in an exclusive heteronormative cisgender manner. I ponder a distorted moral narrative that sanctions this theologically dubious argument affirmed by those who push anti-LGBTQ legislation. Are religion and faith only credible when a conservative Christian baker or website designer has the desire to discriminate based on their religious beliefs? I know plenty of same-sex couples who are just as religious and faithful as those Christians who use the Bible primarily as a tool to give credibility to their desire to hate, discriminate, and dehumanize.
This continues a long and tragic strain of "faith" and "religion" used to legitimize the evil and its productions of the genocide of the American Indian, the enslavement of the African Americans, Jim Crow, lynching, Japanese Internment, the school-to-prison pipeline, and housing discrimination, ie., red lining. just to name a few. These represent twisted biblical interpretations founded in the slaveholder religion. Slaveholder religion was designed to give legitimacy to the enslavement of Africans for economic gain. This is the "faith" and "religion many conservative Christians profess. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court necessarily expresses this "faith" and "religion: founded on the backs of the enslaved and genocide.
I cannot and will not separate the latest decisions of the conservative majority on the Supreme Court from this history they and their benefactors would soon have me and others forget. Their decisions bolster a "faith" and "religion" rooted in the slaveholder religion making life more precarious and less free for those on the margins such as the LGBTQIA2+ community. Their decisions give cover to those who desire to practice hatred, bigotry, and evil reminiscent of the Klan and Bull Connor. I ponder where these decisions come from. What is in their hearts? In this time of immorality, when care and concern, even hospitality is not welcomed and diversity and equity are shunned by many I ponder where the law begins and its purpose.
