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https://wapo.st/49tTGaZ

Research, including new analysis from PRRI, supports the idea that Americans are becoming increasingly estranged from religious institutions and traditions. In 2013, a fifth of respondents to PRRI’s national poll indicated that they were religiously unaffiliated: atheists, agnostics or simply not part of any religious tradition. In the most recent iteration of the poll, conducted last year, more than a quarter identified that way.

While most of those who now identify as unaffiliated after having grown up in a religious tradition say that their reason for abandoning religion was that they stopped believing their religion's traditions, nearly half said that it was a function of their childhood religion's hostility to gay and lesbian people. In 2016, only 3 in 10 identified that reason.


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Yeah, that makes sense. I left the church because they kept harping on something that didn't align with my values. In my case it was "this is the only true church, no other church is true". Right now "gay people have an agenda" is the string a lot of preachers are harping on, and that goes against a lot of people's values.

which is actually everyone's agenda.


The preachers just need a bogeyman to generate fear.

If you don't have anything to fear, they'll create something for you to fear.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/27/2024 07:17PM by anybody.

I think that many people now have LGBTQ family members, friends and coworkers who are either out or not so closeted.

I'm a film buff and I've watched lots of old movies -- including religious ones. One of the standard tropes in films like "The Robe," "Quo Vadis," "The Silver Chalice," or "Barabbas" revolves around the portrayal of early Christians as open, good, welcoming, egalitarian, and tolerant as opposed to the class and wealth conscious, snobby almost fascist power-loving non-christian Romans.


Why is religion so bound with hate?

Or is it that if you want power, you have to exclude, and to exclude, you need hate...


I don't buy Rael's BS any more than Joseph Smith's or Joanna Southcott's, but they seem to accept everyone


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https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjpyzw/how-a-brisbane-artist-became-a-priest-for-a-ufo-pleasure-cult

How a Brisbane Artist Became a Priest for a UFO Pleasure Cult
Luke Roberts is a Raelian: "the only religion with female, gay, and transgender priests."


The man in the photo above is an artist named Luke Roberts. He’s standing beneath a piece of public artwork he built for the Brisbane City Council, which he says was designed to look like a UFO to symbolise the city’s migrant population. But after a pause he admits it also looks like a UFO because he believes extraterrestrials spawned the human race.


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