I'm going to initiate some Christianity discourse, because I've always found the way leftists talk about Christianity uncomfortable, and I'd like to cease that discomfort.
I'm especially curious to hear the thoughts of some of my christian anarchist and socialist comrades such as @VoluntaryDom on this because y'all are actually still in the faith and have found a way to reconcile it with your liberatory outlooks.
To start off, I'll detail what I see as the main stream enlightened leftoid view on christianity is, do some speculation on why that position is popular, then I will contrast it with my own based on my personal experiences with the christian faith and scripture.
Imma be totally honest. Shit like this is why it's really hard for me not to hate christianity. This man makes beautiful music. I grew up with this man as a regular part of my musical diet. I'll never be able to listen to his music the same way again
So much of christianity is based on what effectively amounts to self hate. A perpetual state of guilt that is used to prevent people from actually embracing themselves in favor of some narrow idea of acceptable behavior.
A lot of christianity is based on the rejection of self worth. After all, human righteousness is as filthy rags, and our own hearts are deceitful. It's the perfect environment to incubate self hatred, victim blaming, and guilt.
the Soc dem left lexi discourse confirms one of my fears about the ways we have generally argued for queer liberation.
Historically, the argument has revolved around whether or not being gay or trans is a choice. This rhetorical device made it easy to compare queer liberation to the civil rights movement, which likely played a central role in increasing queer acceptance.
Despite its effectiveness, this argument in some ways obscures the full purpose of queer liberation and largely to the detriment of certain kinds of queer people.
The history of marginalized people's struggle for liberation is the history of those marginalized groups being internally divided into the good one's and the bad one's by those in power.
This history manages to do harm to both the said "good ones" and their "bad" counterparts.
For the bad one's, it obviously makes them an easy scapegoat and often makes members of their community turn on them. For an example of this, look at how some straight passing/masculine gay men talk about more effeminate or flamboyant gay men.