Defending LBGTQIA+ Young Lives the Way the Religious Right Defends the Unborn

Last updated on: March 11, 2023 at 10:23 pm by Julie Nichols

Defending LBGTQIA+ Young Lives the Way the Religious Right Defends the Unborn 2023-03-11T22:23:01-06:00 Julie Nichols

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After witnessing The Religious Right impose death threats and deliberately attempt to harm LBGTQIA+ people and their families, I’ve decided that I will defend LBGTQIA+ young lives to the same level the Religious Right defends the unborn. The only difference is, I will not forsake all other marginalized groups in the name of saving LBGTQIA+ young people and their families the way the Religious Right has done so for the unborn. Again, I define the Religious Right as a group of right-winged Christians who are bedfellows with the Republican party for political gain. They seek this power at all costs no matter who they harm, except the unborn of course. I know good conservatives who do not wish others harm, so they are not part of the Religious Right. Defending LBGTQIA+ young lives and their families is just an extension of my long-standing service as a Pediatric Specialty Therapist and Disability Advocate.

The Religious Right hides their contempt for LBGTQIA+ people and their families behind their “Sacred Religious Beliefs” or “Their Right to Practice Their Faith.” This is actually code for, “I hate the way you love others or the way you practice your sexuality because it doesn’t look like mine, even if I cannot see you or know of you. Therefore, since God has bestowed in me the right to rule over the rest of America because of Manifest Destiny, especially since I am such a faithful Anglo, Republican, neurotypical, straight person, I have the right to weaponize my sacred beliefs to obliviate and harm you by any means possible no matter how unethical, even though “I say I wish no harm.”

Within the Catholic Church, it’s more complicated because Church teaching on sexuality hasn’t changed in 2000 years although I greatly appreciate this moral framework for sexual morality. However, it is a guardrail to give us moral direction to do our best, not a weapon to kill and harm if we are incapable of living up to it all. The Catholic Right wants to defend the Catholic faith by weaponizing sexuality doctrine at the cost of killing, harming, and pushing LBGTQIA+ Catholics and their families out of the Catholic Church right and into arms of Religious Trauma which many times involves suicide and ripping families apart. I know because I serve part-time in Religious trauma recovery. In doing so, the Catholic Right is also destroying and pushing out many Neurodiverse and Disabled people because according to science, more LBGTQIA+ people also fall on other neurological and psychological spectrums than within the general population. According to science as well, only a small number of people are capable of celibacy without incurring long-term damage and many times death. Most people are capable of being in a life-long monogamous relationship which I strongly support.

The Catholic Right/Religious Right says they don’t wish harm, but they are lying like Pinocchio. It doesn’t matter how much pain, suffering, and death they impose as long as they can “uphold the teachings of the Catholic Faith.” I have seen and experienced this first-hand by watching the Catholic Right direct LBGTQIA+ families to gay conversion /reparative therapy camps, even if the child has attempted suicide. I have even seen the Catholic Right make death threats among other cruelties. Is this the heart and mind of Jesus, His Teachings, and the Catholic Faith? No, it’s the exact opposite. Catholic families are having to choose between their child’s right-to-life or stay in the Catholic Church. If you think this is in any way moral, good, or Christian, you need to rethink your faith.

I am going to give the classic scenario and use Catholic Teaching again to defend my position of inclusion within the Catholic Church. This scenario is reality for most LBGTQIA+ people and their families in the Catholic Church. I speak from professional and personal experience. So Catholic parents of LBGTQIA+ children who are many times also Neurodiverse or disabled, here is some good Catholic teaching for those trads who want to use sexual doctrine as a weapon to destroy LBGTQIA+ people and their families and push them into Religious Trauma many times resulting in suicide and ripping families part. If you want to get technical with Catholic Teaching, by advocating for LBGTQIA + inclusion, we are following Catholic Social Teaching which honors the Sanctity of life and Dignity of the Human Person, The Call to Family, Community, and Participation, and Solidarity by keeping the family intact, which includes the LBGTQIA+ person. I am following Pope Francis’s directive in his Encyclical Amoris Lattetita and the Catechism of the Catholic Church to give appropriate pastoral care to the LBGTQIA person by including him/her because it’s life and death, and Jesus’s 2nd greatest commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Since I love to integrate faith and science, I will close with this quote from the Hogg Foundation which is in alignment with every major medical association in the world. Those of you who call yourselves pro-life, remember this………

The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health states that every word and action of love, affirmation, or acceptance can be the difference between life and death for LGBTQ people.

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