I’ve been browsing photos that parents have taken of their children. Captions and titles and comments call these children sweet and cute and adorable and lovely and all sorts of niceties. I remember those words being applied to me as a child when adults talked about me. Most of the adults in my life, as a child, were at church.
Kindergarten
Many of those adults now would barely speak to me because I’m a lesbian. That one word moves me from a sweet lovely adored person included in a community to a shunned “sinner” not worthy of human acknowledgement.
Many of those adults apparently also stopped talking to and including my parents.
I grew up in a very strict lutheran church that is closely related to Laestadian churches. Women were not allowed to be pastors or ministers. They participated in discussions at bible studies but they never stood up in the pulpit and spoke to the congregation. We were required to always wear dresses to church (something my younger sister hated). Most of the women were housewives and stay at home parents (though that wasn’t my mom or grandma). Dancing and watching movies/TV were strictly forbidden. The only music ever played was religious music and hymns. I was taught that other religions were strictly wrong and that we held the one true truth/faith and were the only people going to heaven. When friends of my parents divorced, when I was a child, I noticed that the divorced couple did not seem welcome any longer in our church. Most men smoked heavily, but most women didn’t. Alcohol was never drunk.
Any wonder I distrust religion?
