Hannah & Sadie, Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I appreciate that you are intelligent and honest in your willingness to share your journey together. I am a 55 year old, gay lady, born into a very Roman Catholic family. I attended Catholic school for 12 years and my mother taught at a Catholic school for almost 20 years. I came out to myself at the age of 21 when I realized I was in love/maybe falling in love with a woman. To make a very long story short, I am still in love with her. She has been my partner in life for 34 years, a co-parent to our son for 13 years and my wife for 6 years. We are still practicing Catholics. I could write a book! I just wanted you to know that sometimes it's hard to be gay in the Catholic community and sometimes it's hard to be Catholic in the gay community. My journey has been interesting and sometimes difficult. I wish you both much happiness on your journey together. Deb
H & S, spot on with the ever present internalized homophobia. A person can be live out and openly, but it is a constant but subtle struggle. Second, Hannah and Sadie, with their different religious and non-religious upbringings, illustrate that there are kind, empathetic, compassionate and ethical people whether religion was present or not present in their upbringings. How dialectical. Thanks again, H & S, for another great discussion. And shout-out to Shell. You are a good girl, but please don't chew the couch.
I can confidently say that atleast 90% of my mental health issues and trauma I experienced growing up was rooted or seriously affected by religion. I feel very scared to talk openly about my negative experiences with religion in general. There is alot of shame filled trauma or experiences that people seem to be really curious about but have no baseline understanding of whenever I talk about it. When I was a kid I was taught pretty explicitly that people who were not religious were bad because they were full of sin that they don't deal with. Being a 3rd grader and watching chuch and family speak in a language I don't understand and throw bibles at my brother's chest to cure us asthma while he is seriously struggling to breath is scary. But to me that was totally normal. It was normal that I was exposed to that yet not allowed to watch the lion king. A lack of awareness of sex and discussion of sex and in what relationships it's appropriate lead to a whole host of negitive experiences. I didn't realise that what was happening was actually really wrong. I didnt realise that i could go to the teachers at my school and have them help me because my family didn't want to. And when I went to my teacher I didn't realise the gravity of the situation. If I had of realised how bad it was i probably wouldn't have said anything. Growing up i was taught to give everyone what they wanted at any given moment. I was taught to be happy all the time. Any negative emotion was bad and would not be tolerated by my community. This still affects me alot today. I get so much anxiety when my emotional state is not positive. I feel like I'm doing something wrong by being sad even if its something i should feel sad about. The church I grew up in believes that LGBTQ+ people are sinners who need reformation. Being that way doesn't occur naturally and we best not speak or associate with them directly in case it's contagious. The church provided a reformation program and if you were believed to be struggling with that kind of sin that is where you went. Those experiences deeply affect me even today. I still have alot of interenilised homophobia to untangle from those teachings. I also feel alot of shame and anger about what happened. There are so many other things that seem crazy as well. When I was a kid there were things that I wasn't allowed to eat or do because it "goes against god's word" like eat mustard or own black underwear. Ive read many different versions of the bible many times and I still can't find a clear explanation for this. Not that I need it because im not really religious anymore. This upbringing makes it difficult for me to make friends because so many of my experiences are so different to those around me. It's taken me a while to build a knowledge of pop/internet culture and world events to enter general conversation with people. Even things like politics, my family never discussed politics so when I turned 18 I was super suprised to find out that voting is mandatory (unless you can get an exception) and if you don't vote you will be fined. Religion affected the music I was exposed to. I was only allowed to listen to approved Christian music which feels ridiculous. I remember my friend putting some music on an mp3 and giving it to me when I was in 6th grade. I'd wait till everyone was in bed and jam out to it. As a kid growing up in the church I was told I constantly had to be saving people. I was taught that I would be rejected by society for my belifs and I was told that this set of belifs I am being presented with is true because its hard to believe. Its hard to have your belif system hurt people so it must be true. I feel like most of my life I was missing the human experience of sorting through and questioning my emotions and experiences. I was gaslight out of so many warning signs that could have had me save myself earlier. I am a people pleaser. I feel pressured to help people even when its unreasonable or when im not in a good place to help. If im not helping people what value do I have to society? There are definaltly way more examples of how religion has aided the development of my mental health issues and affected my life past and present but I don't yet feel comfortable sharing so publicly about that. This series has been so good! Thanks so much for creating space for this conversation.
Hannah, I've related to so much of what you have gone through in regards to being raised Catholic. I was also raised Catholic and received Catholic education from kindergarten through high school - with the exception of 2 years in middle school when I transferred to a local charter school, yet was still pressured by my mom to receive CCD education during that time in order to maintain the path of receiving the sacrament of confirmation. Which I felt was silly, but I still went through with it because I was told it's the right thing to do and I wanted to appease my mother. The biggest disparity of our faith upbringing is that I hated every day of it. If it was my choice, I never would have followed this religious path. Not that I have anything against religion, I just didn't like the idea of being forced onto a path that I didn't fully understand or enjoy. I knew this particular denomination of Christianity wasn't for me, but I just had to go along with. I remember learning about agnosticism around the time of my confirmation and relating to that more than anything else I was raise to believe about Catholicism. I was certainly open to the possibility of a higher being existing, but I had my doubts and was so unsure about everything. I just wanted to figure it out on my own terms. I also found it hard to follow this faith because my family was looked down on during my early childhood due to my parents being divorced. We were seen as inferior by many of the families at my elementary school so that was never a good feeling, and I couldn't help but resent the Catholic community for it. We were actually banned from one of our local churches because my single mom of 2 was no longer financially able to pay the yearly dues required to attend and at this time neither myself nor sister attended the school associated with this church any longer so they asked us to leave. I know this isn't how all Catholic churches are run or how all catholic communities view divorce, single families, etc, but at the time it really hurt, and I knew it wasn't a community I'd ever want to be apart of. Though, my mom was still adamant to continue to practice the faith - just with a different church and community. Fast forward to high school when I figured out that there was no way I was 100% straight. I was pissed. I was attending a catholic high school and there wasn't a single person that I knew of that was openly out to the school. Looking back now and with new intel, there were actually a lot of us apart of the lgbtq+ community, but we all had the same fear of judgment from our peers. It was highly rumored that the vice principle at the time was gay and she was bullied for it by students. It was sickening and gut-wrenching to see/hear about so I stayed in the closet, ignoring how obsessed I was with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Black Swann. What made things worse was falling in love with my best friend during our senior year, who came out to me as a fellow closeted bisexual with religious parents. How convenient. So of course we started dating. It remained a secret to just about everyone for the entire duration of our relationship, in fear of what our families, friends, and classmates would do or say. 3 months before I was moving 1.5 hours away for college, our parents found out, and this was one of the hardest periods of my life to navigate. I was forced to cut ties with my best friend and girlfriend at the time, and was sent to a psychologist to "figure out what's wrong" with me. Nothing really positive or negative progressed from there. It just became a topic that wasn't to be discussed for a very long time. This has become very long-winded and scatterbrained, but I felt compelled to share a tiny bit of my personal experience with growing up within the Catholic community. I didn't think I'd enjoy an ounce of this religious series you both are exploring, but I'm glad I've continued to press play. It has brought forth a lot of repressed memories and thoughts for me that I think are incredibly important for me to explore and make sense of.
Hannah and Sadie, I like when you do these types and video series. I grow up Christian attending a Baptist church. I totally believed that everyone who was Christian were good, and if you weren't you were a bad person. I believed that my whole life.
Google “Jennifer Knapp.” She was a Christian music superstar who walked away from her career at its peak. She completely disappeared for 7 years, so when word got out she had made a new album, her fans cheered. Until she came out as a lesbian. The backlash was brutal. Fortunately she handled it fairly well, and now has does a lot of work on the issues between the church and the LBGTQ+ community. Been at it for several years now.
Wow! Really good conversation. I grew up southern baptist christian. Attempting to deconstruct those very polarized right/wrong, black/white viewpoints has been quite a struggle. Most surprising is that I have always been considered very different, “left” or “liberal” from the others in that church (they don’t like my stance on many issues) so I didn’t think I had these internalized issues until I, myself, started the journey of coming out this past year at 38-39. Only out to friends and immediate family. I realized through therapy that I have to deconstruct those learned beliefs and get secure with myself and what I actually believe before I will be strong enough to deal with those critiques. Thanks for keeping this conversation going and providing us a way to keep examining these issues!
Something you guys touched on definitely strikes a chord with me. When you went into speaking about that the person who is queer/gay etc should be accepted but their actions should not be. This is something that my sister and her husband stand strongly upon yet still swear they are accepting of me, even after my sisters husband saying outright that they would not let my two nephews attend my wedding if I ever got married when they were of an age that the could choose. It's something that i wish I could understand more because even though I did attend catholic school for a portion of my life and attended church about 4 or 5 days a week as I was becoming a little bit older until i stopped... I cannot identify with being ok about saying this statement about folks who are queer. Part of me thinks its because my sister was older and had much more schooling within the catholic realm than I did.. but despite that she holds up other progressive views so for me it is so conflicting and i wish I could understand it enough to explain how it doesn't feel right to be able to say things like this to someone yet still swear you accept and love them no matter what. it feels odd. and they try to justify it by saying they aren't willing to accept that i choose to not meet with them when they get to heaven because of the action it and it being my choice therefore making it my fault? it's very confusing to me. I'd love to talk about it more!
Sadie, I relate to so much of what you're saying - I too grew up Catholic and gay. It was only after I had a faith transition (or "deconstruction") that I came to realize that I was gay. The strong compulsive heterosexuality within the Catholic Church had such a strong hold on me that I didn't even think to question if I was straight; it was a given. There were obviously no other examples besides straight couples that were married with kids. Those are the people I socialized with. It's interesting because after I got older (teens & early 20s), I wanted to become a nun after I met a group of nuns that lived next to my high school, and I even started hanging out at that convent and chatting with the nuns. The thought of being around women all the time was very appealing (I wonder why, lol!). I'm curious if you ever had any of those same thoughts... One of the things that my religious upbringing "taught" me was the concept that men were leaders, and that they had the most insightful things to say. After all, they were the ones who celebrated Mass, spoke during homilies, counselled people, were appointed to leadership positions within the Church. I am always having to be very conscious about making sure that I don't defer to men in my daily life, and facilitating that in others (i.e. not letting a woman get interrupted and spoken over by a man, or having her ideas taken by a man and presented as his own.) The other concept that I learned through Catholicism (and I guess Christianity in general) is a belief that "older is more legitimate/more right." This is in terms of holy books, thoughts and beliefs about the universe, how people should conduct their lives, etc. There's a VERY STRONG undercurrent of "Modern society is bad" within Catholicism, and the idea that the current world is ruined, and we should "go back to how things used to be." I have had to unlearn this and understand that society has evolved, learned from the past (somewhat, at least!) and that it's not a bad thing for society to push boundaries and try new things because that's how we learn and grow and determine things.
Hi, really enjoy your conversations. Unlike most of the people on this platform these are open and thoughtful. Thank you for sharing:) Even though I did not grow up in a Christian household or even in deeply religious one, a lot of what Sadie spoke about hits home. I studied in an all girls Christian school and homophobia was rampant there. I came out to my family (unwillingly) about 4 years ago. My mother had (and still has) a hard time accepting it. I was living at home at the time and it was just the worst. There was a lot of crying and general hysteria about never having grandchildren or a normal life. My mother became suspicious of my meeting friends that it was impossible to go out without all the drama and multiple phone calls through the day. I stopped meeting people and mostly stayed in just to avoid the scenes and the explanations, if I didn't go out then she would remain calm. She said to me I could be what I am as long as I didn't rub it in her face and that it were best that I left town since everyone would now start speaking about me. And so i avoided (and still mostly avoid) talking about or doing andthing that would trigger any negative reaction. So this led to a holding back a lot of things which I would have otherwise shared with my mother, I was so concerned about her reaction that I just started lying a lot. Eventually my girlfriend and I shifted to another city when I got a job there about 3 years back. But my mother and family frequented the city and I had extended family there as well. So I spent a lot of energy just hiding my relationship, I would leave my girlfriend behind and spend time with my family so as to not raise their suspicions. My mother knew my girlfriend , she was my best friend and was well acquainted with not only my immediate but even extended family. My girlfriend was impacted quite deeply and now has a severe anxiety disorder and decided to shift back to our hometown since she found it difficult to remain in the city. We're still together but long distance... I can't meet her freely when I am in my hometown becuase of my family and she is unable to travel to the city because of her anxiety. Sorry this got super long, well the crux was about it being ok to be gay as long as you didn't act on it or that it was hidden from all...
Loved it ladies!! This was such an awesome video.. I grew up in a house filled with love.. I went to a Morman church at first and but eventually stopped going cause it wasn't for me.. At the time, I believed in God until early 97 when I lost my dad and hated God cause he took my dad away.. It took me years and years to believe in God again.. I eventually went to different Christian churches and a few Catholic ones.. Some good and some not so good because they didn't like me being a lesbian.. A couple years ago, I started going to a Christian church with my friend from work and I really enjoyed it.. But since this pandemic, I don't go anymore.. It still hurts when I watch the news and homophobic people are still being rude and hurting the Lgbt community.. I still wish we could be kind to one another and that we were done with all this hate.. Thanks for sharing ladies.. Much love to you both and Shell.. Stay sweet and keep on rockin!!
I love those type of videos. Once again i agree 100% with both of you. One thing i learned from last week's and today's videos, is that i had a catholic/christian upbringing and it had more impact on me than i thought. I was told in catechism that i shouldn't be talking about sex, sexual abuse, drug, alcool, homosexuality because it was forbidden and shameful. But with my grandfather (who was rasised by catholic priests) we had those conversations with no judgement or fear just honesty and trust. Surviving both world wars (WWI as a kid and WWII as an adult) gave him a different outlook on life and religions.
Hey Sadie, you said you'd like to talk to someone with your perspective that you had growing up, on the sort of unspoken belief that "if someone is a christian that makes them a good person, and if they aren't, then they're not". I also grew up like that, so I'm here if you want someone to talk to about that. It took me a few years to ease out of that, leaving Christianity, at first thinking I was a bi man, then learning I'm a trans woman, then learning I'm pretty much only gay. I can really relate to the sort of internal gymnastics we have to do at times to overcome those hangups, and I still struggle with internal transphobia at times
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism. It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell. Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely: we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love. There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.” ― Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I was drawn in by the title and glad for the opportunity to just... listen. I like the respectful way you explore your differences, and I am impressed by Hannah’s kindness and patient listening. I admit to a certain relief at how Hannah described her upbringing on these topics. Yet I also see my own biases reflected here....no regrets for that; just awareness. Thanks to both of you.
I'm currently only 17 seconds into the video... but the intro brought up a very interesting line of thought that I thought I'd share. I was raised Christian and I too was taught that all Christians were good people (and probably also that the inverse was also true)... My older sister went to a sort of party one night and they watched a scary movie, and my sister and another girl (non-Christian) were the only ones that were scared/ disgusted at some parts. When she came home and reflected with the rest of my family my mom made a seemingly profound analysis by saying that others can have Christian values and behaviors which makes them good people, but still be "wrong" because they didn't believe in Jesus and were not saved. Somehow, it felt like quite a revelation for my mom to acknowledge non-Christians as having the potential to be "good people", although I was not shocked to hear that them not being saved was still a fatal flaw.
Growing up Catholic, I hadn't realized until later on that my upbringing was so exclusionary to the esoteric and new wave ideas. The priests were accepting of most other view points of most world religions, but there were some that were either seen as too whoo-whoo or downright evil (it's similar in the UU church that I at times frequent outside of the pandemic).
The whole thing proves that you two are as good people as you want to be, regardless of whether you come from two opposite upbringings. NEVER be ashamed of what you are, feel or believe as long as you are happy. But think of all the people who have suffered religious oppression, even in the XXI century! I'm still laughing at something I heard here on YT about Biden's oath next week ... they should put the old Jewish book full of fairy tales aside for good!
Wole Soyinka wrote, "The conflict between humanists and religionists has always been one between the torch of enlightenment and the chains of enslavement."
Alot of good points girls. I am Catholic also and see how Hannah wouldn't understand things, not being religious. Religion is just hard at times. Good job Sadie explaining this. Hannah...love that purple on you. Have a wonderful week girls. Stay Safe!! xx
I so totally agree with your comments on sex and how religion has created their view on it and then there’s reality. Two people in a relationship will have different points of view and what they expect in a marriage and that comes from parents and faith leaders. Communication is a key for both people and understanding of where they are coming from. The winner hopefully I’ll be love. Thank you for this video and the depth of conversation you both went into to.
Yays! Shell got her cone off! Also, I totally know what you mean about getting raised in a homophobic/transphobic environment, and how that can shape your understanding of your own identity! I didn't even have the language to understand that I even COULD be a Trans lesbian, for DECADES after I left the Church! Being a gay man and wanting to dress up as a woman were just intricately tied, and since I KNEW I liked girls and not boys, all my desires to dress like the girls did must've just been me being confused by my sexual desire for then, right,?!? Turns out Nope, I can think a dress is hot AND the lady in the dress is hot! Who knew?!; certainly not young Ynza! ,(Or even 39 year old Ynza!)
Strangely enough, I sort of grew up with a combination of both Sadie's and Hannah's perspectives on religion or more specifically religious people. I was raised Catholic and by in large was taught that being Catholic was good and being devote was a hallmark of a good person but on the other side evangelical Protestants were referred to as "Holy Rollers" by my mother and were seen as automatically being bigots and their religiosity was mainly performative. I still kind of struggle with that being my knee-jerk reaction to people when I hear they're Christian., where I separate out people into "good" Christianity and "bad" Christianity when both groups probably feel the same about me...I also struggle with a lot of internalized homophobia. Which sometimes I think is less because I was taught that being gay was immoral (because honestly it just wasn't something talked about a lot period), but more because it's an overt rejection of the life I was taught I should want. I was taught that the life I was supposed to lead was getting married in a big Church wedding to a man, then having kids who I would raise in the church. Having a regular pew on Sunday and watching my kids be altar servers and volunteering with the annual church fair. It was the very 1950's sitcom life I was supposed to want. And being gay to me seems like an active rejection of that life and I sometimes think that my internalized homophobia more stems from people thinking I'm a bad person for not wanting that life...at least in part.
I'm not Catholic (recovering or otherwise) but I actually really enjoyed Julia Sweeney's book God Said Ha and her long monologue Letting Go of God (on audible). I found the thought processes and her sort of journey with her faith and upbringing very interesting. It might make Sadie feel a little less alone. I grew up in Texas until I was 13 and was an occasional church goer (mostly Methodist with a sprinkling of Southern Baptist for the trauma) but I basically became agnostic/atheist when I was 11 or 12. It's hard to say how it shaped me. I understand most biblical references, but don't really subscribe to them.
A new board member at my church mentioned he was surprised at how many Christians were in the congregation. Just being Christian doesn't mean you are good at it. My wife was cornered at church by someone thinking he could make up for her disabled husband. Our church welcomed LGBTQ members. Individuals may not have agreed. Church was a requirement in my mother's view!. She changed denominations a few times. My father's family was deep in the church but he was not so much. He didn't like the hypocrisy.
Many humanists never had religion in their lives. Others had religious upbringings which left them unsatisfied. Religions were held out to them as providing answers, but they didn't. Perhaps they found that religions didn't answer the questions about reality and the world around them. It doesn't make sense, for example, that any good god deserving worship would allow all the suffering we see in the world. Perhaps they found religion unethical - for example, in the way it treated women, or gay people, or children, or people of different beliefs, or non-human animals. Perhaps they found religions just didn't provide the meaning they claimed to give, in a world so different from the world in which they were invented. Taken from "The Little Book of Humanism"
Woah. I was raised in a religious family. When I was young, my belief was religous people are good by default while non-religious are not. But as I grew up and witnessed the impact of religous, my belief got totally reversed. After years and years of observation and self reflection, I was convinced that religious people caused so much suffering and mental and psychological torture. Division, conflict, holy war, oppression, hypocrasy, discrimination, denial of scientific facts, were once rooted from religion. Religion is a brainwashing tool to control human behavior. I hope one day, we get rid of it. 🤷♀️
LOO💋VE THIS Topic had been the study of my life. Plz hold that taught Plz let my try to resume my 40 years of knowledge about sex and this. Ok. Plz. LOVE U GALS AS always I say but now even more if that is posible love U more.
Hannah & Sadie,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I appreciate that you are intelligent and honest in your willingness to share your journey together.
I am a 55 year old, gay lady, born into a very Roman Catholic family. I attended Catholic school for 12 years and my mother taught at a Catholic school for almost 20 years. I came out to myself at the age of 21 when I realized I was in love/maybe falling in love with a woman. To make a very long story short, I am still in love with her. She has been my partner in life for 34 years, a co-parent to our son for 13 years and my wife for 6 years. We are still practicing Catholics. I could write a book!
I just wanted you to know that sometimes it's hard to be gay in the Catholic community and sometimes it's hard to be Catholic in the gay community. My journey has been interesting and sometimes difficult. I wish you both much happiness on your journey together.
Deb
H & S, spot on with the ever present internalized homophobia. A person can be live out and openly, but it is a constant but subtle struggle. Second, Hannah and Sadie, with their different religious and non-religious upbringings, illustrate that there are kind, empathetic, compassionate and ethical people whether religion was present or not present in their upbringings. How dialectical. Thanks again, H & S, for another great discussion. And shout-out to Shell. You are a good girl, but please don't chew the couch.
I can confidently say that atleast 90% of my mental health issues and trauma I experienced growing up was rooted or seriously affected by religion. I feel very scared to talk openly about my negative experiences with religion in general. There is alot of shame filled trauma or experiences that people seem to be really curious about but have no baseline understanding of whenever I talk about it.
When I was a kid I was taught pretty explicitly that people who were not religious were bad because they were full of sin that they don't deal with.
Being a 3rd grader and watching chuch and family speak in a language I don't understand and throw bibles at my brother's chest to cure us asthma while he is seriously struggling to breath is scary. But to me that was totally normal. It was normal that I was exposed to that yet not allowed to watch the lion king.
A lack of awareness of sex and discussion of sex and in what relationships it's appropriate lead to a whole host of negitive experiences. I didn't realise that what was happening was actually really wrong. I didnt realise that i could go to the teachers at my school and have them help me because my family didn't want to. And when I went to my teacher I didn't realise the gravity of the situation.
If I had of realised how bad it was i probably wouldn't have said anything. Growing up i was taught to give everyone what they wanted at any given moment. I was taught to be happy all the time. Any negative emotion was bad and would not be tolerated by my community. This still affects me alot today. I get so much anxiety when my emotional state is not positive. I feel like I'm doing something wrong by being sad even if its something i should feel sad about.
The church I grew up in believes that LGBTQ+ people are sinners who need reformation. Being that way doesn't occur naturally and we best not speak or associate with them directly in case it's contagious.
The church provided a reformation program and if you were believed to be struggling with that kind of sin that is where you went.
Those experiences deeply affect me even today. I still have alot of interenilised homophobia to untangle from those teachings. I also feel alot of shame and anger about what happened.
There are so many other things that seem crazy as well. When I was a kid there were things that I wasn't allowed to eat or do because it "goes against god's word" like eat mustard or own black underwear. Ive read many different versions of the bible many times and I still can't find a clear explanation for this. Not that I need it because im not really religious anymore.
This upbringing makes it difficult for me to make friends because so many of my experiences are so different to those around me. It's taken me a while to build a knowledge of pop/internet culture and world events to enter general conversation with people. Even things like politics, my family never discussed politics so when I turned 18 I was super suprised to find out that voting is mandatory (unless you can get an exception) and if you don't vote you will be fined.
Religion affected the music I was exposed to. I was only allowed to listen to approved Christian music which feels ridiculous. I remember my friend putting some music on an mp3 and giving it to me when I was in 6th grade. I'd wait till everyone was in bed and jam out to it.
As a kid growing up in the church I was told I constantly had to be saving people. I was taught that I would be rejected by society for my belifs and I was told that this set of belifs I am being presented with is true because its hard to believe. Its hard to have your belif system hurt people so it must be true.
I feel like most of my life I was missing the human experience of sorting through and questioning my emotions and experiences. I was gaslight out of so many warning signs that could have had me save myself earlier.
I am a people pleaser. I feel pressured to help people even when its unreasonable or when im not in a good place to help. If im not helping people what value do I have to society?
There are definaltly way more examples of how religion has aided the development of my mental health issues and affected my life past and present but I don't yet feel comfortable sharing so publicly about that.
This series has been so good! Thanks so much for creating space for this conversation.
Blair can I just say you are very eloquent and just be yourself take care.
Hannah, I've related to so much of what you have gone through in regards to being raised Catholic. I was also raised Catholic and received Catholic education from kindergarten through high school - with the exception of 2 years in middle school when I transferred to a local charter school, yet was still pressured by my mom to receive CCD education during that time in order to maintain the path of receiving the sacrament of confirmation. Which I felt was silly, but I still went through with it because I was told it's the right thing to do and I wanted to appease my mother.
The biggest disparity of our faith upbringing is that I hated every day of it. If it was my choice, I never would have followed this religious path. Not that I have anything against religion, I just didn't like the idea of being forced onto a path that I didn't fully understand or enjoy. I knew this particular denomination of Christianity wasn't for me, but I just had to go along with. I remember learning about agnosticism around the time of my confirmation and relating to that more than anything else I was raise to believe about Catholicism. I was certainly open to the possibility of a higher being existing, but I had my doubts and was so unsure about everything. I just wanted to figure it out on my own terms.
I also found it hard to follow this faith because my family was looked down on during my early childhood due to my parents being divorced. We were seen as inferior by many of the families at my elementary school so that was never a good feeling, and I couldn't help but resent the Catholic community for it. We were actually banned from one of our local churches because my single mom of 2 was no longer financially able to pay the yearly dues required to attend and at this time neither myself nor sister attended the school associated with this church any longer so they asked us to leave. I know this isn't how all Catholic churches are run or how all catholic communities view divorce, single families, etc, but at the time it really hurt, and I knew it wasn't a community I'd ever want to be apart of. Though, my mom was still adamant to continue to practice the faith - just with a different church and community.
Fast forward to high school when I figured out that there was no way I was 100% straight. I was pissed. I was attending a catholic high school and there wasn't a single person that I knew of that was openly out to the school. Looking back now and with new intel, there were actually a lot of us apart of the lgbtq+ community, but we all had the same fear of judgment from our peers. It was highly rumored that the vice principle at the time was gay and she was bullied for it by students. It was sickening and gut-wrenching to see/hear about so I stayed in the closet, ignoring how obsessed I was with Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis in Black Swann.
What made things worse was falling in love with my best friend during our senior year, who came out to me as a fellow closeted bisexual with religious parents. How convenient. So of course we started dating. It remained a secret to just about everyone for the entire duration of our relationship, in fear of what our families, friends, and classmates would do or say. 3 months before I was moving 1.5 hours away for college, our parents found out, and this was one of the hardest periods of my life to navigate. I was forced to cut ties with my best friend and girlfriend at the time, and was sent to a psychologist to "figure out what's wrong" with me. Nothing really positive or negative progressed from there. It just became a topic that wasn't to be discussed for a very long time.
This has become very long-winded and scatterbrained, but I felt compelled to share a tiny bit of my personal experience with growing up within the Catholic community. I didn't think I'd enjoy an ounce of this religious series you both are exploring, but I'm glad I've continued to press play. It has brought forth a lot of repressed memories and thoughts for me that I think are incredibly important for me to explore and make sense of.
Hannah and Sadie, I like when you do these types and video series. I grow up Christian attending a Baptist church. I totally believed that everyone who was Christian were good, and if you weren't you were a bad person. I believed that my whole life.
Google “Jennifer Knapp.” She was a Christian music superstar who walked away from her career at its peak. She completely disappeared for 7 years, so when word got out she had made a new album, her fans cheered. Until she came out as a lesbian. The backlash was brutal. Fortunately she handled it fairly well, and now has does a lot of work on the issues between the church and the LBGTQ+ community. Been at it for several years now.
Wow! Really good conversation. I grew up southern baptist christian. Attempting to deconstruct those very polarized right/wrong, black/white viewpoints has been quite a struggle. Most surprising is that I have always been considered very different, “left” or “liberal” from the others in that church (they don’t like my stance on many issues) so I didn’t think I had these internalized issues until I, myself, started the journey of coming out this past year at 38-39. Only out to friends and immediate family. I realized through therapy that I have to deconstruct those learned beliefs and get secure with myself and what I actually believe before I will be strong enough to deal with those critiques. Thanks for keeping this conversation going and providing us a way to keep examining these issues!
Being a good person is not based on religion 😁❤️
So agree with this
Be yourself never be someone that conforms to what other people expect 😁
Something you guys touched on definitely strikes a chord with me. When you went into speaking about that the person who is queer/gay etc should be accepted but their actions should not be. This is something that my sister and her husband stand strongly upon yet still swear they are accepting of me, even after my sisters husband saying outright that they would not let my two nephews attend my wedding if I ever got married when they were of an age that the could choose. It's something that i wish I could understand more because even though I did attend catholic school for a portion of my life and attended church about 4 or 5 days a week as I was becoming a little bit older until i stopped... I cannot identify with being ok about saying this statement about folks who are queer. Part of me thinks its because my sister was older and had much more schooling within the catholic realm than I did.. but despite that she holds up other progressive views so for me it is so conflicting and i wish I could understand it enough to explain how it doesn't feel right to be able to say things like this to someone yet still swear you accept and love them no matter what. it feels odd. and they try to justify it by saying they aren't willing to accept that i choose to not meet with them when they get to heaven because of the action it and it being my choice therefore making it my fault? it's very confusing to me. I'd love to talk about it more!
Sadie, I relate to so much of what you're saying - I too grew up Catholic and gay. It was only after I had a faith transition (or "deconstruction") that I came to realize that I was gay. The strong compulsive heterosexuality within the Catholic Church had such a strong hold on me that I didn't even think to question if I was straight; it was a given. There were obviously no other examples besides straight couples that were married with kids. Those are the people I socialized with. It's interesting because after I got older (teens & early 20s), I wanted to become a nun after I met a group of nuns that lived next to my high school, and I even started hanging out at that convent and chatting with the nuns. The thought of being around women all the time was very appealing (I wonder why, lol!). I'm curious if you ever had any of those same thoughts...
One of the things that my religious upbringing "taught" me was the concept that men were leaders, and that they had the most insightful things to say. After all, they were the ones who celebrated Mass, spoke during homilies, counselled people, were appointed to leadership positions within the Church. I am always having to be very conscious about making sure that I don't defer to men in my daily life, and facilitating that in others (i.e. not letting a woman get interrupted and spoken over by a man, or having her ideas taken by a man and presented as his own.)
The other concept that I learned through Catholicism (and I guess Christianity in general) is a belief that "older is more legitimate/more right." This is in terms of holy books, thoughts and beliefs about the universe, how people should conduct their lives, etc. There's a VERY STRONG undercurrent of "Modern society is bad" within Catholicism, and the idea that the current world is ruined, and we should "go back to how things used to be." I have had to unlearn this and understand that society has evolved, learned from the past (somewhat, at least!) and that it's not a bad thing for society to push boundaries and try new things because that's how we learn and grow and determine things.
Hi, really enjoy your conversations. Unlike most of the people on this platform these are open and thoughtful. Thank you for sharing:)
Even though I did not grow up in a Christian household or even in deeply religious one, a lot of what Sadie spoke about hits home. I studied in an all girls Christian school and homophobia was rampant there.
I came out to my family (unwillingly) about 4 years ago. My mother had (and still has) a hard time accepting it. I was living at home at the time and it was just the worst. There was a lot of crying and general hysteria about never having grandchildren or a normal life. My mother became suspicious of my meeting friends that it was impossible to go out without all the drama and multiple phone calls through the day. I stopped meeting people and mostly stayed in just to avoid the scenes and the explanations, if I didn't go out then she would remain calm. She said to me I could be what I am as long as I didn't rub it in her face and that it were best that I left town since everyone would now start speaking about me. And so i avoided (and still mostly avoid) talking about or doing andthing that would trigger any negative reaction. So this led to a holding back a lot of things which I would have otherwise shared with my mother, I was so concerned about her reaction that I just started lying a lot.
Eventually my girlfriend and I shifted to another city when I got a job there about 3 years back. But my mother and family frequented the city and I had extended family there as well. So I spent a lot of energy just hiding my relationship, I would leave my girlfriend behind and spend time with my family so as to not raise their suspicions. My mother knew my girlfriend , she was my best friend and was well acquainted with not only my immediate but even extended family.
My girlfriend was impacted quite deeply and now has a severe anxiety disorder and decided to shift back to our hometown since she found it difficult to remain in the city. We're still together but long distance... I can't meet her freely when I am in my hometown becuase of my family and she is unable to travel to the city because of her anxiety.
Sorry this got super long, well the crux was about it being ok to be gay as long as you didn't act on it or that it was hidden from all...
Loved it ladies!! This was such an awesome video.. I grew up in a house filled with love.. I went to a Morman church at first and but eventually stopped going cause it wasn't for me.. At the time, I believed in God until early 97 when I lost my dad and hated God cause he took my dad away.. It took me years and years to believe in God again.. I eventually went to different Christian churches and a few Catholic ones.. Some good and some not so good because they didn't like me being a lesbian.. A couple years ago, I started going to a Christian church with my friend from work and I really enjoyed it.. But since this pandemic, I don't go anymore.. It still hurts when I watch the news and homophobic people are still being rude and hurting the Lgbt community.. I still wish we could be kind to one another and that we were done with all this hate.. Thanks for sharing ladies.. Much love to you both and Shell.. Stay sweet and keep on rockin!!
Love these deep conversations. I can definitely relate😌
I love those type of videos. Once again i agree 100% with both of you.
One thing i learned from last week's and today's videos, is that i had a catholic/christian upbringing and it had more impact on me than i thought. I was told in catechism that i shouldn't be talking about sex, sexual abuse, drug, alcool, homosexuality because it was forbidden and shameful. But with my grandfather (who was rasised by catholic priests) we had those conversations with no judgement or fear just honesty and trust. Surviving both world wars (WWI as a kid and WWII as an adult) gave him a different outlook on life and religions.
Hey Sadie, you said you'd like to talk to someone with your perspective that you had growing up, on the sort of unspoken belief that "if someone is a christian that makes them a good person, and if they aren't, then they're not". I also grew up like that, so I'm here if you want someone to talk to about that.
It took me a few years to ease out of that, leaving Christianity, at first thinking I was a bi man, then learning I'm a trans woman, then learning I'm pretty much only gay. I can really relate to the sort of internal gymnastics we have to do at times to overcome those hangups, and I still struggle with internal transphobia at times
“The only position that leaves me with no cognitive dissonance is atheism.
It is not a creed. Death is certain, replacing both the siren-song of Paradise and the dread of Hell.
Life on this earth, with all its mystery and beauty and pain, is then to be lived far more intensely:
we stumble and get up, we are sad, confident, insecure, feel loneliness and joy and love.
There is nothing more; but I want nothing more.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali
I was drawn in by the title and glad for the opportunity to just... listen. I like the respectful way you explore your differences, and I am impressed by Hannah’s kindness and patient listening. I admit to a certain relief at how Hannah described her upbringing on these topics. Yet I also see my own biases reflected here....no regrets for that; just awareness. Thanks to both of you.
Thank you for taking the time to watch/listen! No regrets:) and we send all our love!
I'm currently only 17 seconds into the video... but the intro brought up a very interesting line of thought that I thought I'd share. I was raised Christian and I too was taught that all Christians were good people (and probably also that the inverse was also true)... My older sister went to a sort of party one night and they watched a scary movie, and my sister and another girl (non-Christian) were the only ones that were scared/ disgusted at some parts. When she came home and reflected with the rest of my family my mom made a seemingly profound analysis by saying that others can have Christian values and behaviors which makes them good people, but still be "wrong" because they didn't believe in Jesus and were not saved. Somehow, it felt like quite a revelation for my mom to acknowledge non-Christians as having the potential to be "good people", although I was not shocked to hear that them not being saved was still a fatal flaw.
Welcome to the church of Hannah and Sadie
A church i would gladly go to.
@@chouyounne yes everyone accepted and included.
Love your work sisters!
Growing up Catholic, I hadn't realized until later on that my upbringing was so exclusionary to the esoteric and new wave ideas. The priests were accepting of most other view points of most world religions, but there were some that were either seen as too whoo-whoo or downright evil (it's similar in the UU church that I at times frequent outside of the pandemic).
The whole thing proves that you two are as good people as you want to be, regardless of whether you come from two opposite upbringings. NEVER be ashamed of what you are, feel or believe as long as you are happy. But think of all the people who have suffered religious oppression, even in the XXI century! I'm still laughing at something I heard here on YT about Biden's oath next week ... they should put the old Jewish book full of fairy tales aside for good!
Wole Soyinka wrote, "The conflict between humanists and religionists has always been one between the torch of enlightenment and the chains of enslavement."
Alot of good points girls. I am Catholic also and see how Hannah wouldn't understand things, not being religious. Religion is just hard at times. Good job Sadie explaining this. Hannah...love that purple on you. Have a wonderful week girls. Stay Safe!! xx
How can you imply that someone wouldn't understand things because they are not religious?
@@tabs41 I am sorry, I meant not being Catholic. I apologize.
Sex is a physical expression of love like singing is a physical expression of music ... keep loving and keep singing.
Have a google of the Mother and Baby homes in Ireland. The Catholic church has so much to answer for, all the damage they have done in Ireland alone.
I so totally agree with your comments on sex and how religion has created their view on it and then there’s reality. Two people in a relationship will have different points of view and what they expect in a marriage and that comes from parents and faith leaders. Communication is a key for both people and understanding of where they are coming from. The winner hopefully I’ll be love. Thank you for this video and the depth of conversation you both went into to.
Yays! Shell got her cone off!
Also, I totally know what you mean about getting raised in a homophobic/transphobic environment, and how that can shape your understanding of your own identity! I didn't even have the language to understand that I even COULD be a Trans lesbian, for DECADES after I left the Church! Being a gay man and wanting to dress up as a woman were just intricately tied, and since I KNEW I liked girls and not boys, all my desires to dress like the girls did must've just been me being confused by my sexual desire for then, right,?!? Turns out Nope, I can think a dress is hot AND the lady in the dress is hot! Who knew?!; certainly not young Ynza! ,(Or even 39 year old Ynza!)
Great chat. It opened my mind a lot more.
Strangely enough, I sort of grew up with a combination of both Sadie's and Hannah's perspectives on religion or more specifically religious people. I was raised Catholic and by in large was taught that being Catholic was good and being devote was a hallmark of a good person but on the other side evangelical Protestants were referred to as "Holy Rollers" by my mother and were seen as automatically being bigots and their religiosity was mainly performative. I still kind of struggle with that being my knee-jerk reaction to people when I hear they're Christian., where I separate out people into "good" Christianity and "bad" Christianity when both groups probably feel the same about me...I also struggle with a lot of internalized homophobia. Which sometimes I think is less because I was taught that being gay was immoral (because honestly it just wasn't something talked about a lot period), but more because it's an overt rejection of the life I was taught I should want. I was taught that the life I was supposed to lead was getting married in a big Church wedding to a man, then having kids who I would raise in the church. Having a regular pew on Sunday and watching my kids be altar servers and volunteering with the annual church fair. It was the very 1950's sitcom life I was supposed to want. And being gay to me seems like an active rejection of that life and I sometimes think that my internalized homophobia more stems from people thinking I'm a bad person for not wanting that life...at least in part.
I'm not Catholic (recovering or otherwise) but I actually really enjoyed Julia Sweeney's book God Said Ha and her long monologue Letting Go of God (on audible). I found the thought processes and her sort of journey with her faith and upbringing very interesting. It might make Sadie feel a little less alone.
I grew up in Texas until I was 13 and was an occasional church goer (mostly Methodist with a sprinkling of Southern Baptist for the trauma) but I basically became agnostic/atheist when I was 11 or 12. It's hard to say how it shaped me. I understand most biblical references, but don't really subscribe to them.
Another great video
A new board member at my church mentioned he was surprised at how many Christians were in the congregation.
Just being Christian doesn't mean you are good at it.
My wife was cornered at church by someone thinking he could make up for her disabled husband.
Our church welcomed LGBTQ members. Individuals may not have agreed.
Church was a requirement in my mother's view!. She changed denominations a few times. My father's family was deep in the church but he was not so much. He didn't like the hypocrisy.
Many humanists never had religion in their lives. Others had religious upbringings which left them unsatisfied.
Religions were held out to them as providing answers, but they didn't.
Perhaps they found that religions didn't answer the questions about reality and the world around them. It doesn't make sense, for example, that any good god deserving worship would allow all the suffering we see in the world.
Perhaps they found religion unethical - for example, in the way it treated women, or gay people, or children, or people of different beliefs, or non-human animals.
Perhaps they found religions just didn't provide the meaning they claimed to give, in a world so different from the world in which they were invented.
Taken from "The Little Book of Humanism"
Woah. I was raised in a religious family. When I was young, my belief was religous people are good by default while non-religious are not. But as I grew up and witnessed the impact of religous, my belief got totally reversed. After years and years of observation and self reflection, I was convinced that religious people caused so much suffering and mental and psychological torture. Division, conflict, holy war, oppression, hypocrasy, discrimination, denial of scientific facts, were once rooted from religion.
Religion is a brainwashing tool to control human behavior. I hope one day, we get rid of it. 🤷♀️
Its one hour with god on a sunday
Not too much to ask seperate
From your relationship what ever
It would be
Sadie, did you go to the same church building through your entire upbringing? Xx
❤️
LOO💋VE THIS Topic had been the study of my life. Plz hold that taught Plz let my try to resume my 40 years of knowledge about sex and this. Ok. Plz. LOVE U GALS AS always I say but now even more if that is posible love U more.
boring - except for the dog, perhaps more dog in future vids