christo-pagan explorer

Sister Clarence Paul prepares a photomicrograph of Paramecium trichium in the science laboratory.

“I’m the Public Universal Friend.”

“What gender are you?”

“Christian.”

“Yeah, but what’s in your pants?”

Like, when trying to figure out the vibe of a given Christian online space, I always check the rules and they’re very open to interpretation. “We value scripture” okay? Doesn’t everyone? “No twisting God’s word” is innocuous on the surface but can quickly become a red flag as soon as anyone mentions the “clobber verses” (see: the Bible’s controversial history of mistranslations).

And especially if a space doesn’t have an explicit rule against hate speech, or homophobia, or even has a rule against homophobia but not transphobia, I immediately assume it’s a bigoted space. Because even with rules against homophobia, they get to decide what they mean by “homophobia.” Which pretty much means anything short of “gay people deserve to die” could fly in some of those spaces as long as you pretend to “love the sinner and hate the sin.”

And, I reiterate, trans Christians are even more uncomfortable in these spaces than cis gay Christians. And that’s saying something because cis gay Christians are already treated with basically no respect at all.

I kid you not, I was briefly in a Christian discord server with a rule against homophobia (but not transphobia) that was way more strict about people posting gym selfies (in the gym chat) than people blatantly breaking the hate speech rule. The meme chat in that server was full of racism and antisemitism. The general chat would shout down anyone daring to be openly queer (even queer Catholics who practice the church’s rule about gay chastity, i.e. lifelong celibacy). But sure, tempting each other to “lust” by showing gym progress is way more of an issue (this deeply weird and unhealthy view of sex and the human body among young Christians deserves its own post).