this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Religious trauma still haunts millions of LGBTQ Americans (www.nbcnews.com)
submitted 9 months ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world
29 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Some mental health experts are advocating for religious trauma to be considered an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Kellen Swift-Godzisz, 35, said he doesn’t go on dates, struggles with erectile dysfunction and is hesitant to trust people. For more than 20 years, he’s experienced intense bouts of anxiety and depression that have had a “major hold on his life.”

“Imagine being told by everyone you trusted that you’re going to hell because you like men,” Swift-Godzisz, a marketing project manager living in Chicago, told NBC News.

At just 11 years old, Swift-Godzisz recalled, he would sit in his bedroom every night praying or writing letters that said, “Please God, remove my affliction of same-sex attraction,” and would then store each letter in an overflowing shoebox in his closet.

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[–] IzzyScissor@kbin.social 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Honestly, the worst part is going to a doctor who you can tell is mildly religious and they start asking questions about why you think you feel anxiety and depression.

The trauma response to lie and hide is so strong, it takes SO MUCH effort to just be honest that it was your religious upbringing... and the second you do, they act like you're personally attacking them. I've had doctors/nurses go from being warm and kind to suddenly going cold because I had the audacity to say that their religion is the cause of my trauma. You just have to keep looking for a new doctor until someone gets it.

[–] SupraMario@lemmy.world 14 points 9 months ago

It's 2024...time to start telling these religious fucks to go fuck a boulder when they do shit like that. I'm not saying get violent, but fuck these aging ideologies and the people who keep propping them up. Easy to say, harder to do, but gotta start somewhere.

[–] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The word "still" makes it seem like the cause of the religious trauma was solved. It wasn't, so of course people are still traumatized.

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 24 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

For real, I'm pretty sure the city of Philadelphia is still stuck using a Catholic adoption agency that refuses to place with gay couples for it's foster care because the Supreme Court won't let the city ditch their bigoted asses

Being traumatized by the amount of power religious conservatives hold over all of our lives is rational

[–] Fapper_McFapper@lemmy.world 27 points 9 months ago

Fuck Religion and if you’re here to defend religion, fuck you too!

[–] Behaviorbabe@kbin.social 26 points 9 months ago

I periodically remind my children that if someone approaches them talking about god that they’re lunatics and to find another adult immediately.

[–] Uranium3006@kbin.social 24 points 9 months ago

religion poisons everything. we must defeat our oppressors

[–] Lath@kbin.social 15 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Bish, please. Religious trauma haunts everyone.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

“Everyone” doesn’t have to worry about being subject to a cottage industry of legal child abuse/indoctrination camps meant to change their sexuality or gender identity and are rife with sexual abuse.

[–] Lath@kbin.social 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, the rest of the kids have to be taken to church regularly in order to be sexually abused. How privileged of them.
Then there are those extra lucky ones who get home visits instead!

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Are you actually comparing being taken to church with "conversion therapy?"

[–] Lath@kbin.social 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Are you unable to take into consideration the idea that the religious staff didn't need special camps in order to assault children? That they could and did do it on church grounds or even in the victims own homes?

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Do you really not understand the difference between taking a child to a church where they may possibly be assaulted and forcing a child to be sexually tortured? Really?

[–] Lath@kbin.social 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Dear cephalopod, you're too focused on comparing who gets harmed the most. It's not a contest. None should be harmed at all.
The division is unhealthy.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You cannot make it any more illegal to sexually abuse children in church than it already is. Conversion therapy is legal in a majority of U.S. states. It is legal sexual abuse. That's a huge difference.

[–] Lath@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Converting "deviant behaviours" was a mainstay of psychological practices up until recently. It wasn't limited to sexual identity. Anyone who didn't conform to social norms of so-called 'morals' and religious background was subjected to this kind of torture, one of its more famous victims being a daughter of the Kennedy family.

There is no legal sexual abuse. There is lack of information, lack of evidence or complicit corruption. Any judge that respects the spirit of law will treat abuse as such when presented to them.

Yet if by chance, any abuse is legal then you are also allowed to perform it on those who practice it on others. I recommend you do so if there is such a situation.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Conversion therapy is sexual abuse. It is legal. Therefore it is legal sexual abuse.

https://www.nsvrc.org/blogs/conversion-therapy-sexual-violence

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

The irony of the person who came into a post specifically about the trauma that religion causes LGBTQ people and tried to make it about other people saying this is too unreal.

Pot, have you met kettle?

[–] Lath@kbin.social 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I didn't try to make it about other people. Being a victim of religion is not an exclusive membership. Or are you proud of being an abuser's favoured one and I'm threatening that position?
If so, then I apologize. Please, segregate yourself. Stand out. Be different from any other victim.

My bad.

[–] EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 9 months ago

Yes, you did. When speaking about a specific group being affected by something, we don't have to talk about every group affected by the same thing. To not do so isn't ignoring them or segregation or whatever, or else every time you talk about starving children in the US, you have to mention all the starving children in every other country as well. Nobody here or in the article said anything about how straight kids aren't harmed by religion.

This is just "I am uncomfortable when the conversation isn't about me" because you aren't included in a conversation about LGBTQ experiences.

[–] DrBob@lemmy.ca 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No. They were talking about organized sexual abuse.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

Conversion therapy is organized sexual abuse. In fact, it's sexual violence.

[–] Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 9 months ago

Did it make sense to you when you wrote this comment to suggest that kids subjected to conversion therapy camps are somehow less exposed to abusive religious practices?

[–] oDDmON@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

TY. Came here to say the same.

Doesn’t matter your orientation, guilt and shame are the tools of control and clergy wield them to great effect.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

That’s absolutely true, but there’s an added dimension for queer people because it serves as an additional original sin.

[–] Ranvier@sopuli.xyz 4 points 9 months ago

The lgbt person's story is just an example. The article goes on state religious trauma may affect as many as a third of US adults. It's not saying this hypothetical new dsm diagnosis would be specific to only lgbt related religious trauma.

[–] lolcatnip@reddthat.com 4 points 9 months ago

That seems very dismissive of the actual trauma many people experience. Lots of people grew up without abusive religious authority figures, or without any religious authority figures at all. I'm one of those people and I don't want to downplay other people's suffering by acting as if I experienced it too.

It sounds like you probably experienced religious trauma yourself, and part of how you cope with it is telling yourself it's just normal. It's not.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 13 points 9 months ago

No fucking shit. Maybe it’s just the queerness talking but I assumed this was common knowledge. And it’s clearly intentional. Religious folks don’t protest pride to present an informed alternative, they do it because some of us will have trauma responses when hearing what they say and trauma responses make for vulnerable people, and Christianity preys on vulnerable people.

It’s the same as how Christians give us the trauma that drives us to alcohol abuse then use treatment for that as a recruitment ground. Whether it’s actually intentional or not they drive us to the exact positions that they recruit from.

[–] Numberone@startrek.website 3 points 9 months ago

Equal opportunity haunter...