Mpromptu

Hi, Charlie -- Love your show! When are you going to make it available as a video or audio podcast? Because it would make long drives much more bearable.

I sure hope so. Just about all the ways LGBTQ people are discriminated against are rooted in religion, especially conservative denominations. So as the demographics shift away from religion as a whole, I'm hopeful that we'll see a similar shift away from anti-gay discrimination as there will be less support for it.

Even young evangelicals are much more supportive of LGBTQ rights, even if they lag behind the rest of us.

This is a great question, because it's one of the main obstacles to convincing people to stop believing in God. We're essentially asking them to abandon their social network, and a lot of people won't do that (for good reason) no matter where the evidence points.

I don't know that there's anything nearly as powerful... but it's interesting to watch Meetup groups form around a common bond or even Resistance groups form around a political ideology. Those aren't analogous to churches, but they're not entirely different, either.

As I've said to atheist groups before, though, unless we can offer people the social benefits of church without the religious nonsense, it's going to be very hard to convince them to leave. (There have been many attempts at forming "atheist churches," with varying degrees of success.)

So glad to help!

It's always infuriating to see politicians and otherwise decent people taking anti-LGBTQ positions. It's rage-inducing when I hear it from someone I know personally. But losing my cool probably won't solve anything. I try to limit confrontation to people whose minds might actually be open to change. Even if I engage with a conservative online, I'm thinking about what I could say to help people who are reading the comments, not necessarily the person I'm talking to (who may not change).

I really think it will. It's not that the 81% love Trump. Some just tolerated him with the hope he'd appoint conservative judges (one of the few things he's unfortunately done very well). Some couldn't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat (Clinton, specifically). But none of them were bothered enough by Trump's rhetoric, racism, sexism, obvious pandering to their community, etc. to even stay home on Election Day.

I hope people recognize the incredible hypocrisy. There was a Christian president in office for 8 years and they fought against him all the time. Now they have one who's Christian in name only -- who certainly doesn't act in the mold of a "family values" champion -- and they refuse to abandon him.

If nothing else, they've lost any claim to moral authority. For years to come, when they say something like abortion or divorce or marriage equality is immoral, everyone will be able to respond, "But you supported Donald Trump, so what do you care about immorality?"

I think a lot of young Christians are disgusted by this, too.