Let’s talk about religion.

Open Minds Group Online - Oct 22

Do you have a faith and is it something that you were born into, or was it something that came into your life as an adult? If you’re not religious, how do you feel about the rituals and practices of those people who do practice a faith? 

At the beginning of October we gave our online group time and space to think about religion and how it affects their lives. We also wanted to think about the impact of religion on our LGBTQIA+ identities and how religion can interact with this identity. 

The majority of the attendees were either practicing Sikhs or had experience of growing up in Sikh Punjabi households. People talked about the fact that growing up, they were exposed to a lot of ideas about what the Sikh religion was about, but a lot these ideas turned out to be false or ideas that turned out to be cultural and not religious. 

Some of our family members had told us that to be LGBTQIA+ and religious was to be going against what religion was teaching and the only way to live a religiously correct life was to ‘be straight’.

We want to trust what our family tell us, and when they say things like this, it can set up strong feelings of shame inside us. This shame can be even more intense if we’re told that it’s what ‘God’ has decided. 

Some of us started to make our own investigations into what religion says about being LGBTQIA+ and everyone who read into Sikhism found that there was nothing written about same sex relationships or attraction. There is a deep emphasis about living a good and honest life and about building a personal relationship with God. 

Just because we know this, it doesn’t mean that people who think of themselves as religious will make space for LGBTQIA+ identities. Religous people can still be some of the most hostile people when it comes to thinking about queer lives and they often feel the most confident in expressing these views. 

Lived experience of being excluded in these kinds of spaces meant that some of the group felt unconnected to the rituals of their religion and they wishes for more spaces where having a LGBTQIA+ identity didn’t stop them worshiping with other people. Although some queer friendly religious spaces are starting up, LGBTQIA+ lives are still hidden in most Sikh religious conversations. 

Overall the conversation was joyful and celebratory. The religious members of the group talked about how developing a personal connection with religion meant that they felt closer to the real values of the religion. They felt confident in being able to push back against any shame that other people directed their way and it sounded like they were practicing the religion much more meaningfully than many of the people around them. 

We ended the group with the hope that, for those people that needed them, LGBTQIA+ friendly religious spaces will continue to start-up and grow. If you’re a member of any of these kinds of groups, please let us know.

With warm wishes,

The Open Minds Project ­

We meet on the last Wednesday of each month and if you want to join us at an Open Minds Meeting, please visit the Events page on our website.