Ending LGBTQ bigotry might start here.

I’d like to go out on a limb by saying that the first, best way to end the bigotry, ignorance, and hatred directed against the LGBTQ community would be for certain organized religions and their leaders to stop teaching and condoning the intolerance, marginalization, and hatred of the LGBTQ community through their teaching, primary source documents, and explicit doctrine.

Religion certainly isn’t the only place where this kind of hatred and bigotry originates, of course. Intolerance and hate have many sources. But if you grow up in a religion that stands opposed to same sex relationships, transgender rights, the concept of gender fluidity, and basic human decency, it’s probably going to have an influence on you or the people around you.

Right?

When you tell your congregants that my gay friends will burn in hell for loving people of the same sex, or you refuse to allow gay or lesbian people to marry within the confines of your church, or you condemn their sexuality based upon a book that also orders you to murder anyone who dares to work on Sunday, you’re probably contributing to the problem in a significant way.

And I’m not just referring to the bigoted religious leaders standing before their congregations, but also the congregants who allow their spiritual leaders to spew their ignorance and hate unchecked.

If you wouldn’t work for an employer that made policy based upon bigotry, you might want to reconsider your choice of religion if it, too, bases its policies in bigotry. If you wouldn’t vote for an openly bigoted politician, you might want to start tithing somewhere else, too. If you don’t accept bigotry as a part of your everyday life, maybe stop accepting it as a part of your religious life.

If you wouldn’t do business with an openly bigoted company, you probably shouldn’t do business with any part of that company. Right? Claiming that your particular franchise is ignoring their company’s foundation of bigotry fails to acknowledge that your support for your possibly more tolerant franchise still ultimately supports the foundation upon which the entire company is based.

Saying, “Yes, the church is bigoted, but my preacher is not” still supports the church and its bigotry.

Doctrine is doctrine.

If certain religions stopped being intolerant, hateful, and unquestionably evil about their treatment of members of the LGBTQ community, things might improve considerably for my gay and transgender friends.

That would be good.

Things might also improve considerably for the congregants who are taught to hate certain human beings based upon their gender and sexuality. Nothing good comes of hate. Nothing good comes from senseless, bigoted intolerance.

Again, I’m out on a limb here, so forgive me if these ideas seem outlandish or unrealistic.