I really do try to respect other people's beliefs, no matter how strange and unworkable they sound to me. I really, really do. My husband is much better at it than I am, but then he was brought up in a non-orthodox religious household and his upbringing was imbued with warmth and endearing tradition. And it's all that, that I try to keep in mind when I'm thinking bad thoughts about religion; about how, no matter how nice and kind its participants are, pretty much all of the religions I'm aware of treat women as second-class servants.
A religious wedding I went to recently just confirmed this. I honestly have no real desire to 'slag off' people's beliefs, but at one point the officiator turned to the assembled crowd of friends and family (separated, incidentally, into groups of men and women) and said "Now...I know in modern times it's fashionable to state that our religion treats women as inferior. But I have to tell you, that couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, we men place you on a pedestal...because you look after the home and family. You control the most important part of a man's life, and we revere the contribution you make".
This was said with genuine warmth, but I found it so bloody patronising that I wanted to scream. He then went on to state that the man's job was to "feed and clothe his wife", with the predictable follow-up about not taking that too literally in shopping centres. In one just-under-an-hour ceremony, this man had managed to reinforce more lazy stereotypes than Jim Davidson, albeit without the added bile. But no matter how nice he was, why does anybody take this sort of rubbish seriously? Have we not evolved sufficiently to leave all this sort of stuff behind us and accept that people can be whoever and whatever they want? Religion, or rather our interpretation of it, is responsible for the belief that women are nothing but homemakers, that gay people aren't 'natural', that the idea of changing sex is wrong, that we should class faith in a god as being above the use of medical developments. Why? Honestly...just why? I genuinely, honestly don't understand why these old religions are given any credence whatsoever. Not in this day and age, when we know so much more and are supposed to be enlightened by scientific discovery and depth of knowledge.
My husband, and others, say it's because people are brought up with it; they live it from birth and they see the good sides of it, like how it can comfort you in a crisis, how it can make you a good person and enshrine you with good family values. But again - why does anybody need religion to make them a good person, or to care about their families? Why can't people just be good anyway, without the promise of eternal salvation afterwards? And just what constitutes "good"? The Ten Commandments, for example, aren't specific enough for these modern times; an awful lot of interpretation has to come into what is essentially a list of half-baked directives from a meeting at which all the participants were half-asleep (and we've all been there, right?) "Honour thy mother and father" is one I find particularly vague and unhelpful, because some people's parents are monsters. Surely if there really is a God, he'd have been a bit more specific; helped us out a bit?
Ahem. Deep breath...and relax!
I don't usually voice rants like this...well, not unless I'm provoked. Normally I smile, and I nod along, and I try my best to see the good in ceremonies such as the wedding I've just mentioned. None of the other guests would have known what I thought, unless they asked me directly, which none of them did. Though sometimes it's embarrassingly obvious, like the video of my sister's wedding where I'm unknowingly captured rolling my eyes and making a silly face during the hymn we were singing at the time (I wanted to sink through the floor when I saw that - how embarrassing!!) "Why did you make that face?" asked my sister. "Er...well, I'm just not really a fan of religion and hymns, that's all" I spluttered.
She looked at me for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. "Fair enough" she said. And maybe that's good advice for me too!
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