The Thing Is - In Order For Me To Trust You As A Religious Person, I Need To Know That You Support Apostates

The thing is - in order for me to trust you as a religious person, I need to know that you support apostates of your faith. ALL apostates of your faith.

The ones who left because they faced spiritual abuse, the ones who left because they didn’t think the religion was true, and the ones who left because they simply didn’t like it. The ones who are open and angry about their religious abuse. The ones who still participate in cultural events and the ones who completely cut contact with the faith. The ones who left because their community was sexist, racist, homophobic, or transphobic. The ones who converted to a different religion and the ones who decided they would just rather assimilate and the ones who don’t give you a reason.

And when your reaction to an apostate, ESPECIALLY ones who left because of abuse and conservative communities, is stuff like “well, the people who hurt you weren’t REAL [X]s”, or “well, actually if you interpret this religion the RIGHT way (by joining MY community) then it’s totally not bigoted at all -” or “well you can’t let your bad experience taint a whole religion” or “you shouldn’t talk about your bad experience because it gives the rest of us a bad name” or “then I guess you never REALLY had faith” or “the idea that you can leave a faith in a meaningful way is a Western colonialist ideal” or “if you leave this faith then you are committing voluntary cultural genocide” - the last two of which are real things I saw real people say recently - then it’s very obvious you care more about protecting your religion and its power over its adherents than about caring for the individual people within it.

Nobody owes it to you to stay in your religion. And if you can’t 100%, wholeheartedly respect that, then I’m not going to trust you or your opinions about religion.