You know, I feel like a lot of the difficulty that I have with dealing with a lot of the queer community as it exists on here stems from the fact that I approach the world from a very Jewish perspective and a lot of these kids are coming from a culturally Christian perspective?

Like, I come at the question of identity from a perspective of 'there is no queer Pope, there is no one person who hands down judgements on what Is or Is Not in the community, and each one of us is the sovereign ruler of our own identity,'...

... which is a very 'two Jews, three opinions' sort of way to approach things.

But a lot of these kids have a super binaristic good/bad, black/white, 0/1 sort of mindset, which is just Puritanical mindsets wearing a rainbow sash.

It's very 'don't argue with the pastor'.

And I know what that mindset is, because that's how I was raised. There's one Correct Way to view the scripture, there's one Correct Way to behave, there's one Correct Way to be whatever you are, and if you do it Wrong, then you'll get rejected, because you're no longer Pure.

So a lot of these kids come from that kind of background, and while they're rejecting the Gay Is Bad programming, they're still stuck in that sort of 'you have to behave in a certain way to Belong' mindset.

Which isn't inherently, like, bad, people like to Belong, but.

In a lot of these kids it comes with a sidecar of 'I am the authority on you and your identity, because there's only one way to be a Lesbian, and if you Lesbian Wrong, then YOU are wrong.'

& that's just not how personal identity works. It's very much 'two Jews, three opinions.'

So yeah, I guess that's why I get so confused by these kids, they act like there's a queer Pope out there handing out proclamations, or the pastor is going to track them down after youth group and scold them for Queering Wrong.

And I'm just over here arguing in Torah study.