Alexis @LexYeen@vulpine.club

So like I'm not saying always be wary of Christians or whatever. But if someone seems very interested in being your friend despite the fact that they seem to "disagree with your lifestyle" and you know they're in a religion that emphasizes evangelism

I'd be very cautious

And even if it feels icky or not right there's a lot of pressure to approach things like this and think about people in this way. You're told you should only be friends with nonbelievers to convert them

And you need to always have people you can target for these kinds of exercises. If most of your community is from the church it's kind of hard so you need to go befriend people for the purpose of evangelizing.

When I was in evangelizing circles they had us do this exercise several times where we made a web going out from us then wrote down the names of any people we knew weren't "saved" (ie in a church with similar doctrine) and then we expanded the web out to people they knew who aren't saved that we could reach through them

So you're supposed to like target those people to get to their extended networks. It's very culty tbh and very manipulative

The thing is too like there are people who will respond in ways that appear to be positive and supportive and they're possibly more dangerous than the people who are outright about their bigotry?

They probably do actually care about you, but in their worldview that means they need to save you and they're willing to stick around to make that happen. They will proudly brag about how they're willing to befriend gay people to convert them (not to gay people of course)

So I responded and was like, please don't ask the pastors unless you want to be manipulated and evangelized to

They want people to come to their church and they want to convert people they see as sinners, don't walk up to them and give them that information

And then someone shared how a bible group chat they're in suggested that they should try to "befriend" members of our lgbtq+ organization which is like, textbook targeted evangelism

I went to this FAQueer thing yesterday, so like people were asking questions about queer stuff. And one of the questions was how to find a supportive religious community as a queer person

And some people who don't have much experience with church were like "just ask the pastors if they are accepting of gay people!" And like I know they meant well but noooo don't do that

If you ever want a straight answer about a church don't ask the pastor

@Oneironott macrotters

just walking down the street casually, saying hi to their smaller friends
-F

what lgbtq+ staff at the bbc were saying last week (from https://www.vice.com/en/article/akgxm5/bbc-expected-to-quit-stonewalls-lgbtq-diversity-programme)

hey aliens,

when we launch billionaires into space, those are for you. you're supposed to take them. those are free specimens for your research. on the house

you're welcome