Interesting, sobering read from Chris Stedman. I can defer to the respondents who have stated that not having a belief in a deity makes for a less fertile ground claiming divine or supernatural authority in the demeaning of SOGI diversity, but I can just as well accept his observance of how lack of a belief in a deity is not an indicator of greater respect and acceptance of differences in sexual orientation and gender identity.

Reading about the case of LGBTs in China before, during and after the Mao dictatorship should justify both statements. Homosexuality was not banned in China during the empire or the early republic, but it was during Maoist (state-atheist and state-feminist) dictatorship under “hooliganism” laws and psychiatric Imprisonment. Now that those factors have been out of the picture since the early 2000s, the government there is tight-lipped about LGBT-anything, but it doesn’t take an antagonistic approach to the proliferation of LGBT organizations. But the fact that the doctrinal homophobia of Communist state ideology was imported from Russia and the Soviet Union, a historically-“Christian nation” which had just recently gone state-atheist, can provide many ideas as to why state atheism and state feminism did not inoculate the typical Cold-War Communist state against cultural homophobia and transphobia.

Of course, now in the post-ColdWar/Stonewall era, many of those same countries are dropping the homophobic and transphobic laws. And now things are flipped: the state-owned media of China, Cuba and other state-atheist Communist countries are much more acclimated to LGBT people, while the Christian communities of these countries are coming out with doctrinal homophobia.

But is it the religion? The political ideology? The leaders’ experience of LGBT people achieving their rights, living their lives and defying stereotypes in “freer” societies? Indigenous movements for coming out and challenging institutional narratives? What changed in China, Cuba, Vietnam, etc.?

The state atheism and state feminism certainly did not factor into the gradual change in narrative to LGBT people. It may be possible that the state feminism may have remained based upon a rigid gender binary which was retained by the Communist-ruled state, leading to the oppression of LGBT people. It may very well be possible that state atheism allowed a dependence by the Party almost entirely upon (very often) inhumane medical practices and ideas which went unchallenged because they were “scientific” and “hygienic”; i.e., that homosexuality and gender variance are mental disorders and violations of the social order.

That’s the conundrum: Neither atheism nor feminism have any inherent answers or doctrines regarding LGBT people and  the dignity of our variance. They intersect at many points when it comes to the influence of religion upon cultural and political perception of gender and sexual variance, but they are not intrinsic to the question of our equality.

They do help, though. Non-belief in a deity intersects when it comes to the perception of science and academia toward LGBT issues, or at least mitigates the resort to supernatural claims regarding sexual and gender experiences. Similarly, feminism intersects when it comes to the cultural and institutional treatment of non-males in society.

Does this dichotomy – whether atheism/feminism are helpful or not-so-helpful to LGBT people – matter?

To me, it does, but my perspective is that of someone who found Abrahamic religion – especially Christianity and Islam – to be the “same shit, different asshole”. When I look outside of that extremely large grouping (which includes Judaism, even in its practical mitigation of homophobic and misogynistic scriptures), its a bit harder to find the sort of scriptural homophobia and transphobia which one finds in Abrahamic religion, but the misogyny is still rampant.