Things you hate that are not socially acceptable to hate

For me, it’s

My birthday
Christmas
The pressure to keep in touch with people
Exercise

Drivers stopping to let me cross the road after I already stopped or adjusted for their passing.

I feel like if I was allowed to hate birthdays a lot of resentment about other things would vanish. But last year I had to get a cake and everything because it would be “weird” to have Easter at our house and not acknowledge my birthday.

I honestly hate all holidays.

Except halloween

I don't know how old you are treesh, but I've found that post-40 it got a lot easier to ignore or minimize birthdays. I haven't been around my extended family on my birthday for a long time though

um what

It's so damn normal not to care about or to perform your indifference to your birthday, whereas I LOVE my birthday and love celebrating with friends.

I've found that after 40 I've said fuck it and embrace my birthday cuz it's awesome.

I am 36. My children and my spouse love birthdays and I am happy about celebrating other people on their birthdays. I just have an irrational hatred of my own, in part because I was born on Hitler’s 100th birthday. It feels cursed.

My best friend's birthday is also 4/20. You know what you can do? Spark up.

I hate generative A.I., which is socially acceptable in some places but not my corporate workplace. Senior leadership are fond of repeating the nonsensical mantra, "A.I. isn't going to take away people's jobs, but it is going away the jobs of people who don't know how to use A.I." I want to scream in their faces.

It has never been well received when I say I want to do nothing and receive nothing on my bday. I think it is seen as petulant.

Oh i really hate ai too. Good one.

I actually celebrated my birthday this year, for the first time in decades, because it happens to fall on Charlie Kirk Remembrance Day and I wanted to reclaim it

Marijuana makes me have panic attacks lol xp

Negronis?

Sober for 2 years after many years of daily drinking :-/

I’d love a negroni but shouldn’t

I like birthdays and most annual occasions but people think I'm crazy for suggesting the British should move their fireworks night to any part of the year that isn't cold and soggy, like pretty much every other country in the world

all good xpost

The Princess Bride (I don't even actively or publicly hate it, it only comes up when people keep pressing me about what i think about it when they notice I'm not joining in their quotefest)

the 4th of July. even when this country was less of a cesspool, it's a holiday full of obnoxious drunk people blowing things up and scaring dogs

theatre people (yes, yes, I know that makes me the worst kind of hypocrite)

Harry Potter fans (pre-JK Rowling heel turn)

most thinkpieces

95% of local opening bands

Waffles and pancakes
fireworks

Mashed potatoes. Least favorite food.

i'm into this thread. these days i try to minimize the things i hate, and i've definitely made progress. BUT there are some things that are just plain nopes for me and always will be. christmas is one of them. thankfully it doesn't upset me like it used to. i celebrate the solstice with a fire to welcome the coming light. and then spend xmas out of town with my partner if i can.

let's see, one thing i hate doing that i do feel a need to do, to a degree, is experience the mostly horrible health care system and racket in the u.s. my partner saw a mole on my back recently and insisted i get it checked out. yeah i'm just not going to do that. like, as a separate dr office visit. i might bring it up in a regular physical. overall i'm not spending money on health care unless i'm already sick. i know there are preventative things you should do. some of them seem more important, to me, than others. that's my decision. i know that can make people big mad (i've seen it on this board). but, like, we're all going to die. and how much a person is willing to spend in doctor's offices vs a health risk is a personal decision. so nyah. i'll do whatever the fuck i want when it comes to my own health, unless it puts others at risk.

i hate the feeling that, even though when you go to a gym you are ostensibly there to work out, you enter a social arena and are somewhat obligated to interact with and accept everyone and welcome everyone looking at you and etc. most people get the message that i just want to be left alone at the gym, but some people are paying attention to everyone and everything but their own workout, and they are usually the ones who gawk or talk etc. it's very much not acceptible to get irritated at gym talkers because "live and let live" is the overriding law at the gym, but i can't help but feel that the law should really be "focus on your own workout, your own body, and shut the fuck up" lol. also "gym walking" should be against the law. people who walk around the perimeter of the gym for what seems like hours to get their steps in. go outside you sod! there's probably something terrible that keeps them from going outside, i guess. but damn their constant lapping gets on my nerves.

birthdays, i have mixed feelings about. generally just want them to be over but i have discovered pleasure in people wishing me happy birthday. i don't respond to anyone though. it's my birthday so i can do what i want! not going to make it about other people and their feelings. but yeah kiss the ring. haha.

whistling

xp I've had a mole on my chest for years, probably decades at this point. Every time I went in for a physical I asked my doc "you sure this is nothing" and he was always like "it's nothing." And every time I took my shirt off at the pool or beach somebody would say "man, you really need to get that looked at, because I knew somebody who..." So finally my doc said "would it make you feel better to see a specialist?" And he referred me to a dermatologist at Mass General, who said "it's nothing" before I could even get my shirt all the way off. Now I want those well-intentioned friends of mine to reimburse me the co-pay.

Children

If i didn’t have kids I would never go to the doctor.

I especially hate how dentists tell me to get invisaline. Like i refused braces in middle school for a reason, I like my crooked teeth.

do you enjoy chewing

the stuff that dentists insist on as like things you have to do is .. much greater than the things you actually have to do ime. my partner got implants for teeth that were pulled and it's been a lot of time, money and etc that doesn't seem necessary or desirable to me. i had one pulled 7 years ago and it's fine. maybe it depends on which tooth / teeth. but again, i'm going to let him do him and just offer empathy.

brushing is bullshit

I luckily have not needed much dental work but am always fine with fillings when needed. I resent the invisaline comments because it is cosmetic and who are they to say how i should look.

Almost every eating establishment you can find on a British high street, but especially Greggs.

with skin and tooth stuff i just think there's a spectrum, it's personal, it's easy to cross over into nice-to-haves but not-strictly-necessaries. like, have you seen tibetan sherpas? i doubt they're seeing dermatologists. there is a lot of pressure with certain health care areas that seems largely derived from that sweet intersection between people's neuroses and an industry's profit motive.

I had an opthamalogist recommend surgery for a minor ptosis in my left eyelid. Was furious.

I am in a bad mood today which is part of the origin of this thread.

In general with my appearance I am mixed. I am really vain in some ways, but I never appreciate comments from others on how I could improve my looks. I feel like I should be allowed to grow old and ugly, to be ignored. Like I fear that but I also I wish I didn’t and god save anyone who recommends botox to me.

Greggs logo is confusing to me, it looks like an estate agents'

xxp but again, it's personal. some people really need the skin attention. others are blessed with thick skin so to speak. i resent people generalizing about what health practices you're supposed to do. it's my decision bitch.

I had braces for 8 years because my teeth looked like Lisa Simpson's in the computer model and I couldnt chew properly. I would never have qualified to be a Union soldier in the Civil War because you had to have two teeth that met so you could rip open cartridge boxes while holding a gun.

imagine that "bitch" as like a gay man saying "slay bitch". sorry not sorry. wow ok i've reached my daily sass quota.

If i had that i would have gotten braces. My teeth are slightly crooked on the bottom and my bite is perfect. I am fortunate to have had good dental health. My issue was with dentists and other doctors trying to convince me to looksmax.

Xp

If i was a woman I would probably go insane with all the cultural pressure to look thinner, younger, whatever. The little bit that I experience that it feels so invasive.

Almost every eating establishment you can find on a British high street, but especially Greggs.

British fetishisation of bad food is real. 95% of UK car journeys are under three hours' duration* yet our motorway service stations are legion and always filled with people buying overpriced, low quality food and beverages.

*made-up stat.

I would never have qualified to be a Union soldier in the Civil War because you had to have two teeth that met so you could rip open cartridge boxes while holding a gun.

TIL

i hate the incredibly generic and scripted kind of chit chat that strangers tend to engage in in places like airports. how bout them broncos etc. why i got big-ass headphones on at all times when traveling.

relatedly i hate airports. it's getting to the point where if it's not reachable by car i'd rather not go. my body clock is all messed up and i had to spend 8 hours in a closet, but i'm somewhere else for 5 days. great. i don't like the shellshock of traveling by plane. give me space and slow transitions over land please. my aversion to air travel has only appeared within the last 5 years or so.

i hate drinking culture. the faux excitement of it. i say this because i spent the weekend with someone who likes to drink, and we were going out to places for that reason. so boring.

It’s incredibly socially acceptable to hate airports and drinking culture dude

think airport hate is near universal (I love them but I am odd)

I feel like the weird person more and more lately because I still enjoy plane travel (not as much as train travel!) and having mah dranks

i hate airplanes and, this is the one i am most ashamed of, traveling in general...

if it was up to me i would never leave the nyc metro area for any reason.

i am not proud of that at all

I totally admit to this being something I'm not proud of, because even though I'm pretty acculturated and I look askance at forms of ethno-nationalism, there are still parts of me that want to keep Asian culture separate from white/ American culture (and in case people don't know, I'm Asian). And maybe that's where my unease comes from, like this is how I compensate for otherwise being bad at being Chinese. I haven't considered it from a colonialist perspective, but to show how acculturated I am, I'm not that familiar with the history of Taiwan (which is where most of the Christian Asians I've met come from), much less of Christianity therein.

I’m currently in Taiwan in the lead up to Christmas; I get less sense of christian influence here than in South Korea or the Asian diaspora communities in DC or LA. Am I off base?

The temple-to-church ratio definitely favors the former.

Maybe not if you're in Taiwan -- I just seemed to notice that a lot of immigrants from there tended to be Christian.

Statistically, Christians in China are divided almost equally between Catholics and Protestants, and are at 5% of the population, and it’s about the same in Taiwan and mainland China— much higher in Hong Kong (14%). South Korea in comparison is 30% Protestant, it’s really a thing there. Philippines ofc is 85% Catholic.

In comparison, most of the SE Asian countries are 10% Christian.

there's sort of a flip side to orientalism that i think is involved in this kind of thing - looking askance at asian christians. it's one of the reasons i feel myself hesitant to 'explore buddhism' - i don't want to be a tourist, and thankfully meditation doesn't really require a religious tradition. i think generally it's a good idea to hold space for all religions being both something that offers a lot to people and has a natural darkness on the flip side. like it's kinda baked in. to religions and to life generally lol.

I had an affair with a Vietnamese man who told me he was Christian. When I asked him if his family was Protestant or Catholic, he corrected me— “we’re Christian”. I asked him again and again he corrected me. I asked him “pope or no pope” and he replied “oh, pope, definitely.” I thought of how I could name several of the historical ecumenical councils and their significance and about Origen on my bookshelf and I knew this affair wouldn’t last, and it didn’t

I've noticed it too. College students say they grew up "Christian" but have no idea what denomination or have no idea what "denomination" means. I kinda get it: to call yourself "Protestant" is a negative affirmation, no? But "Christian" suggests that Catholics worship Baal.

Most Protestants make the distinction when asked— Anglican, Presbyterian, Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, Unitarian. The only Christians I’ve heard describe themselves as “Protestant” really are from Ireland and Northern Ireland, now that I think about it

I always have said “United” to Canadians who know what that means, and Presbyterian to people who wouldn’t know

One of my younger coworkers who grew up Catholic may have been messing with me, but apparently the in-joke now is an inversion of the “Oh, they’re not Christian, they’re Catholic” trope that midwestern protestants would use. He said “oh, we’d say ‘we’re catholic, they’re “christian”’”

It’s a weird religious landscape and I feel like my friends who were raised catholic have more of a cultural affinity than a lot of the protestant denominations who have pretty much dumped every tradition in favor of megachurches

Modern Americans seem to just church shop for vibes and doctrinal differences are irrelevant. Although sometimes the demonizations have hard time figuring out what is they believe. Luther apparently was apparently certain that God had predestined humans for salvation or dannation—a belief growing Lutheran I had always thought belonged exclusively to the Calvinists—but Luther’s follower Melanchthon worked to really downplay that.

-denominations-

The average age of the worshippers going to the Baptist church next to my condo complex must be about 29. They dress in shorts and t-shirts. This church likes to paint affirmational maxims on its exterior walls and from what I understand they barely allude to the Bible. People want vibes, not rules, I guess. I'm not sure what to think. As a former Catholic, I can't shake the belief that some sense of pain -- of sacrifice, etc. -- should enter a relationship with the divine. Perhaps I'm full of shit.

I mean, if you aren't parsing the Old and New Testaments and the sermon/homily comes down to Power of Positive Thinking twaddle, what intellectual simulation will a worshiper get? They can stay home and watch an influencer.

I'm still thinking about becoming a Mormon because all the Mormons I know are doing really well financially. I think of it like a spiritual version of LinkedIn.

Modern Americans seem to just church shop for vibes and doctrinal differences are irrelevant.

As an american I understand just how well this aligns with our cultural leanings. But the way this tends to work irl is it gives rise to numerous cults centered around charismatic preachers who clothe themselves in the immense authority of The Almighty to push their congregants in any direction they feel like.

Add: It also gives rise to megachurches that sell happy talk and repackaged capitalist consumerism.

I like the lite-rigour of Prez and Anglican. I think Baptist Church is silly.

My boyfriend’s family are all mega church people— bf’s younger brother plays guitar in the band. I gamely agreed to go to a service— they didn’t ask, I told them I was down and they were delighted.

It fucking sucked. The music was trite and the lyrics terrible. The vibe was like U2 made by AI. The centerpiece of the service was a sermon given— over fucking video conference— by the head of the church. The sermon was 50 minutes long.

It was the most basic ass material, coin sheep prodigal son, like a ten year old could’ve given the sermon— but the dude was getting it wrong. Fucking up the interpretation. Prodigal son returns and the dad, like God, will always welcome him home, right? Not according to this dude, he was video conferencing that there were conditions. That God wouldn’t always take you back.

I was appalled by the whole experience. I told my bf I wanted to take them down to a proper fucking service at a proper fucking church. Get an actual minister to dispense actual biblical wisdom. He told me that, strangely, his parents would more-likely attend a synagogue or a mosque than they would the United Church. That they were seen as somewhat “more sinful” or something to Evangelicals.

Anyway I like the vibe of Evangelicals and wkiw them any time but I’m not ever going to their megachurch again, that is the wackest version of Bible that exists

Most of the evangelicals I know are all in on the prosperity gospel and not very au fait with Jesus being a bit of a socialist.

I don’t know any evangelicals, thank god

I had a convo about religion w/ some friends during my master's in Portugal and two of them did mark the division as being between protestants and christians. Neither of them actually religious themselves, it wasn't a chauvinistic gesture, had just grown up knowing there's a schism and that obviously the church their parents and most of Portugal went to was the Christian one.

great story fgti - I want to hear more about the updated prodigal son!

I went to a LOT of Sunday school/church as a kid. Yet when I started taking my toddler to playgroup and hearing Bible stories there (did not know in advance that was going to happen; but I kept coming back because the cake was excellent) there were a few unfamiliar ones where my friend and I would be surprised by the 'twist' ending - the precious pearl being something you should treasure, not give away to feed the poor or whatever

That God wouldn’t always take you back.

haha, this stuff is so funny to me now. put your dick in the wrong hole or your lips on the eternally damned cigarette paper of a marijuana joint? sorry bub the entirety of creation hates you. it's so wild because the actual literal new testament is the exact opposite of this kind of thing. but the in-group dynamics of a "religion" i mean a social club for dumbasses just cannot resist the pull of a little arbitrary fear for group cohesion and ritual sacrifice.

I've noticed it too. College students say they grew up "Christian" but have no idea what denomination or have no idea what "denomination" means.

Whenever I taught my gay life and culture course and had students do introductions at the beginning of the term, I inevitably had a few who led with "I grew up in a conservative Christian household/community" and I always took that to mean "evangelical." Maybe I'm assuming too much, but my best friend from high school came from an Evangelical family, so I know a little bit--literally, that is--about how to read these things.

My husband is a practicing Anglican. His church does Pride stuff, does trans outreach, and even ruffled some feathers recently by maybe getting too opinionated about the Palestinian genocide. So my guess is that my students who lead with "I grew up in..." belonged to a different church.

I adore my inlaws and their Evangelical friends— and they adore me. I see how their social activities and outreach are enormous net positives in their lives. A relative of my bf had an alcohol-related scare and the way their family and community helped him recover was effective and supportive and frankly wonderful to see.

It seems for all intents and purposes that they were super loving and supportive in their way toward my bf being gay. But it also generally seems as if Evangelism’s positive aspects are kinda most-applicable to normies, that people who diverge from “what is standardized” are left feeling isolated and unsupported— it’s not like this church has a GSA for their youth or anything.

I am less-than-skeptical in my responses to certain of my non-religious friends whose teen/young adult children have entered into some manner of Christian exploration. It seems to me to be a healthy thing on-the-whole for kids to be going to youth groups, or going to church, I guess? if the kids are “normies”; like if they were gay and doing gay stuff or musically-inclined and doing music stuff how could one not be supportive? I don’t know. My own experiences in interfacing with different forms of religious exploration— attending synagogue with Jewish friends, listening to Muslim friends talk extensively about what scripture means to them, going to Mormon services with my step-family’s Mormon friends, going to Mass with my ex’s family, and of course my five-year stint of being “in the United Church” albeit as a pseudo-atheist— these experiences have been essentially enriching. Finding youth group at age 15 basically saved my ass as a teenager, gave me something to do instead of BBS’ing and indulging in latent puberty-induced pyromania

But also, fundamentally, I think scripture is amazing and qualifies as “essential reading”, especially if one is capable of interfacing with it more from a philosophical/anthropological perspective.

Funnily enough two of my closest closest friends, we became attracted to each other and would become “bffs” before we realized that we had a mutual fascination with Christian history and philosophy, while simultaneously being basically-atheist.

Both times a friend has told me about their kid getting into Jesus I’ve basically responded “that’s fine, encourage them to investigate the Quakers” bc they seem to me to be the faith least-likely to fuck up a kid

Mennonites too, ime, at least the ones in Houston

Don’t be so sure about the Quakers. They’re pretty two-faced and, uh, racist, at least here in Philly. My dad always had a saying about them: “They’ll smile at you on Sunday, and stab you in the back on Monday.”

I say this as someone who witnessed a lot of poor Quaker behavior at my religious Quaker high school— including a horrible, almost violent homophobia. It has changed, which is great, but the Quaker outlook on things is outwardly very progressive, but in practice leaves a lot to be desired, at least ime

i imagine unperson is joking about joining the mormons to be better-off financially but... here is my honest opinion about it. it's basically what my dad did in his 20s. joined the mormons and married my mom for better prospects. i would say, if it's just you and you aren't planning on having any kids, do whatever the hell you want. but if you end up having kids and you're in the church you're consigning them to a young life of child abuse so... fuck you forever in that case.

which brings me around to another 'thing' that fits this thread topic for me... mormons! and mormonism! i understand that anywhere outside the "mormon corridor" it's generally ok to hate mormons or think they're creepy or weird at the very least, but inside the corridor it really isn't. i have a very long and very convincing essay, any part of which i can recall at will, about why my hate is justified, which i tentatively began composing in my early teens and finally completed in my mid-30s. i thought that once i finished it i could somehow chill on it but it has just condensed into a blue-hot core buried deep inside me. it's hard hating mormons with fervor and being surrounded by them, living among them, passing by hundreds of them every week in the grocery store and on the street. it doesn't do the soul good to view most of the people one passes by every day with the utmost disgust and suspicion. i'm so tired of hating mormons. but there really is no other choice for me. it is, after all, their fault and not mine. the best i can do is shut them out as much as possible. so far that is what has had to work.

Great replies today, all.

Don’t be so sure about the Quakers. They’re pretty two-faced and, uh, racist, at least here in Philly. My dad always had a saying about them: “They’ll smile at you on Sunday, and stab you in the back on Monday.”

I say this as someone who witnessed a lot of poor Quaker behavior at my religious Quaker high school— including a horrible, almost violent homophobia. It has changed, which is great, but the Quaker outlook on things is outwardly very progressive, but in practice leaves a lot to be desired, at least ime

― a tv star not a dirty computer man (the table is the table), Sunday, December 7, 2025 5:22 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago)

this is a really awful post. i usually read past your diatribes and don't respond, but this one actually kicks me in the gut. your intolerance is showing.

sincerely, a queer brown quaker

your experience is different than mine. my freshman year at said high school, my dad was at a school function, and a prominent Quaker (and editorial cartoonist, natch) said, straight-faced, “the problem with Philadelphia is that it needs to be more like Seattle. we need fewer Blacks.” this was par for the course among many of the more “respected” and prominent Quaker families at the school.

and how dare you tell me that my experience of homophobia from Quakers evidences some intolerance on my end.

there were also the numerous times that Black teachers of mine at said Quaker school were called slurs by my white classmates, some of whom had been going to the school since they were just out of diapers.

the best thing about the school was the education I received. i had one bad teacher throughout all of high school, and even she was, in retrospect, in over her head.

Ya that's not been my experience with Quakers at all. Quakers were getting gay married in Canada long before the state made it legal.

i imagine unperson is joking about joining the mormons to be better-off financially but... here is my honest opinion about it. it's basically what my dad did in his 20s. joined the mormons and married my mom for better prospects. i would say, if it's just you and you aren't planning on having any kids, do whatever the hell you want. but if you end up having kids and you're in the church you're consigning them to a young life of child abuse so... fuck you forever in that case.

which brings me around to another 'thing' that fits this thread topic for me... mormons! and mormonism! i understand that anywhere outside the "mormon corridor" it's generally ok to hate mormons or think they're creepy or weird at the very least, but inside the corridor it really isn't. i have a very long and very convincing essay, any part of which i can recall at will, about why my hate is justified, which i tentatively began composing in my early teens and finally completed in my mid-30s. i thought that once i finished it i could somehow chill on it but it has just condensed into a blue-hot core buried deep inside me. it's hard hating mormons with fervor and being surrounded by them, living among them, passing by hundreds of them every week in the grocery store and on the street. it doesn't do the soul good to view most of the people one passes by every day with the utmost disgust and suspicion. i'm so tired of hating mormons. but there really is no other choice for me. it is, after all, their fault and not mine. the best i can do is shut them out as much as possible. so far that is what has had to work.

Yeah, I was mostly joking but it was based on a real observed phenomenon, at least in my own limited experience. There was a Mormon temple two blocks down from me in NJ and there were much nicer cars in that parking lot than in any other part of my neighborhood. When I worked for Blue Cross of Idaho for 2 1/2 years a lot of my coworkers were Mormons and/or ex-Mormons. (BTW, working for a health insurance company in one of America's reddest states was a whole other kind of headfuck - daily interactions with multiple obviously gay coworkers and people with generally liberal politics, all of them living in a state that's trying as fast and as hard as it can to turn itself into a Christian death camp.) They were all super nice in a very glassy-eyed, keepin' it positive kind of way. But I have never heard anything actually good about the Mormon church or the lives its adherents live. There are Catholics I know and respect and genuinely believe live good lives (my mom, for one). Same with adherents of virtually every other religion. So I know it's possible to be a good person and be religious, while continuing to believe that really really, religious belief - heaven, angels, god, all that - is some dumbass bullshit.

@table:

Your classmates, who were also children and not necessarily Quaker, said horrible racist and homophobic things in the '80s or '90s? And an older fella made a profoundly offensive comment to your father, which was 'par for the course' and somehow permits you or your father to broadly stereotype every member of a minority faith?

Do you really think is defensible to repeat the phrase: "They’ll smile at you on Sunday, and stab you in the back on Monday”? To broadly assert Philly Quakers are 'two-faced?' Honestly, you're a smart guy. Try rereading your post, and replace 'Quakers' with 'Muslims or 'Homosexuals' or 'the poor.' See if you really endorse your comments. I don't think you will.

If you'd said 'Quakers aren't as tolerant as their reputation suggests,' I would've heartily agreed with you. But you didn't. You insulted members of a minority religion, my religion, and your stated positionality does not afford you any greater authority on this issue than does mine. In our mistreatment we are equals. But bona fides aren't the issue. I too have experienced harassment, injury, and exclusion as a result of actions by other Friends, and I would never ascribe their treatment to the faith/culture itself.

But I have never heard anything actually good about the Mormon church or the lives its adherents live.

I grew up around Mormons, my stepfather's family is from SLC. I loved it. My next door neighbour, my age, was always inviting me over to play basketball and Zelda. His year-younger brother had Down's Syndrome but nobody talked about it, they just treated him like a normal kid with different needs. They didn't push their faith on me, but I was curious about it, having read The Great Brain. They were amenable to discussing it. They gave me The Book of Mormon. They took me to church if I asked them to, and services were reasonable and productive and nice. The younger brother gave testimony like everyone else in the congregation and people were patient and welcoming to him.

As an adult, I love spending time in SLC because alcohol, although it is consumed by some, it hasn't shaped the entire way that adults are conditioned to socialise. I love socialising but I don't like drinking, and it's great to be in a city where people are more-likely to invite you out for non-boozy hangs, it seems like people are just into pickup sports and hiking and biking and culture shit.

My stepfather's family has a less-rosy attitude toward the Mormon church. Family members (now deceased) had experienced shunning and stuff like that, largely for expressing feminist or pro-LGBTQ opinions. We went to see Space Jesus. My uncle looked at the hallways of portraits of Mormon Important People in the temple and said "have you ever seen so many white dudes on a wall".

there are a few differences with mormons vs. your standard catholic or protestant sects, even the more hardcore ones. they pretty much require you to give 10% of your income to them. if you don't, you're out. that in itself is what tips it over into cult territory. it's also related to why church members tend to be more well-off. the whole multilevel marketing phenomenon plays out socially in the church. you have to do certain things, behave and look a certain way, etc., and you're in the club. it encourages a pretty predatory attitude among men, because the entire point of the church is to sacrifice critical thinking for .. whatever it is they get. cover for when they want to sexually assault a child. entry into the mormon sky lounge (shame about the decor). a very strange mafia style situation wrapped up in generic platitudes and the most toxic passive aggression you can imagine. it fits a certain flat, mercenary style of person very well. it's an extremely materialist organization. it's really similar to masonry in that sense. also in the sense that it's extremely male supremacist.

i've met and known a lot of people who consider themselves to be open-minded and/or liberal or even radically leftist and still belong to the mormon church. but, in my view, your money is where your mouth is. and if any of your money is going to the church, you're a fucking hypocrite and you're full of shit. sorry, that is just how it fucking works! i have a lot of empathy for people who don't want to leave the only support system they've ever known behind, or who literally don't have the resources to start again. but unfortunately i don't see any other way to regain one's decency, basic moral compass and spine for walking the walk of a more enlightened and open life, accepting of change, honest before the true, ever-shifting face of god.

xp to fgti - mormons are very nice people if you're an outsider. that's kind of their m.o. and i have fondness for reading about your good experiences with your stepfather's family (i also loved the great brain as a kid). but yeah .. if you're homosexual, or if you literally believe that women are anything other than baby-makers, you are profoundly at odds with their core doctrine, and if you stay with them you will kill yourself, literally or spiritually/emotionally. they have not budged on any of that and they are never going to or they'll cease to exist.

really, i could sum up my hatred this way. i hate anyone who thinks there is one true way to live. i hate anyone who gives materially to organizations who stand for that. i hate their sheer arrogance. i hate that they've broken their minds and their spirits, all of the beautiful things that they are given in each and every moment, in order to worship death. i hate that they think that everyone else should do the same thing, that they desire for everyone else to do the same thing. i hate that they cannot tolerate mystery. and i hate their ill-fitting suits and their masonic kinkade mcdonald's architecture and their two hundred and ninety three billion!!! dollars and their evil evasion of any responsibility for the hundreds of thousands of deaths of queer people they've caused and their baggy polyester underwear and their desire to appear cool and with it and pop culture conversant anyway and their massive victim complex and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

and for the record, there is no way to quantify how many queer suicides they're responsible for, how many female suicides they're responsible for. but all of my experience leads me to believe that hundreds of thousands is not an exaggeration!

it's honestly a fucking miracle i survived and that i'm doing ok. the longer i live, the further away i get from the church, the more deeply i realize that.

And they own 16 billion dollars of real estate across America including a fancy apartment building in my town.

@remy: I’ll say this: Quakerism is a profoundly beautiful religious movement, and I am glad that I was exposed to its ideas. I learned a lot about myself and the world around me from Quakerism, and still hold many of its spiritual beliefs as my own.

But my interactions with most Quakers have been largely negative. It was wrong of me to project my negative feelings from these interactions onto the entire religion and its believers, so I apologize. But I also cannot control what my interactions have been, and how I feel about them.

Also, fwiw, I am 41, and was in high school from 1999-2003. It was exceptionally homophobic!! Even after I graduated, there was a “scandal” that saw one of the only out gay male teachers at the school quitting his job of 20+ years in protest. These things happened, they were real, and I can’t change how they have negatively shaped my view of many Quakers, as unfair and unfortunate as that is.

these experiences have been essentially enriching

When I was a child I was exposed to Unitarian Universalism, where a key part of the curriculum was going to a different house of worship every week (Quaker meeting, mosque, synagogue, Greek Orthodox, Hare Krishna) in a program called "The Church Avross the Street."

At the time (80) there were at least as many ways of being UU as there were UU church's. Lots of atheists and Jews and hippies who appreciated the officially dogma-free dogma.

You can get high church UUs with choir robes who talk of God and Jesus, or hUUmanists in a geodesic dome who just wanted to talk about Emerson. Theologically very much a cafeteria where you take what you want.

I got there through my stepmother, for whom it was a multi-generational tradition (her church was that of T.S. Eliot's grandfather).

For historical and for taxonomic reasons folks will shelve them under Protestantism (as above in this thread). However my cradle-Catholic father claimed to be a Trinitarian Unitarian just to be difficult.

If I needed a "chirch that pissses me off least," UU does accommodate a rather hard agnostic stance. For which it gets the bad rap accorded to "cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose which bits they like. The joke goes "they're so open-minded their brains fell out."

As a former Catholic, I can't shake the belief that some sense of pain -- of sacrifice, etc. -- should enter a relationship with the divine.

Yes, agreed. I think it's fair to say that Neil Tennant's lapsed Catholicism has frequently influenced his songwriting, and the ambivalence detectible here, in his thoughts on post-religion Europe, always resonated strongly with me:

Now, as a matter of pride
Indulge yourself, your every mood
No feast-days, or fast-days, or days of abstinence
Will intrude

some sense of pain -- of sacrifice, etc. -- should enter a relationship with the divine.

Even "agreeing to endorse a specific set of truth claims" seems too much to ask of some churchgoers obvs.

Which connects to some of the "what even is a denomination" stuff upthread. If church is a content-free feel-good vibey thing, your opinion on justification by faith vs. works, or double predestination, or whatever becomes irrelevant.

Hence I think there are a lot of mall churches (not even mega churches, just contemporary "church for people who don't go to church" with relaxed dress codes and bad rock music) for which the value prop is what you get out of it, not what it asks of you.

One can stake out the position that what is good for you doesn't necessarily feel good. Eat your vegetables.

And as discussed above, if a church becomes your supportive community that helps you in bad times, it may be partly making the case that the selling point of church is that it's beneficial, rather than that it is correct on the facts.

This Atlantic piece gift link offers a related argument. I find it a little exasperating personally to hear a case made for church based on what you get out of it, divorced utterly from whether you agree with its specific content. But clearly not everyone has that hangup.

I've noticed it too. College students say they grew up "Christian" but have no idea what denomination or have no idea what "denomination" means.

An actual conversation I had with a 20-something coworker at the 90% Taiwanese company I used to work for.

Me: so what denomination are you?
He:pr: Uhh... Christian?
Me: I mean like, are you Catholic or something?
Her: Don't Catholics, like, worship Mary?

I stopped trying to have conversations about anything with her after that.

Baptised Anglican/Episcopal but never joined the local church. We were encouraged to attend church/chapel/temple with friends - my favourite one was Maundy Thursday with my bestie from grade school and her Presbyterian family. Least favourite was anything Lutheran.

If I needed a "chirch that pissses me off least," UU does accommodate a rather hard agnostic stance. For which it gets the bad rap accorded to "cafeteria Catholics" who pick and choose which bits they like. The joke goes "they're so open-minded their brains fell out."

This is amazing, thanks for that post YMP

I like Weird Al, but I have a sneaking suspicion the man has a mean streak that's the secret fuel behind all the parodies.

re: Quakerism, I'd read a neat comic about Benjamin Lay but I think where most people would come out from hearing about such a progressive figure would get a good impression of Quakers I got the opposite: his fellow Quakers were really, really, really against him (until they weren't)!