Quote of the Day: Deadly Bullying

In the wake of recent suicides by members of the LDS, a column in the Salt Lake Tribune looks at the foul fruits of religion and the attendant bullying and cruelty that seem to be the principal hallmarks of conservative denominations.  The piece also underscores the fact that it's not just LGBT teens who take their own lives because of the anti-gay hate and bigotry that spew incessantly from the "godly folk."  Here's the money quote:

When you put religion and homophobia together, a special poison is created and the damage is intensified. When you take a religion that teaches the mistaken notion that gays choose to be gay, and you add in the opinion that God disapproves of homosexuality, the combination is often too much.

Recently, on a beautiful spring day, after services in an LDS ward house, a bubbly, sweet, funny woman was laid to rest. Over her lifetime, she had significant trouble with her religion and her God-given sexuality, trying desperately to be faithful to both, even though the church has set them up as mutually exclusive. Even in the safety of adulthood, it was too much. (Goodbye, old friend.).

[E]ven if the LDS Church gets all the way to full acceptance of homosexuality by noon tomorrow, it will come far too late for an unfathomable number of LGBT people, people who saw no way out of the religious bullying other than to take their own lives.

I continue to view far right, judgmental religions to be one of the foulest forces for evil on the planet today.  Despite modern knowledge and science, their adherents willingly embrace ignorance and bigotry.  A world without religion might well be a far better place.