I'm all about everyone having their own beliefs and I think free speech is incredibly important. But when someone's free speech starts insulting another individual's existence, then a line is crossed. I also support people being religious and finding peace and solace in religion, faith, or spirituality — but as I have seen, religion can be used to hide discriminatory beliefs.
I am a senior social work student at Illinois State University. About a month ago, my seminar class watched a news video about the transgender military ban supported by our government. The video focused on a trans woman who was currently serving in the Navy and how identifying as a woman but being born a biological man, had affected her thus far. She spoke about how important the Navy and serving her country was and how she would ultimately respect an order to leave if her officer commanded her to. The video also touched on some of the legal aspects of the story and various commanders and officers were all shown giving testimonies stating that having trans individuals in the military didn't cause any unnecessary problems or costs. My professor always tries to bring different topics to class to discuss in a social work state of mind and up until this point, I believed that my classmates were very open to conversation and firm believers in human rights for everyone. The video wasn't that long and after we completed the video, my professor opened the discussion up to our small class.
Almost immediately one of my classmates said that she believed people should be able to do what they want but she didn't agree with this person's "lifestyle choices." This comment set off many of my classmates' inner social justice warriors and we were instantly all on edge.
The room was eerily quiet waiting to hear what she would say next and the discriminatory language kept coming. She said that because of her religion, she didn't believe that trans people could be trans, and she would refer to them as their biological sex because that's what her god would have "wanted." She said that identifying as trans or even being gay, was looked down upon in her religion. She also kept using the terms trans and gay interchangeably even though they have completely different meanings in the LGBTQIA+ community.
The entire exchange was incredibly frustrating and my classmates and I tried to educate her on how what she was saying was extremely offensive and didn't match up with core social work values. She kept defending her religion and said that she could work with "those kinds of people" if they were her clients, but would only provide treatment up to a certain point.
The discussion probably lasted for an hour and was increasingly frustrating the longer it went on. The negativity in the conversation made my classmates and I wonder how our peer would interact with future clients and if her career would be successful for her and benefit her clients. As social workers, we should all be doing what's best for our clients, even if we don't personally agree; it's important to do no harm and provide resources necessary for clients' needs. Religion can be very helpful and enlightening for some, but it should NEVER be used to discount another person's life or existence, and that's the tea.
