Godless Perverts is very proud that this week Greta Christina, one of our founders, was awarded LGBT Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association.
Greta Christina
It’s a great acknowledgment, especially right now. It’s not just that Greta has been responsible for some of the smartest, clearest writing in the atheist communities; it’s the amazing level of shit that she and other queer or feminist activists have had to put up with for doing so. Atheist communities are changing right now. They will change, no matter what the old guard want. Atheists will become queerer, browner, and have a wider variety of genders than they do now. That scares the hell out of some people, and Greta, Rebecca Watson, Ophelia Benson, and other atheist women have had to pay for that fear by being assaulted with a constant hail of rape and death threats. Against that background, it’s damn good to see Greta’s work being recognized by one of the community’s big organizations.
Godless Perverts got started not only because alternative sexuality communities are brimming over with woo, but also because there is so much difficulty talking about sexuality in atheist communities. We see ourselves as building a bridge between the two. Greta’s acceptance speech is highly relevant to that: she speaks about how her atheism and her sexuality are connected, and how one informs the other. She talks about that in the excerpt below, but you should really go to her blog and read the entire thing.
For me, being bisexual and being a humanist aren’t separate. They inform each other, they’re influenced by each other. Being the LGBT Humanist of the Year isn’t like being the Coffee-Drinking Humanist of the Year, or the Humanist who Likes to Watch “What Not to Wear” of the Year. They’re not irrelevant. They’re connected. A big part of why I’m so passionately committed to the godless community and the godless movement is that I’m passionately opposed to how religion has traditionally dealt with sexuality — sexuality in general, and LGBT sexuality in particular. I’m fiercely opposed to the traditional homophobia and transphobia and sexism and general sex-negativity of most traditional religions, and to the terrible harm it’s inflicted on millions of people. But I’m not just opposed to these specific religious doctrines about sex. I’m opposed to the very idea of religion shaping our sexuality. I’m opposed to the very idea that we should base our sexual ethics on how our sex lives supposedly affect invisible beings in an unproven hypothetical life after this one. I’m opposed to the very idea that we should base our sexual ethics on what someone else wrote down thousands of years ago about what God supposedly told them about how he does and doesn’t want us to do the nasty. The very idea is absurd. The very idea does harm — even if the specific doctrines are harmless. And this is a huge part of what drives me as an godless writer and activist.
About Chris Hall
A somewhat nerdy pervert who looks (mostly) normal on the outside, Chris Hall is fascinated by the politics, culture, and art of sex. He has written for The Atlantic, Alternet, SF Weekly, Slixa, numerous anthologies, and a dog blog that will go discreetly unnamed here.
