That goes without saying, although one might think that you would recommend that those who find some of those laws offensive to try the religion out. But as you can see, some people don't like at least some Baha'i laws enough to object from the outside.
Humanism works. It's been tested in a few arenas and has always made lives better there where religions never had before or since. We just need the religions to stand down. If humanism can purge the world of religious homophobia, it will have made the world a better place. It HAS been doing that, and that alone is responsible for all of the reduction in homosexual oppression that we have seen - why it is no longer illegal or called a mental disease, why gays can now adopt, teach, coach and serve on juries - all prohibited when i was young - and why they can marry and enjoy the protections of the state that the law affords heterosexuals. No religion did that, but one is threatening to undo it.
Humanism is the driving force for unity in the West. It underlies the left's support of tolerance and inclusion, including LGBTQ+. The religions are the brakes to that progress. What is Baha'ism actually doing there apart from spreading homophobic doctrine? All I see are vague platitudes about unity with no plan. What would the Baha'i do with the world if given its ear? I can tell you exactly what the humanists would do - what you see them do every day, what they are doing on this thread, and what the American Constitution embodies.
Here's a bit of the harm homophobic attitudes cause: "Lavender ceiling - an upper limit to professional advancement imposed upon LGBTQ+ people that is not readily perceived or openly acknowledged."
This is what is meant by systemic violence ("the harm people suffer from the social structure and the institutions sustaining and reproducing it.") - how ingrained prejudices perhaps not even experienced as such contribute destructively to the lives of some others.
And here's a bit more, as well as somebody pushing back at the religious homophobia. This is what this doctrine does:
And how do you think that believing by faith is perceived? It's the greatest error possible to make according to the rules of reason. Every time one does that, he commits a non sequitur fallacy. Every time. Faith cannot possibly be a path to truth if the opposite of what you believe by faith to be truth can just as easily be believed by faith? What value is a method that can take you to every wrong idea imaginable if one sidesteps the vetting process that critical thought offers, which takes one to sound conclusions instead?
I'd say that any critical thinker's mind is more error-free than any faith-based thinker's.
And what do you say to one who finds some of those commands ugly?
You all presented the same argument, which everybody else found irrelevant, a point none of the Baha'i here addressed. The Baha'i all claimed that they weren't homophobes because they didn't actively hate or persecute gays. Their collocutors to a man said that wasn't essential to homophobia - that just accepting the spiritual or moral inferiority of gays was sufficient. The Baha'i claimed that they don't do that, and their answer wasn't believed. We understand that a loving Baha'i father of a gay son can treat his son as well as one who is not homophobic, but he cannot escape the fact that his religion teaches (and he must accept because he was told and believed that it comes from a good god) that there is something wrong with his son. And if his son knows the religion, he knows that about his father, someone the son may love very much, but has to live with the understanding that he is not as good as a straight son in the eyes of his father's god. None of that is connected to active feelings of hatred, so repeatedly defending against the charge of homophobic doctrine that has been accepted as God-given by saying there is no feeling of hatred has had no impact.
They hold the same belief. Nobody wants to defend against that charge when their religion teaches that homosexuals are defective. It's a losing argument these days, one that only serves further to make the point that religious homophobia is moving outside the Overton window (acceptable opinion).
What you call bashing is moral indignation regarding a doctrine repugnant to humanists, and that has not abated at all. Why would it?
