For the past six weeks, my modern world studies class had been exploring the unit of belief system focusing mainly on Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Many perspective and differences between these religions were studied and it made me realized how religion holds such a big part of our daily life. Even though people may say ‘I don’t have any religion’ in my opinion that is almost impossible or REALLY hard to do since religion play many roles in our everyday.
One of the examples is: In class my friends and I discussed about the topic of whether same sex marriage should be allowed or not. I learned a lot from that. Specifically those who believe in the church are taught that God made human, and gifted them with marriage therefore babies to continue their generation. From that religious practitioners believe that it is morally wrong to disgrace God’s gift to humanity. I’ve found two opposing point of view in one of the blog posts in a website:
For those of you who honestly believe thatbeing gay is a choose, let's take a spin on it from my personal experience ofcoming out. It has literally been the worst experience in my life in how muchstress it caused and still causes me, but I have never been happier. First ofall, you all argue of how any gay kid is not religious nor could ever know god,but I grew up in the LDS church for the first 18 years of my life. I grew upstrongly believing that homosexuality was wrong, all I wanted was to live a'normal' life. Normal in the sense of what mormons consider normal. Marriagebetween a man and a woman, having children, etc. Up until my first year ofmiddle school, I was perfectly fine with the morals I was taught and neverfound any reason to doubt it. This was also the first year I came to experiencethese "terrible, disgusting" feelings of being gay. Somewhere in theback of my mind, I knew I was gay, but being raised under the family and valuesI was, I felt it was my duty and responsibility to fight off these feelings andensure that I never acted on them. For seven years, yes, seven years, all theway up until my freshman year of college, I suppressed these feelings and puton a straight face for all of my friends and family. In reality though, I wascompletely disgusted with myself. I hated having to fight everyday to be"normal", and I didn't understand how it was fair that God createsomeone like me and expect me to go through life pretending I am someone I amnot; pretending not to be the person he created. Let me say, not many peoplecan begin to understand the pain I went through, mostly emotional. Fighting offhomosexuality is not just a time to time battle. It is a fight that takes placeEVERY single moment of EVERY single day. Do you know, why? Because just likebeing straight, being gay is what you are. For those who say that they haveovercome being gay and gone to marry a woman and have children, I am trulysorry. Because even when I felt like I had the upperhand on my feelings, theywould always come back, ALWAYS. Sometimes 100X times stronger than before. Itwasn't until college that I finally realized what I was doing. What was the pointof all the years of fighting the feelings? There was not one. Once I had gottenaway from the constant influence of my church every sunday as well as thevalues of my family, it was so clear that I was fighting my feelings notbecause I personally thought it was bad, but because I was being influenced byexternal factors. After that I was able to come out to one of my friends forthe first time. It was no easy thing, and in the coming weeks I still didn'tknow if I had made the right choice. But as I came out to more people, Irealized something. Although there are people who would/did severe ourconnection because of my choice, there is always someone new to meet who willbe perfectly fine with you, love you for you. Gay people are just as normal as everyoneelse, they love, they cry, they laugh, they smile, they..... feel! Honestlythough people, why would anyone choose to be gay?! Why would ANYONE on thisplanet choose to go through the all the public hate and bashing we receive? Howis it anyone's right to deny marriage to us? Now before I go into that, let mefirst make everyone aware of every piece of info. In my life at college, awayfrom home, I am out and everyone around me knows that, but in no way does myfamily know about the decision I have made. Think not telling able to tell myfamily who I really am sucks, just listen. I already know their response tothis. My family would completely cut me off, my parents would kick me out ofthe house, and would no longer support me in any way. I know this for a factand have accepted this, so there is no point in wasting your time with youroptimistic points of view. In what world is it right where parents will openlyreject their children because they choose to be who they are? Not only is thisterrible, but growing up in the church, I made several of my closest friendsthere, and the second I came out to them, they would respond with just as muchrejection as my family. How is that right? Be aware though, I am in no waysaying that this is the case for every kid, but only for me specifically. Backto the point though. Most people would agree (obviously the ridiculouslyreligious wouldn't) that the rejection of friends and children for being gay isabsolutely terrible. So how is it any better to reject an idea when it has noeffect on anyone else whatsoever? How exactly is me marrying the man I love orany other gay couple going to destroy anyone elses life? Are we going to cometo your home and force you to watch us make love in front of you? Do we go aroundtrying to force others to be gay? (<---Not that this is even possiblebecause like I have said, you don't choose to be gay.) In no way would ourmarriage affect you, and you are completely absurd if you think so. Marriageshould be allowed to be with any two people who love each other. Woman andwoman, man and man, woman and man. It is all the same. Who can doubt love? Ihope that people open their minds one day and look at how much more pain theircausing rather than the help some are supposed to be giving as religious peoplewho act from God. 
As you can see, the man in here represents the association of human and religious influence. He grew up in a Church thinking that same sex marriage is probably the worst thing ever. Thinking that it’s wrong and disgusting. His parents to, is totally against the subject of homosexuality. Then in high school he has come to a realization that he is in fact gay himself. He was disgusted with himself at first that this is really happening to him. This man talks about how his family would cut him out of the family and want to absolutely abandon him. This effectively shows us how influential the Church is to his family and himself.
Another example is of a friend of mine, he is fully against the idea of same sex marriage. He thought that homosexuals asking for legalize marriage is too much. He thinks the world have already given them enough, letting them be together and not hurt them is already enough given. He is another portrayal of how he is affected by the way he was raised, therefore religion that his parents and himself follow.
This passage is important to me because I am a part of this world. I have many friends that are homosexuals and they are all good people, but others of strong belief often discriminate them and so this topic is quite meaningful to me.
Basically a person who follows the church strictly thinks it’s super inappropriate to go against God’s teaching, end of story. This may be just some everyday life situation, but that is exactly the point I’m trying to make. Religion take parts in many of the aspect in our life and in the website I pulled the blog out of shows that there are many teenagers and adults out there who thinks gays and homosexual people are faulty. Some of which does not even know the reason, but because they were taught that way, gay people disgust them for no reason. Belief system tell us how to live our lives, in this case ‘don’t be something else God didn’t make you to be’. The Bible says that if you don’t have complete faith and follow Christianity completely then you will not earn your salvation. That is how religion guides our life.
Of course, I wrote this blog not to offend any homosexuals or Christian people. I’m just simply trying to elaborate the fact that religion shape so much of our life. Its’ involvement make the world we are living in today. I’ve never really taken religion into much deep thoughts and now that I have it led me into another world, with better understanding.
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