ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how students talked and wrote about religion and sexuality, including how they interacted with a visitor to class who identified as a conservative Christian. Many of us in our class shared, to varying degrees, the same stereotypes of conservative Christians and, sometimes, of religious people in general that Hermann-Wilmarth described herself holding. In general, students consistently constructed religion and religious people in negative ways and in opposition to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people. They spoke and wrote about religious people creating doubt and self-hatred among LGBTQ people/characters, leading parents to reject their children, and posing a challenge to the anti-oppressive work that students hoped to accomplish in schools. Certainly, many religious communities have taken strongly anti-LGBTQ stances, but many others position themselves as actively open to LGBTQ people. Several students adopted a reflexive positioning, recognizing and exploring contradictions between their own beliefs and their constructions of "religious people".
