A woman on social media has gone viral just ahead of Easter for revealing the “no-religion” space she’s established for her new home — with nearly 4,000 people sharing reactions and some 1,200 comments resulting in fewer than 12 hours.
She asked others if she was in the wrong for “making our home into a no-religion space, and including my mother in the rules?” Fox News Digital reached out to a psychologist for professional input into the situation.
The poster described herself as a 27-year-old woman whose 32-year-old girlfriend “finally moved in” after they’d been dating for three years.
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She said the couple are “very excited to make our apartment into our own space, since for both of us this is the first home we’ve had without sharing with anyone else.”
There have been serious problems in her life, she revealed, with both her mother, who is still alive, and her late father.
She described them as “rabidly Catholic.”
She said she was raised Catholic, which meant attending “church every Sunday, praying before every meal and snack, blah blah blah,” she wrote.
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She said her mother was furious that she — the Reddit writer — refused to study for and accept the sacrament of Confirmation.
She also said her mother “didn’t approve” of her bisexuality.
The woman wrote that she finds that “weird,” given that the mother “is surprisingly OK with gay people.”
She still “dragged me,” the woman on Reddit wrote, “to church, hoping I’d grow out of it.”
The woman went on, “Long story short, I moved out at 18, and have kept a respectfully distant relationship with her.”
She said her mother has “mellowed a bit in her age, but she still tries to invite me to church every week, even after I told her plainly to cut that out.”
Added the woman, “She’s respectful to my girlfriend, mostly because I will choose her over my mother if it comes to that, and it nearly did,” she said.
The woman revealed that her girlfriend “has an even more traumatic past with religion. When she was outed at 12, her parents abused her until she was 18, then disowned her, the entire time using Bible quotes and ‘God’ mission’ as an excuse.”
The woman added that her girlfriend “still believes in a god, just not in religion or worship, which I respect.”
So, “with all our trauma about religion, we decided to make the place into a no-religion space.”
What this means, the woman continued, is that there’s “no praying, no religious symbols of any kind, no proselytizing, no talking about religious settings” in their home.
She said her mother “hates” this decision, “because all her friends are churchgoers and 80% of her stories relate to something happening in church.”
Wrote the woman further, “She also gets mad that we make her take off or cover her cross necklace, as are the rules. She claims we’re being hypocrites, to which I told her she’s lucky to be in my life at all.”
Even so, added th woman in her post, “Some of our friends told us we’re taking it too far” and that the couple are “using our trauma as an outlet for revenge.”
So, she asked others, is she in the wrong for “making our home into a no-religion space, and including my mother in the rules?”
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Plenty of others weighed in — with one commenter summing up the feelings and opinions of many, many others: “Your house, your rules! But I personally think telling her to cover up her cross necklace is probably one step too far.”
That comment above received more than 9,000 “upvotes” on the site.
Another person wrote, “On the fence about the necklace. I think in other contexts it might be too far, but I know people with PTSD over religious trauma — so it can be triggering seeing religious images, and the house should be a safe space, so I think it’s fine.”
Wrote another individual, “I think, in general, it’s unfair and selfish to ask that someone actively hide their religion from you and never reference or practice it in your home.”
Added this person, “But I’m also a queer woman, and I think that people are entitled to their own beliefs only so long as those beliefs aren’t harming anyone … and both [the original poster] and her [girlfriend’ have been directly harmed by their families’ religious beliefs.”
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This same commenter finished with, “So considering what both … have experienced with religion and religious folks, it’s perfectly fair of them to want their home to be a safe space from all that.”
