My guest this week is Troy Moore-Heart. Troy grew up in an Evangelical family in Texas and described his childhood self as a “true-believing born-again Christian” who was baptized by his father at 6 in his grandmother’s church. Troy experienced religious trauma, the natural childhood fears given the purported reality of a spiritual realm all around him. Later in life, when he acknowledged his sexuality he “fervently believed [he] was going to hell.” When he eventually came out to his family he needed to put up healthy boundaries. Troy started to call himself an agnostic and not an atheist for fear of losing his relationship with his family. After marrying as an adult, he came to terms with his religious trauma and anti-queer shame. He discovered secular humanism as “an ideological and moral home.” Today, troy calls himself a progressive humanist, and he is focused on transformative justice. He is becoming a humanist celebrant. He supports projects like the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Y’all Means All and the Trevor Project. Troy also supports the thriving secular therapy community that is growing around trauma-informed therapy, including the Religious Trauma Institute and the Reclamation Collective. Troy requests that you consider signing the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Y’all Means All” pledge. “It’s become a galvanizing slogan to promote LGBTQ inclusion and advocacy in rural Southern communities.” Links Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/troy.moore.heart/Y’all Means All
http://www.yallmeansall.comThe Trevor Project
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/Religious Trauma Institute
https://www.religioustraumainstitute.com/Reclamation Collective
https://www.reclamationcollective.com/American Humanist Association
https://americanhumanist.org/ Interact Full show notes
https://gracefulatheist.com/2021/02/14/troy-moore-heart-yall-means-all/Deconversion How To
https://gracefulatheist.com/2017/12/03/deconversion-how-to/ Attribution "Waves" track written and produced by Makaih Beats
http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Makaih_Beats  Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/