r/exbahai

Hello and welcome to HistoryFlights, and from LGBTQ Baha'i Experience and History Flights Productions IT'S THE HIDDEN FAITH, the UNDEFEATED and TRULY Independent Investigation of the Baha'i Faith.

I’ll summarize why you should care about queer freedom inside this tiny, little-known religion called the Baha’i Faith that is a microcosm of everything wrong with Abrahamic faiths when applied literally towards this one “problem.” I hope you can also watch the rest of The Hidden Faith: The Undefeated and TRULY Independent Investigation of the Baha’i Faith to get more background on the Baha’i Faith, but the blog entries I include from Internet Archive backups of Baha’i Rants, Just a Baha’i and Gay/Lesbian Baha’i Story Project should provide enough context. I’ll also include embeds from the portions of past Hidden Faith episodes where I discussed queer issues on my Substack, so please subscribe there and to my YouTube to help support a solo creator in my fight for truth, justice and historical accuracy!

When you emerge from a high-control religious environment, the first instinct is almost always demolition. You want the institution to answer for the harm. You want the holy men who act holier-than-thou to sit down, look at the evidence, and acknowledge their failures. You want the doctrine that suffocated you to be dismantled in the public square until the whole thing either reforms or vanishes. I know that instinct intimately because I lived in it for eleven fucking years. Even if I never signed a declaration card, by virtue of being in a relationship with one who love-bombed me to get me to visit her friend’s fireside, six of them in a marriage I put disproportionate effort towards, I got about as close as anyone could to being Baha’i while still outside of it.

For years, many thousands of people have internalized shame, believing that all humanity is one but that some are more united than others, that they struggle with a spiritual handicap, that their voices must be silenced from Dialogue to Talisman. The final breaking point always comes down to realizing that any system that requires you to destroy yourself to maintain its harmony is not a sanctuary, but a prison. The real schism happening in the Baha’i Faith is not a loud fight over succession as in every single prior transfer of power, but a quiet quitting by the thousands buried under fake numbers. Over the past several years, spaces like r/exbahai and independent channels like The LGBTQ Baha’i Experience (who I had the absolute pleasure to interview!) and Trash TV (looking forward to interviewing her later) emerged as safe spaces for, say, a nineteen-year-old queer believer in a small town, terrified of losing their family and community, to put on headphones and hear someone say: You are not crazy. You are not broken. Most importantly, you are not alone.

I’m hoping to put the full script on Substack AFTER Wahid’s tortious attempt to have it destroyed by criminally abusing the DMCA process as a heckler’s veto is reversed when they see that the clips I embedded there are obvious fair use. Otherwise, there’s a million different blogging platforms, and I’ll let you know where it lands. Please also note that the AI image in the thumbnail was NOT made by me, and my apologies regarding occasional editing issues in the interview.

ALL THE TRIGGER WARNINGS as well!

Here’s yet another thing that disturbs me. The Bahai Faith freely allows people to enroll under the guise of independent investigation of truth along with friendly coercion and pressure to join. Once a member, the bomb is dropped that the Bahais don’t accept gay relationships or allow gay marriage. Pressure is applied by LSAs to get individuals to become straight or lead a miserable, lonely, solitary life.

The Bahai Faith has pushed Conversion Therapy, which is frowned on by psychiatrists and psychologists as being damaging and dangerous. Many cities and some states have outlawed Conversion Therapy. I witnessed it when the LSA of Los Angeles had a member come give a talk to the community about the Conversion Therapy she had gone through. The LSA used her presentation as evidence that it works. Totally reckless and irresponsible.

That all being said, inside the Bahai Faith the anti-LGBTQ edict has been sternly mandated, but without any support services being made to individuals. None. I have a friend who is trying to remain a Bahai but living in solitude, battling depression. Another friend had AIDS and went to his LSA for spiritual support. Instead, they removed his voting rights, chastised him, and announced the reason for his voting rights being removed to the entire community. He died from AIDS related complications all alone, without contact from his Bahai Community.

So this is a religion of rules, rules, rules and not any compassion. Unity of mankind, but only for some of mankind.