Truly devout/pious folks from any religion I’ve known have been good people and a joy to be around. I think they’d be good people anyway though, and their religion just gave them a framework.

They probably would be yeah. Although I have family members who definitely weren't great before they found religion. Two uncles in particular who are great now but were not on this path before. Then I have another uncle on the other side of my family who absolutely refuses to accept that his daughter is gay and him and his wife have put that child through absolute hell. I've seen videos of her mother screaming at her that she was the devil and all sorts of disgusting shit that a child should never hear from anyone let alone a parent. Being trans I've cut contact with them completely because even if they act nice in my face, I know what they say when I'm not around.

When folks use religion as their justification for behaving in ways that are clearly at odds with its most basic tenets, that’s what I find toxic, and do feel is far, far too common.

Yeah unfortunately it is. Religion is as corrupted as politics are these days. These people seem to think they're only following the word of god but they're just being manipulated. I can't help but feel bad for them even if some of them would literally want to see me dead.

I’m probably coming in hot on the topic in general because although I’m a cishet white guy I’ve just about had it with the ridiculous bullshit from the right in this area in recent years, and it’s becoming a real hotbutton issue to me.

I get it. This all needs to stop. I'm just scared that if all sides just stay angry at each other we will never be able to get past this without things getting even uglier. So when I see someone like the dad in this story, I'd rather forget everything else and appreciate the fact that they've improved and even give them praise. They've admitted to being wrong at least once so maybe now they won't be so quick to hate things they don't understand.

I don't know, maybe I'm naive. All I know is that I'm really sick of all the negativity, the constant outrage and outright ragebait articles, all the pundits and the talking heads who basically just try to make the other side look dumb for views, all of it. It feels like we're all being played, even by the people on "our side".