As a religious person, I don't want patriarchal religion to gain more political power.
That kind of religion degrades the inherent worth and dignity of women by trying to sell them a cramped narrative about what it means to be a woman. If a woman wants to live gender roles from the 1950's, that's their own choice, but women in general should have more options than that, and patriarchal religion denies them that by stuffing all women into one mold.
Moreover, that mold isn't even used in a consistent, principled way. It becomes a vehicle for class warfare (a recent study showed that on a college campus, lower economic class women were more likely to be accused as "sluts" regardless of actual behavior, upper class women could keep getting abortions even after it has been restricted or outlawed), petty vendettas, and other dark impulses.
My religious vision has no room for that. Those of any gender or sex identification should have the freedom to realize their fullest potential.
= new reply since forum marked as read
Bonus for religious men is that it generally subjugates women as well.
Thanks for that! 
Ms. cbayer may know something about medicine. But her sense of "religion" and "belief" seems typically uninformed. She seems to know almost nothing about say the Bible; and seems to know very little about Religion. Probably should not presume to use terms that she has not formally studied.
Specifically, ms. cbayer's sense of "religion" seems to be rather uninformed and intuitive. Her sense of it orresponding to a typical late agnostic liberal position, c. 1968: many liberals in this era said that religion is "just what you yourself believe." (Cf. a DU OP on this). This regards religion as just a matter of private subjective sentiment only.
The implication here was derived from a sort of earlier gentleman's agreement: that in polite society, one kept one's religion private, or "to yourself." This notion eventually developed into the 60's notion that beliefs are all internal, and subjective. And that they therefore should not be acted on. A "belief" was thought to be a largely private, internal matter, of one's own spirit. Not an objective fact.
This was a very popular 60's idea. But there were problems with this notion of a religion should be an entirely private, internal ("transcendental"; "spiritual"
thing. Though this rule minimized conflicts between different and vocal, even physically warring religions, at the same time, the whole rather ascetic/priestly notion of a religion that should remain entirely private, and never attempt much to effect things in the external "world," results in a religion that in effect, is irrelevant. That has no effect in the material world.
In sum, a religion or "belief" system that is seen as a mostly and simply internal feeling, that eschews much involvement with the external world and our physical material life and world, is by virtue of that very retreat from the world, irrelevant to much of our lives. But next, it gets worse.
In what sense is such a "belief" "schizophrenic"? I use the word metaphorically. But basically, I mean that the notion that our mind, spirit, is entirely internal, and separate from our lives in the external world, leads to some problems. In simple language: people who hold this kind of "belief" soon start get too far into their own head. And to shut out the external world. They begin to retreat into subjectivity, and to shut their lives off from everything around them. In effect, their minds split or "schism" from the social and material world around them. As they withdraw into increasingly, the all-too-subjective and often delusory world of the private self; into private and subjective ideas untested by any attempt to enact or cross-check them against material, historical facts in the external world.
