My provocative statement for today: fundamentalist religious groups inevitably wind up with the same lunchbox of dogma on gender, race and sexual orientation.

They’re not issued with them when they come into the lunchroom, but give any fundamentalist religious group time and – gosh, look at that! – the contents end up just the same. And do they go back to the lunch counter and say “hey, this isn’t what’s on the menu. We were promised peace, love and understanding”? I’ve not seen it happen yet.

I’ve pondered this for some time. It was easy to imagine that these dogmatic positions arose from the founders or founding documents of the religious group concerned. But that was just me imagining. They don’t – certainly not in the case of Jesus, Mohammed, the Bible and the Qu’ran.

Here’s what I think. They’re patriarchies, and they’re just doing what patriarchies do. That is, they’re putting fences around their own areas of insecurity. They assume everyone else is like them, legislate accordingly and make it a prerequisite for membership of the group. Of course they don’t sit in meetings saying “We’re really concerned these fears and desires might get out of control if we don’t lock them down hard enough” … but come lunchtime, look what’s in their lunchbox. This is just a theory, mind.

By the way, what’s in your lunchbox?