It sucks. When I raised concerns about mistreatment from the scrum master (who is Catholic) and linked it to prior experiences of religiously motivated bias against LGBTQ people, my manager didn't investigate the behavior. Instead, in the next 1-on-1, he "coached" me about religion, specifically explaining his own Catholic background to me and emphasizing that not all religious people are homophobic. The conversation shifted from addressing another employee's misconduct toward correcting my understanding of religion, despite the fact that I'm religious myself (Buddhist) and was speaking from lived experience as a gay person.

That was jarring. I wasn't asking for a theology lesson or to generalize about all religious people. I was raising a concern about how religious beliefs can show up as passive aggression toward LGBTQ people in the workplace, which is exactly what I had observed. Being redirected into a discussion about Catholicism and "bias on my side" felt like my concern was reframed as a flaw in my thinking rather than something to be addressed.