What you described as leftist literature is actually a very extreme form based upon Marxism, which you discussed briefly. Marx called religion the opiate of the masses, not so much to destroy the integrity of religion, but to illustrate the fact that religious principles are often used to control the populace. This is a mistake that many people make.
Being Russian, Marx was critical of the social elite of Russia which always had a close affiliation with the Orthodox Church even up to today. Leftist ideology can be subject to a variety of definitions, but to me it means respect and concern for the health and welfare of individuals as a core important value. There is also belief in the collective good as being beneficial for the good of all. Thus, we pay taxes to provide money to take care of the disadvantaged. I use it in this broader sense. In terms of American politics, we might call my position more progressive, as opposed to what the right calls conservative, which actually is not. They often use rigid, archaic, social standards to give themselves credibility. The problem is that there is nothing religious about it in a higher sense. It is a means of control, exactly what Marx complained of. It is based upon self interest and greed, rather than concern for people. if you want to call leftists as being a form of religion, which is at odds with conservative traditional religious principles, I would agree. But it is not a rejection of the higher ideals of enlightened religions, per se. Indeed, the left promotes these values far more than the right and highly religious do. It is not necessarily a fight between religion and secularism, as flip sides of the same coin. This appears to be what you believe. I would strongly disagree with this. Many on the left have rejected religion specifically because of its abuses and intolerance over the centuries. But they do believe in its core values, though it may not always be expressed in their struggle against organized religion used as a club to control everyone else.
One subject that was a major focus of your article, which I intentionally avoided, was your discussion of gender as a social construct. This is not correct. Gender is as innate to a person as sex is. It is not a matter of conditioning, contrary to what many religious people believe, based upon their idea that man was created in God’s image. Man was created in God’s image, but that does not mean that man was created as a group of binary beings. This is a fiction which even the ancient Jews, who wrote the Old Testament, did not believe. They actually acknowledged and respected eight genders, four of which we would consider to be LGBTQ and two of which we would consider to be transgender today. Phrasing this particular debate in terms of religion versus secularism is disingenuous and inaccurate. I intentionally avoided the subject in responding to your article, though I have written and commented about it at length elsewhere.
