Oh! This is the thing I’ve been reading about, with how people change their minds.
It turns out that for everyone, belief is partly to largely social. The brain values in-group membership and security much like how it values physical security. When you say something to someone that threatens their group security, the brain reacts similarly to if a bear had just walked into the room. There’s no cool analyzing of facts.
So you have someone who’s anti-trans and hangs out with their anti-trans church, and that’s a big part of their community. That’s their friends, family, and support. They get together, sing songs, and trash talk trans folks. Now, you come up to them and say “Hey, trans folks are people like anyone else and don’t deserve to be treated badly.” You’re an outsider. The brain looks at this like siding with you risks being ejected from the safety of the group to be eaten by wolves. That’s uncomfortable. So they make up excuses to resolve this. You’re a liar. You’re wrong. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You don’t understand it’s about protecting children. This is an exception that doesn’t prove anything. It was a false flag operation. Excuses. Excuses to protect group membership and resolve cognitive dissonance.
People are complex and hold many memberships simultaneously. This person belongs to a church, but they also have a family, and they may be in a political party, and a sports team. And the church may belong to a larger group like Christianity more generally.
One of the ways to get people to change their mind is to appeal to another group they’re a member of. Like, you probably can’t get a republican to recycle by appealing to environmentalism. Republicans have gone hard on the environment doesn’t matter. But you could probably make progress if you appealed to american exceptionalism. Only America can turn trash into treasure! That might appeal. That doesn’t make them feel like they’re clashing with a group.
This is also how stuff like qanon hook into people. Being part of the group feels good, and getting people to look at facts is going to be an uphill battle when it means risking that membership. And that’s on top of the whole “most people don’t want to admit fault”
Anyway. I digress. The specifics of christianity are a problem, but none of this is really unique to it. We should probably be spending more effort dismantling hate groups and such, though. And maybe building groups that aren’t centered on hate and xenophobia.