http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niche_conformity

Niche conformity is an interesting concept I have run across. It is paradoxically conforming, yet not conforming. It is the paradoxical relationship between people and culture. People, no matter how independent and unique they are, will choose from a ready made selection of cultures and cultural options. People are too lazy to be too eclectic or invent something from scratch. Also, since people tend to think this over, more than other people think, it is a really complicated part of a person’s choices. Various factors influence one’s choices. While choices obviously aren’t coerced, except rare occasions, you can never really say whether cultural choices are conforming or non-conforming. They are a really gray area.

Any fan of South Park know that Goths are the best example of niche conformity in the West. Thus can apply to any example, but generally this gets the most attention on this topic. South Park exaggerates this paradox into a contradiction in that you are not conforming by conforming. People from within a group will more often see the non-conformity more, while someone outside will see conformity more.

Islam and the hijab are interesting cases in niche conformity. They are that here in the West, but a mainstream in other parts of the world. This is complicated by the fact that in some countries both are enforced by religious police who punish things like apostasy and undressed women (here meaning anything a little as too much visible hair on one’s head which can mean any visible hair at all). Since various Muslims countries don’t respect the liberty to chose Islam or the hijab or not choosing them, people assume that Islam and the hijab are signs of coercion rather than conformity. It’s not that people are coerced as much as there as tons of tiny pushes that build up over time that continually push people into accepting the ways of what they were born into. I assume your friend was born into rather than converted. The stats show that most are born into it, but that can be true of any religious group. The liberty to accept or reject is assumed not to exist or that the person won’t exercise the choice to reject despite having it within a group, that it looks from the outside as explicit coercion.

What if a friend, family member, neighbor, acquaintance, etc said they were going to change their fashion style, political ideology, religon, or anything or major importance? This goes for any example, not just the ones I gave. How you answer that varies from respecting their liberty to trying to make them think over their options before making any choices to borderline coercion by trying to convince them not to make their hypothetical change. This goes especially for religion choices. People never make a really free decision with hundred of religion as a person’s fingertips and a person choosing one of them. Various factors in a person’s life rig the game so as to a person making a choice disproportionality more likely than others. The closet is usually referring to hiding sexual orientation or gender identity. It can also refers to hiding one’s religion. Closet Paganism is a thing I heard of so much that Closet Wicca is called Broom Closet Wicca, for the pun. I have also read magazine articles about Closet Buddhism.

An object in rest tends to stay at rest. This is inertia. It also explains why most people born into something stay as something. Why do people never convert to another religion? Why don’t more people really notice the fact conversion is an option for them? Why do some people after covering revert back to what they were before? These are all question I will have to look into.

I didn’t really have the luxury of staying in the black church (historically black Protestantism). Being LGBT and being LGBT affirming severely limits one’s choices religion wise. The chances of a cisgender heterosexual being in any religion are drastically different from LGBT people being in it. In Western countries, LGBT people are very likely to be in a group that affirms them, but inertia can sometimes overtake that as well. LGBT people are way more likely to be Unaffiliated/None (Agnosticism, Atheism, SBNR, Secular Humanism, Deism, Ethical Culture Movement, Transcendetalism), Buddhist, or Unitarian Universalist* than the general population. I put an asterisk near Unitarian Universalism that since the sample of them is so small, it’s statically harder to say with them. There were too few Pagans, Spritualists, Afro-Diaspora religionists, Japanese new religionists, Eckists, Raëlians, etc to surgery despite their pro-LGBT stances possibly making them qualify as well. Among all the choices, Unaffliated/None and Buddhism seem to dominate LGBT people’s religious choice of what to convert to according to polls. It has contributed to my conversions to Buddhism, but it wasn’t the only factor. There is also a group of various religious organizations within Unitarian Universalism. So, the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship within the Unitarian Universalist Association allows me to be Buddhist and Unitarian Universalist.