Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Forwards, O How I Hate Them

Okay, not all of them. Some are cute, harmless, amusing, etc. But sadly, my Dad likes to send me whole batches of them every so often, and while some of them are kind of funny and I don't mind those, it's the ones like this that I wish he'd quit sending. In particular it was this section that made me almost, but not quite, send Dad a tart little response asking him not to send me stuff like this anymore:

"Whether you like it or whether you don’t God was a part of building this great nation. To remove him is to take away the very foundation of what this country was all about.

I don’t care about your political correctness!

I don’t want to know your sexual preference!

I could care less about all of that. Stop making it the headline of the day!

That’s not America."

I didn't send him the tart little email, but only because I have to ask him not to come install some damn pyramid-scheme air filter system in my house, "just so you can write me a letter of testimony, you don't have to buy it." If I reject both his air filter and his emails, he'll get all sensitive and think I don't want to see him anymore. That's what he did when we requested he and his wife, whom I do not like but to whom I am perfectly civil, find somewhere else to stay the night we brought our daughter home from the hospital when she was born. We just felt that we would like to spend our first night home together as a family without visitors, plus we were totally overwhelmed and didn't need to have to take care of anyone but ourselves and our tiny new person. Naturally he interpreted this as, "You're mad at me for not being able to come see you the night the baby was born because I had a doctor's appointment that was evidently more important, even though I said I'd drop everything and rush to your bedside the minute you called," and attended a motorcycle rally the first weekend of her life after stopping by to visit for a whole twenty minutes because, "We paid for this rally a month ago and it wasn't cheap!"

Um, no, I don't have any childhood baggage about my Dad, why do you ask?

Okay, so first of all what bothers me about this kind of thing is the whole "this is a Christian nation," thing that I've come across here and there, generally in connection somehow with my Dad. I once attended a service at his church that happened to be right around July 4th, 2002, so it was the first Independence Day after 9/11 and also right around the time that they were arguing that whole Pledge of Allegiance thing about whether to include "under God" or not. You can imagine how they took that ball and ran with it, and so I was forced to listen to how this was a Christian nation founded by Christian men on Christian ideals blah blah blah and that taking God out of government and prayer out of the schools was directly responsible for Satanism, teen pregnancy, drug use -- oh, and homosexuality.

I was utterly mortified since, as some of you know, I am a drug-using, teenly-pregnant, devil-worshiping fag. Okay, not really, but I am a lesbian who has never really used drugs, didn't get pregnant as a teen or any other time until I had pay two grand for the privilege, and so far as I know have not practiced Satanism, unless it was inadvertant and then I suppose I could blame it on an allergic reaction to painkillers like all the celebrities do...

And, um, didn't the framers of the Constitution deliberately separate church and state so that people who didn't want someone else's belief system shoved down their throats by the government could live in peace? Wasn't that part of why they came here and stole this continent from the people who already lived here? I mean, I know it's a little late for us to pack up and leave it to the Native Americans, but can't we at least maintain the semblance of giving a shit about freedom from religious persecution? And hey, news flash: that includes Christianity!

I would also like to state specifically that my Christianity bears very, very little resemblance to whatever brand of "Christianity" that these people profess to practice.

And secondly, who's making an issue out of who else's sexual orientation? Not preference, you hate-peddling moron. Orientation. It's funny how if you're in the minority and you bring up a point you have an agenda, whereas if you're on the other side of the issue, you're just "morally right." Funny how that works. Really. Funny.

Okay, enough soap-boxing. I just woke up itching for a fight, evidently. Carry on.

5 comments:

J.Po said...

Itch away, your majesty! You're on a major roll...

Oh, and God Bless America, by the way. :)

Elizabeth said...

I celebrate Festivus "for the rest of us!” do you think they hate me too?? It's Ok if they do, just wondering. Oh, and what does "I want the Abramoff’s of the world to be labeled what they…nothing more than organized crime in a better suit." mean?????

Impetua said...

I actually don't know anything about Abramoff, though I intend to look it up shortly.

J.Po said...

Kind of surprised he took a shot at Abramoff, who was involved in channeling mucho bribe money to Republicans (and, to a far lesser degree, to Democrats). I would have thought that channeling dirty cash to conservatives is a Sacred American Family Christian Value.

Impetua said...

It's classic fingerpointing to refocus the blame on someone else even when you're guilty as hell.