(no subject)

[which_chick]

I am an idiot.



One of the people who friended me on facebook (I typically agree to "be friended" on the grounds that perhaps other people know for themselves better than I do whether or not they really want to be friends with me. I don't think it's really my place to tell people that, seriously, they shouldn't friend me because they are not going to find my belief system / political views / social outlook / taste in movies compatible with their own.) posted the following after her son's high school graduation...

I must commend ALL the speakers at the Class of 2013 Graduation. EACH AND EVERY ONE of you acknowledged God as our Savior and encouraged your classmates/students to seek HIM for wisdom and guidance throughout your lives. And all of you were very thankful to HIM for where you are today. My heart is VERY appreciative to each and every one of you because you stood in front of sooo many and were NOT ashamed! GOD BLESS EACH OF YOU FOR YOUR WITNESS AND TESTIMONY!!! ♥ Through students like you we ARE able to keep Christ in the schools!

*Sigh* Seriously, that's what she posted right out there in public.

I do not believe that a public school graduation, which takes place in the publicly-funded school and is paid for by my tax dollars, should be used as a pulpit to advance one's faith. I am somewhat horrified that anyone would consider such a public occasion an appropriate place for testifying. And I am thoroughly squicked that anyone I know personally thinks Christ or any other deity-ish personification *belongs* in the public schools but not as squicked as I am that they FUCKING SAID THAT OUT LOUD IN PUBLIC. Seriously, "Keep Christ in the schools!" is right up there with "Niggers are property." in my book. It is just as offensive as "The Jews deserved Hitler."

I didn't say people should be PREVENTED from testifying as to their faith in a public school graduation speech. (We have free speech, so people may say what they will if they are giving a graduation speech.) I said that I didn't think Christ belonged in schools. I said that talking about one's faith in a publicly-funded venue at a public event was crass, inappropriate, and insufficiently respectful of the separation that should exist between church and state. I also allowed as how the "Yay Jesus!" shout-outs may not have been received as joyfully by her if they'd been "Insha'Allah" instead. It is easy to listen to the speech you agree with, after all, and not so easy to have to tolerate the speech you "know" to be wrong. (And according to almost every religion, it is the One True Way. If you are a follower of Islam, then the Christians are wrong. If you are a Christian, then the Muslims are wrong. They can't all be right, but at least in my world they're all equally true.)

I should know better than this. I live in a deeply-conservative religious redneck part of the country. I choose to live here. I am here a-purpose with the full knowledge of what it means to live here.

My facebook, on a daily basis, is full of "Click *like* if you Accept Jesus" posts. I do not remark on any of them. (There are only so many times you can say, "Look, it's all pretend." without getting bored.) It is full of people posting how much God has helped them everyday. A guy I went to highschool with has had a son who accidentally shot himself in the head with a .38 about a year ago. (He and friends were messing around with a gun, thought the gun was unloaded. It wasn't.) He regularly posts on his faith and how it has sustained him through his son's tragic and early death. I carefully avoid mentioning how if God sees every sparrow that falls, then He probably also had a hand in the son's death. I make a pretty solid effort to get along without stomping on people and their faith, but the facebook friend was all "Keep Christ In Schools!" and I saw red.

So I called her out on it, which I should not have done. (Why not? Because it would not solve anything. Because it would make her and her circle of friends unhappy. Because her facebook wall is her forum and not mine. Because nobody really gives a shit about my views regarding the appropriateness of shoving one's religion down the throats of other people at a public high school graduation in rednecklandia. And because, like I find the "Honk if you Love Jesus" postings tiresome clutter, other people find "God is not real, get over it" postings tiresome clutter. If it's inappropriate for them to be all Yay-Jesus because sharing one's religious beliefs with the uninterested is tacky and crass and impolite, then it is also inappropriate for me to be sharing my non-religious beliefs with the uninterested because that's also tacky, crass and impolite.) And she (and her circle of friends) blew up in unhappiness, which I suppose I should have expected. They said I was unAmerican. They said this was a CHRISTIAN nation. Oh, and she helpfully told me the following: no one hindered you or criticized your beliefs that we expressed at school. Good to know that I have been remembering high school incorrectly all these years.

Well, hell. Not much to say to that, is there? C'mon, it was unwinnable from the start and I knew that before I typed the first word. I deleted what I had said and used that space to apologize.

EDIT: I was out of line here and wrong to say what I did. This is not my personal venue for expressing my beliefs about church and state.

EDIT: Here I continued to be wrong and out of line. Again, I apologize for using your personal facebook as my forum.

You are correct. I was out of line in expressing an opinion on your facebook and I should not have done so. I am sorry to have upset you -- sometimes my judgment isn't particularly stellar. Your personal facebook is not my bully pulpit for my personal beliefs, either, and I was wrong in using it that way. I am sorry and have deleted my (previous) offensive comments. I will do my best to not offend you further on your facebook posts.

Sometimes I wish I had the stomach to play along (Praise Christ!) in order to get by. I just... it's not what I believe. It isn't at all what I believe. I GET SO DAMN TIRED OF HAVING TO BE THE INVISIBLE ATHEIST ALL THE TIME. Let other people post Yay-Jesus without comment, endlessly. (You do know it's not real, right?) Carefully edit your lack-o-belief stuff so that it is not offensive to those who "still believe". (Like with kids and Santa Claus. Don't ruin it for them.) Sidestep the questions whenever possible. Do not get angry for other people pushing their faith -- evangelism is part of what they believe and part of what made the Inquisition possible. (Atheism is not particularly an evangelical sport but just because your beliefs do not use that tool doesn't mean it can't be in the toolbox of other beliefs.)

Comments

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I sometimes feel like the problem is one of visibility, that being a relatively invisible atheist in my everyday life leads others around me to assume (like the problem with heteronormativity) that everyone they see is "like them". One of the reasons that it is important to present other people with real-world examples of people different from them is that once they know someone like *that* (a lesbian, a gay man, a transgendered person, a person of color, a person of a different color, a Sikh, an atheist, a Republican), their attitudes toward the group may begin to soften. Not always, of course, and mostly not making quite the severe about-face that, say, Rob Portman (Senator with gay son) did about "gay marriage" when it turned out that was an issue that affected him and his son personally. But still, there is a softening of the attitudes, a lessening of the 'othering' when an individual personally knows someone different from himself or herself.

Tolerance is the end result of getting to know people not-like-oneself. For that to happen, people need to know folks not-like-themselves. Sometimes the differences are immediate and visible -- as for people of color vs. white people. Sometimes the differences are not as obvious, as for one's sexual preference or (sometimes) religious views. In those cases when the difference is not-obvious, does the different person have an obligation to reveal his or her difference (I can't bring myself to use "their" for single-person, unknown-gender pronouns. I don't give a shit what other people do here, I just can't fucking do it.) ? Probably not. In many cases, doing so could put the different person in harm's way, lose his or her gainful employment, etc. It's not always the time or the place. Also, not everyone wants to spend a lifetime being the "Token Whatever".

But when it's safe and reasonably convenient, being-visible is an important thing.