I'll Be Hating Religion for Lent

Every year it happens and every year I can't believe it. People you never believe would do so start lining up to get ashes swabbed on their head and making "resolutions" to refrain from doing things for several weeks for the Catholic ritual of Lent. It's like when you find out someone cool is ... well, participating in something you consider very, very uncool. Which brings some very uncomfortable feeling to the forefront.

Some people say they're participating in Lent for the challenge of giving something up and staying away from it. That's as bad as people going to church for loving support of community through Jesus. More over, a pair of gays getting married in a church that honors a religion that states they are going to hell. You do not participate in an organization that you disprove of. If you do not approve of priests getting away with rape, the banishing of persons for sexual preference or centuries worth of lies to control the populace then you shouldn't give them the time of day. Isn't that hypocritical? I would not participate in any Christian religion because I firmly believe it ruins more lives than it saves. That's enough reason for me. It didn't even have to get to the way they conduct business or rape your children to make up my mind.

For me it's more of a difficult decision to keep liking these people than wondering why they have decided to do the things they're doing. I've always been out there with people and I happen to like knowing everyone. Plus ... people just freaking adore me. This fills my world with a very broad spectrum of people. And yet it still twists my mind into a billion pieces when I find out someone I thought of as pure awesome is a conservative-thinking Sarah-Palin-Supporting Catholic-church-on-Sunday-going individual!

How does that happen and how should I feel about it? I don't know if I'll ever have the right answer. There is no conclusion to thought of understanding how you can love someone and absolutely hate their views and choices. To most this is easy to deal with because you may feel that people are people and are allowed to get behind some pretty stupid business. To you it may feel like a matter of personal opinion and some sort of diversity. But you need to understand to me it's as drastic a comparison as finding out your best friend is Adolf Hitler. Not the same thing? I don't think so. Killing Jews is bad, but so is supporting an organization who has made gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people (to name a few) be outcast, murdered and generally treated like shit.

Would you support the KKK if they presented you with a challenge to lay off chocolate or saying "the F word" for a month? Probably not and probably because you don't agree with the whole bothersome "black people thing" going on in their organization.

As much as I'd like to continue thinking people participating in religion are as cool as I thought they were, I can't. I can still agree that they are "nice people." You can be a nice person outside of your affiliations but quite frankly we are our affiliations! A nice girl who knits is a knitter. She's not just a nice girl. She's a knitting nice girl. I am an artist and a writer. If people forgive the things I say and choose to like me detached from everything I choose to be a part of then they may seriously be misguided in that decision.

There comes a time when we have to tell people what they are doing is not helping. Just because you're nice and maybe even awesome is not going to stop me from asking why the hell are smearing ashes on your head in support an organization of old men who have enslaved people for over 2,000 years? That and think just a little bit less of you for your decisions to do so.

In a Drunken Galaxy Far, Far Away

It's no wonder that people have such a hard time allowing gay marriage. Especially when in some states like Georgia they are still quarrelling over whether or not to allow people to purchase alcohol on Sundays! A bone of contention with me when living in Atlanta. In the state of Georgia they still have not been able to smack down the Christian right-wing fools and "convince" the senate for Sunday sales.

It's another bleak picture for change. Just because most of the country is doing it does not mean that everybody is doing it! In Georgia there is nothing out of the ordinary about thinking you can't pick up a six pack of beer on a Sunday for your day at the park. It's as if it's normal for people to not be allowed to do this.

After living on the west coast it is unfathomable that such steep laws against alcohol sales even exist. What is the matter with people? What does the restriction of alcohol sales on a Sunday help to do? Aside from rape the state of beneficial tax revenue and many other fabulous benefits. The only thing it does is pack the liquor stores on a Saturday night with people stocking up for their Sunday festivities. That along with leaving some very depressed alcoholics on a Sunday who forgot or ran out of their life-saving beverage first thing Sunday morning. I know you're wondering how could someone dependent on booze forget to purchase it on Saturday, but trust me it happens.

Have they not learned yet that if someone wants to do something, they're going to do it? It doesn't matter what laws are in place or how many electric fences are erected to keep a person out. They're going to do what they want when they want. You can arrest, fine and lethally inject people to stop them from doing something, but there will always be someone else following right behind to do it anyway. Is that a good argument for letting people do what they want? Yes, in most cases. Especially when it comes to that wise logic of do whatever you will as long as it's not hurting anybody else.

The only defense they provide for not selling liquor on a Sunday is keeping people on the straight and narrow with the Lord Jesus Christ. Which continues to boggle the mind because in the real world there is no Lord Jesus Christ and anyone I've ever met on the straight and narrow are the crookedest folks you could meet.

Buying alcohol on Sundays will keep people "good." Don't let people do what they want. People can't be trusted to take care of themselves. Is that how it is? Protecting the sanctity of the good folk. Those whom button up those blouses and fasten their neckties real tight, worshiping false idols in expensive churches run by child molesters and slipping politicians bribe checks under bathroom stalls. Those whom go home and close the blinds to practice all the sinful atrocious acts they preach against. But that's alright, because they do it in private.

What is the matter with people?