Darn, I went OT in my own thread. I will punish myself.
There was one good quote in the miles of reply to Ridley, attributed to Thomas Jefferson:
Man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.
I added that Jefferson must have been afraid of the Baby Jesus too.
That entire post was the backdrop to a visit to my parents, with all siblings and their kids (28 in all). The hardest part was this whole Christianity schtick which included 5 minute long blessings at the dinner table as a younger brother and brother-in-law (a Methodist minister) did some competitive praying at successive meals. The blessing started simple but each one got longer and longer, up to 5 minutes but seemed like hours. Finally I declared the winner (preacher lost), adding that size does matter in the eyes of God.
But before Christmas dinner I did notice that no woman was ever asked to give the blessing. It had become an exclusively male club. I pointed this out and preacher boy offered it to my wife, but in a sort of intimidating way and she declined.
They stopped asking me long ago.
I really do believe in live and let live but something has snapped inside me in recent years. The piety of it all makes me sick. My brother attends a fundie Presbyterian megachurch in Birmingham. Coincidentally enough, two members of that Church were scamees (is that a word) in the Borat movie. Remember the scene at the antebellum mansion dinner (something like the manners society) where there was a minister, his wife and some other people? Sorry, I sidetracked myself.
A Bush supporter, my brother refuses to talk politics, but that makes it all the worse for me, the juxtaposition of all that righteousness with support fo a psychopath. Rightly or wrongly, I take his inability to discuss as a superiority thing. I do not know what makes all fundies tick but in my brothers case he just wants to fit in. He was no rebel like me. At every turn in life he tried to figure out what a good person would do and what would get him the greatest amount of acceptance from those around him. He does have analytical skills (he's an attorney) but they are applied selectively to the extreme. I marvel at his ability to compartmentalize what to me, are contradictions of such magnitude that they could never escape notices from even the most ignorant among us.
Let's just say that on the way to adulthood he abdicated most of his chances to think for himself, instead letting the Lord to most of his talking and thinking for him.
So, not knowing what's good for me I show the family "Its a blunderful life", a takeoff on the Jimmy Steward Christmas story with similar sounding name. well, that one went over like a fart in church. Judge the humor and propriety for yourself:
It's a Blunderful Life
Well, my Mom did laugh but she was careful not to do it in front of my fundie brother. My comment on the fast-moving, widespread and sudden loss of humor was that "as soon as you let one elephant in the living room there suddenly becomes room for many more elephants".
I lamented the fact that we'd been unable to discuss politics civilly like the Kennedys who would take some issue or world even each night as dinner table conversation. My Mom snapped that "we arent the Kennedys and that she was going to turn into an elephant on the rampage in a moment if I did not lay off." I found somewhere to go and read away from the fray.
It was an interesting holiday. Something about all the solemnity and piety just gets my panties in a wad and it gets worse every year. I can tolerate this outside my family but when people whose every quirk and foible I know well start doing the holy thing by wearing the chip of faith on their shoulder something in me makes me want to knock it off.
I had that stuff crammed down my throat since the womb. In some ways I understand and agree but when it comes to the freaky, delisional things people do in the name of organized religion, I'd sooner spit on Baby Jesus than join in with a straight face.
Life can be so ironic. Amidst all this religious frenzy, before I'd left for CA I shared the results of my recent Internet research, that the Pattillos were former slave owners and that is the reason that so many blacks share ouw name. That was in response to my father having researched the family tree back to Scotland, but his version left out the slave part.
I suppose I'm a hard case.