I have formulated a policy, and have been attempting to adhere to it.

[snarp]

The policy is that, if some item covered in the news has ever ruined my day, and if other people have already discussed it more eloquently than I can, I don't post about it here, so as not to ruin anyone else's day. I consider this policy to be socially irresponsible, but then I also consider this blog to be The Place For Talking About Fox Demon Cyborg Werewolf Romance, And Related Concepts. I assume that most people are here for the Cyborg Werewolf stuff, so the latter concern usually trumps.

But I'm breaking the rule for a second: I want the Cordoba dudes to build like, eight mosques. I will get them the damn money. I will steal it from Harry Reid and Obama. I am so disgusted by their wussdom that I changed my operating system, which is a new and scientifically unprecedented level of disgust. Probably there will be papers written.

What infuriates me the most about this whole discussion is that a lot of the people who are insisting that religious freedom doesn't apply anymore are the same ones who, in my home town, show up on the local news every once in a while explaining that it's a threat to their own religious freedom not to have the Ten Commandments in courthouses, and mandatory prayer in public schools.

When I was a kid, we had a sort of irregular Christian Ed class consisting of a lady telling Bible stories with a feltboard. This was technically "optional," but what that meant was that the parents had to sign something or come in and explain that we weren't supposed to be in Christian Ed. (And it didn't necessarily mean anything when they did - at one point Mom came in, and elongated_tito and I didn't have to go for a while, but after a while they started making us again, because they didn't feel like detailing an extra teacher to watch us.)

At least one of the Indian families - I'm not sure whether they were Hindu, Muslim, Jainist, or something else, but they weren't Christian - apparently didn't give permission, or else the kids didn't try to get it, because they were always there. I assume they didn't want to deal with the harassment that came with not filing off to listen to the Bible stories with everyone else.

I disliked it when school assemblies required group prayers, as nearly all of them did. Most of the time I would be a wuss and kind of duck my head so it looked like I was praying, but sometimes I didn't bother. A couple times I got yelled at for that. I remember wondering about this as a kid - I mean, they knew I wasn't Christian. This was something of which I'd made sure! (I was loud.) So by telling me to make these gestures that meant something to them but nothing to me, they were, in essence, telling me to lie to them. I was not a well-behaved kid, but I didn't like to lie.

(My disciplinary problems were, in fact, partly due to my determination to tell everybody exactly what I thought of them. Some thoughts, I felt, were best expressed through the fist.)

Now I see that it wasn't actually about faith - the teachers who did this didn't really care what I believed, or even what any of the other kids did. They knew that most of the Christian kids were probably only making the gestures while they thought about something else, and that didn't bother them. All they cared about was that we carried out the motions. In a community in which everybody's Christian, praying is just part of being a Good Kid, in the same way turning in your homework and not scratching up the desk with your pencil is. If you don't duck your head, shut your eyes, and put your hands together, you're misbehaving. They had no other context for interpreting my distaste for pretending to pray - they couldn't imagine any other meaning for what I was doing. Obviously, they thought, I was just trying to annoy them.

This is, I think, part of the impulse that makes people of otherwise normal intelligence insist that mosques are "symbols of hate." Christians tend to think of themselves as being the default in the US. Once a teacher told me in an exasperated tone, as if I was only pretending not to know this myself, that I wasn't "really Jewish," and therefore had to go listen to the Bible stories. I don't know how she defined that - maybe I should've been, like, wearing a yarmulke? I probably should've said "oy veh" or something, I don't know.

But because I wasn't blatantly, visibly something else, she felt I had to be Christian, because in her mind, that was the default state. And the thing about being the default is that you get used to things being set up for your own convenience. All the stories you hear are about people like you, all the stuff on TV's about people like you, all the pictures in your kids' books are people like you. You think that's how it's supposed to be. The world generally arranges itself conveniently so that you don't need to think about people not of your faith. When the guy on the podium starts praying, you know that everyone else is going to do it, too. When you see a mosque on TV or in a picture, you know it's really far away and nothing you need to deal with.

So you're so used to not having to see them that, when you suffer the slight inconvenience of having to look at a mosque or a kid who's not praying, it feels like an assault. Because it's all about you. When I didn't pray, the teachers knew it had nothing to do with my beliefs - I was just doing it to tick them off. When a Muslim group wants to build a mosque, Glen Beck knows it's got nothing to do with their faith - they're just doing it because they hate Christians. Glen Beck's smart! He knows it's really all about him.

Comments

[nagaina]

CO-FREAKING-SIGNED.

I am so effing sick of this entire moronic "controversy." I had a friend from college go completely batshit insane anti-Muslim after 9/11 and she's just been a complete lunatic about the whole thing, to the point that I finally had to tell her off and defriend her. And, yes, I frankly blame the Republican Party for their relentless and cynical appropriation of 9/11 as a political tool for all of this.

[ajnabieh]

I want the Cordoba dudes to build like, eight mosques. I will get them the damn money. I will steal it from Harry Reid and Obama. I am so disgusted by their wussdom that I changed my operating system, which is a new and scientifically unprecedented level of disgust.

Yes, yes, yes. I am basically incapable of thinking about this without flipping out, and I have shit to do other that flip out, so I'm letting Jon Stewart have my angry for me, but--O.M.G. EVERYBODY STOP IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT.

[distractionary]

My main experience with this was seeing a news clip with Governor Paterson pointing out "hey, guys, they're allowed to have their mosque, okay?"

but that was like. over a week ago. I don't know what's been happening to them since. I'm pretty sure it would make me irate.

as the child of a Presbyterian minister, it makes me irate that people are giving these guys so much shit, and that's without me even knowing the precise depth of the shit they've had piled on top of them!

(also I grew up in Frankfort, for a while. It sucked.)

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Once a teacher told me in an exasperated tone, as if I was only pretending not to know this myself, that I wasn't "really Jewish," and therefore had to go listen to the Bible stories.

FLAMES. FLAMES ON THE SIDE OF MY FACE.

But because I wasn't blatantly, visibly something else, she felt I had to be Christian, because in her mind, that was the default state.

I am reminded by one of the first really big culture shock moments that hit me when I first moved to the mainland. I'd gotten a job at this commercial printing company in Philly that was run by a couple of old guys who'd all grown up in the same ethnically/religiously homogenous neighborhood, and as the business expanded over the years they'd added on more buddies from the old neighborhood, and their grown-up kids, and some of their kids' spouses and college buddies, to the office staff. The dudes working out on the printing floor were a mix of black and white and latino; the office staff, except for me and the black receptionist, were all white -- and I'm so light that folks kept assuming I was one of them.

So one day I was in the breakroom eating lunch, and I was chatting with one of the younger women working there -- college buddy of the company president's daughter, only a couple years older than me. I don't remember what the conversation was about but she said something that made it clear she'd assumed I was a Christian, and when I told her "ummm, no" she'd been visibly startled. When I explained to her that there were tons of folks back on the rez who had never converted and my family were among them, she was downright shocked. "Wow, I never knew there was anything besides Protestants and Catholics!" she chirped, followed by a VERY LOUD COUGH from the guy at the next table -- "Oh, and Jews, of course." she added helpfully to the office's sole Jewish employee.

Yeah. It was a really special moment.

So far as I can tell, the Becks of the world must think "religious freedom" means "freedom from ever having to acknowledge or coexist with pesky religions other than my own". Fuck that noise.

[vito-excalibur.livejournal.com]

Is there a word for the opposite of nostalgia? You are making me feel anti-nostalgic for my own childhood in Texas, yes. :/

My own rule is that I try not to link to bad shit just for the sake of "did you know about this thing?" unless I can also provide something that people can do about it if they want to, whether that's donate money, talk to friends, change their own behavior, something. I feel that it is too easy to find bad news that you can do nothing about which leaves you powerless. But I will talk about bad shit if I also have additional personal thoughts about it, which you have done here; that seems different somehow, more like a conversation.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

You are making me feel anti-nostalgic for my own childhood in Texas, yes.

Oh, yes: where religious diversity means going to school with Methodists, Lutherans, Catholics, and Southern Baptists!

The very first Jew I ever (knowingly) met was a girl who moved into town in seventh grade. Naturally as nerds we bonded over Elfquest and SF novels and were good friends until her dad got transferred a couple of years later. Amusingly enough, she seemed to be considered more exotic by our classmates for having lived in New York City than for being Jewish (You drink frappes instead of shakes?! Bizarre!), but I think that's because Jewishness was so far out of the everyday experience for most of us that it flew under the radar.

[snarp]

My own rule is that I try not to link to bad shit just for the sake of "did you know about this thing?" unless I can also provide something that people can do about it if they want to, whether that's donate money, talk to friends, change their own behavior, something.

That is a good rule.

[jackandahat]

Ah, the joys of enforced prayer. I live in England, I was raised Irish Catholic and escaped, and I have serious issues with organised religion. But I didn't protest, I didn't make a big deal, I just stood there quietly and refused to put my head down. When they tried to make me, I pointed out that they were asking me to lie, and they were telling me that their beliefs weren't something people actually believed in, just something people pretended for five minutes a day.

Got so many detentions for that.

And the thing is - these people weren't the kind who were going to church on Sundays. (Excluding the Religious Education teacher who marked you down for not believing in her God.) Several of them were divorced, or living with someone before marriage, definitely not following all the rules of what they claimed as their god. So I always suspected it was nothing to do with God and everything to do with "Shut up little child, do this pointless exercise just to prove you're willing to unquestioningly go along with the herd."

I tend to feel that's part of the objection here - they feel that people aren't going along with the herd. (Even if it's possible they are, it's just they're going along with their community's default, not the biggest community.)

[sanguinity]

:: If you don't duck your head, shut your eyes, and put your hands together, you're misbehaving. They had no other context for interpreting my distaste for pretending to pray - they couldn't imagine any other meaning for what I was doing. Obviously, they thought, I was just trying to annoy them. ::

I heart this so much. Because it is, so totally and always, all. about. them.

[grrlpup]

I've gotta wonder: how would anyone know you didn't have your head bowed and eyes shut, unless that was also true of them? How dare anyone be all "you all have to pray. But I will be the prayer monitor."