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snarpThe 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
no subject
Date: 2010-08-17 02:18 pm (UTC)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.