My sister posted this on the faceyspaces today. Yeah, the one who’s becoming a nun. I was all excited for a second, and then I was just sad.
Sure, dude, you don’t want to teach your children to eat sand. But if you’re a grown adult who likes to eat sand and doesn’t cause anyone harm by doing it… why not eat sand? There shouldn’t be a rule against eating sand just because not everybody wants to eat it and it doesn’t provide nutrition in any way. Do you really want the church to treat you like you’re perpetually a child who doesn’t know any better and can’t care for himself or make his own decisions?
You know what else isn’t nutritious? A lot of the foods we eat. You know what else isn’t healthy? A lot of the “traditional” marriages I’ve seen in the world. Why does the church prioritize the marriage between an abusive alcoholic and the wife who’s too afraid to leave him? In fact, the church stigmatizes the battered woman who divorces her husband in order to survive… but refuses to recognize the long standing, deep, abiding commitment and love between two wives. Or two husbands. Or two anybody-the-church-thinks-is-icky.
You don’t want to eat sand? Don’t. You don’t want to have sex? Don’t. But you can’t make laws telling me not to eat sand or have sex just because you don’t want to. That’s not how this works. I get to make my own choices, and my choice to eat sand is just as valid as your choice not to.
Apologies for the short post this week. Life happened. More on that later. :p
Penny Gets Lucky 
keelyellenmarie
Ewwwwwwwww LifeTeen. The uber-Catholic mega-youth-group from hell. ewwww.
Kasey Weird
Ugh. I’m really sorry :\
mothlit
Agree… very sad. I was once pretty religious, a Baptist missionary, in fact, but came to understand that too much just didn’t make any sense. Like, for instance, a loving god (born-again agnostic speaking) who supposedly made us in his/her image, created some members of the human race who are, apparently, flawed at birth. They won’t be allowed to find pleasure in their private parts the way others do. So sorry, god just isn’t really committed to what’s fair. Really?? We know what a powerful tool culture is when intelligent people reach such illogical conclusions in the name of religion, or god, or… whatever.
b.h.quinn
I tend not to talk about religion online (or with certain people) because it often seems to get me nowhere, but I don’t get that feeling from the blog posts I’ve read so I’m going to give it a go.
This may (probably) has a lot to do with where I grew up and who my family is, but I’m a Catholic — a faithful one, who reads the Bible, read the Catechism, went to 13 years of plaid-skirted torture (aside from the no-boys thing, it wasn’t that bad), and goes to Church — and I have absolutely no moral issue with anyone on the LGBT spectrum or what they do with their bits in private times (this does not included kissing, although full-on Frenching in public can sometimes make me cringe). And, despite the conclusions in the CCC, I really don’t see a reason for the Catholic Church to either.
I don’t often see the… views that are on lifeteen in the young Catholics I know, and as time moves I believe that the stubbornness of old men will die off (mostly as they die off). Once the Catholic Church proclaimed that interracial and inter-religious marriages were mortal sins and that women wearing pants was a sin (not sure if that one was mortal), but that changed too. The central message of the Church — to love and respect everyone as we expect to be loved and respected — is solid and will hopefully guide us to a more understanding (and less ridiculous) stance on major issues like the LGBT community..
I hope that you can find more understanding (and less condescension) from your family as time goes on, but I also hope that these views don’t lead you to automatically discredit anyone who believes in God. All of us aren’t like what you see there.
mothlit
Hi, B.H. Quinn. Just curious if your aversion to public Frenching is restricted to the gay population or does that include heteros as well?
b.h.quinn
I am an equal opportunity prude. I should clarify that I mean very intense Frenching that is a step or two away from more fun, less clothed forms of entertainment.
Leah Ashley Esser
“if you believe that men and women and sex and marriage are pretty much whatever we say they are, then okay: we don’t have much left to talk about.”… yep, we don’t have much to talk about cause I kind of think that’s exactly how I define healthy sex and marriage. If everyone involved is happy, I’m happy. Wow… I’m so not impressed with that article…