I am a bigot

So I'm stumbling around the Internet, the way you do when it's a day ending in -y in laundry month and there are only a thousand or so other things you should be doing. What to my wandering eye should appear but this piece of tripe concerning Manifest Destiny. I didn't cringe quite as much as I had earlier with that UC-Davis video, but close. People have to see this, I thought, and immediately posted it to my Facebook wall, captioned "This may be the scariest thing I've ever read in my life."


I didn't bother to check Reddit.com's take on this article: I knew what it would be. Snide and dismissive, just as I was. Christian site, what did you expect? No, instead I sauntered around Christwire.org a while longer, gibbering. What to make of a headline like "Scientists Develop Gay Repellant Powder?" I know what *I* made of it: let's see now, does this redeem science in the eyes of Christianity, or not? Or how about "Is Your Teenaged Daughter Throwing a Twilight Vampire Babies Pregnancy Pact Party?" Yeah, the night after I throw my Harry Potter Dark Arts Party.

After posting another link to my Wall--and noting the immediate disgusted reaction of a close friend of mine who happens to be a devout Christian, I decided to get off that site before it could contaminate me any further. I went to check it out on Wikipedia, only to discover what Reddit had known all along, and what I should have guessed: I'd been trolled.

Christwire.org is a satirical site. Neither of the posts I so gleefully put up were real.  Mr. Critical Thinker here unthinkingly, uncritically shared his discovery, all too eager to play pin-the-stupid-on-the-Christian. Would I have done this with any other supposed class of idiocy? I think not.

What does that say about me? I could protest that I am merely a victim of Poe's Law, that being "it's impossible to create a parody of extremism that somebody won't mistake for the real article." I could do this, yes, and bring up things like this, which is real, or this, which is also real. But the truth is,  this isn't the first time I've paid lip service to the truth that the vast majority of Christians think this stuff is loony...while hurrying to say "look! Look what the Christians are up to now!"

So help me, I was relieved  to see that friend of mine was revolted. Despite having known her for almost a quarter century and counting her amongst my best friends, I wasn't completely sure she would be. On some level I'm forever afraid that moderate Christianity is going to spill over into lunacy, simply because to me, the idea of--say--a devil is lunacy. Christians tend to believe in a devil, ergo Christianity is nuts.

In short, I am a bigot. I am that thing I am forever mocking. That hurts to admit. I am forever quoting Neale Donald Walsch: "Mine is not a better way, mine is merely another way"...and I'm not only lying to myself, I'm also insulting anyone else who may think exactly the same thing but believe differently than I do.

I'm not going to do an about-face and embrace Christianity for myself. I've read the Bible and done a ton of exegesis and I just can't. Nor am I going to stop bringing the excesses of Christianity to attention. I have too many gay friends and relatives to let hate speech go unchallenged, and I have heard far too much hate speech from the mouths of self-defined Christians. HOWEVER, I will stop believing, and wanting to believe, that the excesses are the norm.

Please forgive me.