Fan, meet s**t. S**t, meet fan.
Well, the conversation I expected with my mom has finally commenced. She forwarded me a bizarre little Paul Harvey screed about “poor, oppressed Christians can’t even say ‘merry Christmas’ anymore without being threatened with legal action”, and I fired back a long email to her telling her in no uncertain terms that religion as a topic is now absolutely verboten between she and I, that I’ve spent the last twenty-plus years not intruding my beliefs on hers (or anyone else’s, for that matter), and that it’s high time I got the same respect.
When my dad and I had the same sort of talk over a different subject–ultimately winding up with me telling him, quote, “Look me in the eye and tell me that I’m the fuckup you keep treating me as”–Dad admitted that I was right and that I did deserve more respect than he was showing me.
We’ll see what happens here.
St. Bob's Basilica 
Sounds like Paul Harvey has OD’ed on the Kool-Aid and is now in the Bill O’Lielly camp.
I am so fed up with the “Christian” hypocrisy. Poor them, they are so oppressed. Yet, they insist that protestant Christianism is the only true religion in the United States; they do their best to change legislation so that we become one big Baptist bible-thumping nation. Gays, Muslims, Jews, immigrants and women should have no rights, but waaaaaaah! Wal-Mart greeters can’t say “Merry Christmas” to their toothless shoppers! They are the American Taliban, and they have the balls to whine that they are being suppressed?!
You know I love your mom. But she shouldn’t even dare bring up oppression to her gay son. She and I got into it a little bit about W last holiday season; I just have this fear I am going to speak my mind (which you know I have the wont to do, quite often) and be banned from their house forever.
As you mentioned, it’s probably a faux email chain. And yeah, Bill O’Reilly pretty much started the whole “war on Christmas” nonsense. Not that political correctness is that kosher, but attacking PC does not excuse impoliteness. A lot of the items even become just as bad as political correctness itself.
To me, Bill O’Reilly and company represents a certain segment of baby boomers. Their whole “conservative” and “Christian” nonsense is just a cover for their 1950s-worshiping crotchedy old-fartism. (Though their 1950s-worshiping is warped. If they really loved the 1950s, they wouldn’t be so down on Halloween, for instance.) Most Bill O’Reilly rants can be accurately described as “senior moments”.
PS:
Chances are, if it was a forwarded email your mom sent to you, it wasn’t by Paul Harvey; Snopes.com has debunked a couple of “Paul Harvey” pieces here:
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/wishfor.asp
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/prayer.asp
Generally, they are pieces by wild-eyed “Christians,” supposedly given more credence by tacking a celebrity’s name onto them.
Speaking of which, please show your mom this article I found at Snopes, and its rebuttal:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/devil.asp
Re: PS:
It was the prayer one. I will be forwarding that link along to her as well. I really don’t think she realizes that she’s being a “pushy Christian”. She’s not a fire-and-brimstone psycho, but she operates under the mindset that since most people are Christian, it’s “not really normal” not to be. And I don’t think she realizes that pushy Christians only ever really succeed in pushing people *away* from Christianity.
Re: PS:
Do pushy people ever do other than push away?
Re: PS:
She’s about to find that out the hard way.
One day I’ll have to write about the persecution fetish American Christians have. :P
I’ve heard that Bill Donahue of the Catholic League once said in one breath that ‘diversity be hanged, we’re ALL Christian in the US’ and in the next talked about how horribly oppressed Christians are, in this country.
The nation’s run by ’em, they have all the money, power, and media outlets – next time someone says the media’s run by liberal atheists and jewish guys I’ll point out Rupert Murdoch, who’s sizeable block of it is run by a right wing Christian – and yet, they’re ‘oppressed’.
Listen to one of ’em spin a tale of the day coming where they’ll be in concentration camps behind barbed wire in this country, for their beliefs. It’s an education…
And makes me wonder why they don’t have their own faithful-imprisoned-fetish art site, yet. :P
OK, ramble off.
–Drake
OK, second thought.
Ask your mom this: “If you’re so oppressed in this country, shouldn’t that mean that Bush should be in a ‘relocation camp’ and not President?’
‘Shouldn’t Pat Robertson be in exile, and not like, superrich with millions of followers?’
‘Shouldn’t you have been rounded up by the Secret Police, and not sending me e-mail?’
So many people in the US confuse ‘rude disagreement on the part of others’ with ‘oppression’. I’ll introduce them to the ghosts of my great uncles who all died in the Gulags back in the last century. I’m SURE they’ll explain ‘oppression’ to her in very specific terms. :P
(I’m sorry, but this is kind of a hot button topic for me and it got PRESSED).
–Drake
Well, with her, it’s not quite on the level of a Robertson or Falwell. She really just doesn’t think first before engaging her mouth… or her email account. But if she really thinks an officially Christian America would be a good thing… she’s going to have to realize what that’s going to mean for her gay Atheist son. And I don’t think she’ll like that.
She really does mean well… but she’s also the most surprised to find that she’s walked herself into a minefield with no idea how she got there.
My paternal family is the same way… I call them “Germany ’39er’s”. Whenever I bring up Falwell, O’Riley, Donahue especially, they SAY they don’t approve – but then start saying how we NEED ‘defense’ of the faith and the faithful.
Hence my term for them. “Vell, you know, ve don’t LIKE Herr Hitler but, he hass done zo MUCH fur Deutchlend…” :p
Since most of my obnoxious family is Catholic, when they get like that I happily remind them that any Christian regime would be fundamentalist – and wouldn’t like them one bit more than they like freaky me. I usually get tossed out of the house at that point, as I point out that they doth protest too much. :p
–Drake the evil heathen
And really, I think few such as your mom realize that in an all-christian America, plenty of christians like herself would be oppressed enemies of the state for not being the right KIND of christian.
Be careful of what you wish for, he said…
–Drake
Yes, and I need to remind her that the “Christian America” people are the same people who believe in legalizing discrimination against me… sadly, I live in a state that has passed one of those odious anti-gay marriage amendments.
Unsurprisingly, she took my statement “I don’t want to talk religion with you any more” as “You can’t pray for me”. Now, the verbal jiu jitsu really begins–because of course, I said no such thing. And she’s being told that why I’m saying “no more” is because she obviously doesn’t listen.
*sigh*
Fortunately my parents are agnostic, so I never had to deal with religion, but when I was in grad school, I had to put my foot down and tell them point blank that if they didn’t treat me like an adult, I would *not* visit.
Of course, this latest stunt from your mom is up there with the friend of a co-worker who cornered me at the plastics conference a few weeks ago because she had mentioned I was an athiest, and he was sure that if I just heard his arguments, I would realize that athiesm was illogical and accept the existence of God like he had. Ugh.
I had to drop the thermonuke earlier today. I told her she’s doing to me with religion what Grandma did to her with booze–at the very least, that will get her attention. And I told her to take a couple days to just think about it, pray if it helps her, but that she was demeaning me and insulting me and it is going to just stop *now*–there is to be *no* more preaching, period.
I expect her to complain that I hurt her feelings. I will explain that had she respected mine in the first place, that would never have happened. She’s not going to make this about her.