Sometimes it happens all in the same day. I’ll get a message on Facebook from one person accusing me of only attacking Islam. Later, a tweet from a believer, “How come you focus entirely on Christianity?” Sometimes I get the urge to pop some corn and sit back wait for the message from a Moonie, “Why pick on us only?” These people literally see one tweet and assume it represents everything I have ever posted and jump on the gatling. Pew, pew, pew!
There's just one thing, though. GM is an equal opportunity critic. If you’ve got yourself some dogmatic rules, a self-contradicting doctrine and you’re trying to push it on people who don’t want it, I will jump at the opportunity to tear it apart. I don’t care if it’s the religion that’s caked itself into my town like burnt lasagna noodles, and I don’t give a fuck if it’s some obscure religion from deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. If you shove it in my face, or the face of other people, either directly or through pressure to include it in policy, I’m gonna say something. I always will. Islam, Christianity, Judaism or Heaven’s Gate: I am critical of it all.
The problem is that the criteria for my criticism as laid out above happens to fit Christianity most of the time in my world. There is a family of Syrian refugees here in town who appear to be Muslim, but there are just five of them and so far, they’ve never come knocking on my door trying to sell me a belief in Allah. I don’t have to take my son to mosques for his graduation, karate lessons or choir performances. They don’t vote in mayors or MPs who will push their religious agenda. They don’t try to teach my kids about Islam in school.
It’s a pretty new-agey town, so there’s a handful of Buddhists, of course. The Buddhists don’t come knocking on my door telling me the world would be better if I could just follow the teachings of the Buddha. I’m not given the up and down glance of judgement for telling them I don’t have a religion. They don’t try to force meditation at the beginning of every city council meeting.
I have a feeling there may be a couple of Satanists here, but just the fact that I am not sure shows you how much they’re trying to infiltrate my world with their ideas. Same with Sikhs, Hindus and Jews. None of these groups give a fuck that I don’t have a religion. None of them see me as “the atheist who needs saving."
I can tell you who does, though. I can tell you who does show up at my door weekly trying desperately to get their hands on my soul. I can tell you who does want prayer to be an integral part of all city business. I can tell you who does talk to my kids about their god, and hosts all the children’s events in town at churches and I can tell you who swore the music camp was secular but I knew that was a lie
when my son came home singing about Jesus and Moses.
Christians. Christians do this. Christians ask me what church I go to. Christians homeschool many of the kids around here, teaching them that our earth is 6000 years old and the brainchild of some sociopathic, self-obsessed, jealous magician in the sky. Christians hand out literature at all the events in town. Christians put gory photos of dead babies on that literature, and have no qualms about handing it to my seven-year-old son. Christians tell me I am going to Hell on a daily basis. Christians vote in my town to elect the man who thinks more churches and fewer schools should be built here.
Christians. Not Jews. Not Muslims. Not Buddhists. Not the Satanists.
Christians.
So, yes, I tend to write mostly about Christianity, because it’s forced down my throat on a daily basis.
Yes, I speak more about Jesus than Muhammad, because Jesus is in all the literature that gets hand-delivered to my door. Yes, I criticize the actions of the church because the church, it seems, will stop at nothing to get me and my family to believe.
People tend to speak most about what is around them. I’m not a big fan of the sports outside of American football. When I criticize sports, it’s very rarely about cricket. I don’t often complain about European handball. I criticize, most often, hockey, because, like old Jeeby, it’s fucking everywhere in my world. It’s crammed in my eyeholes without my fucking consent at a rate more rapid than Donald Trump can lie. You had better understand, GM will have something to say about that. I’m not a bend-over-and-take-it type of lady (unless it’s Godless Dad) and I never have been.
I think the solution here is pretty blatantly obvious. If you don’t like the fact that I criticize your religion more than all the others, get it out of my face. It’s so simple. Instead of criticizing me for not wanting to be brain-raped with your magical bullshit, criticize the people doing the brain-raping. Criticize the methods of your church. Stand up against the church trying to affect the law and the lives of people who may not believe. Change the way your religion does things. Get it, the fuck, out of my face and I will happily shut up about it.
In the meantime, your bullshit is in my crosshairs. If you come to my door and tell me I’m going to Hell, I’ll be vocally critical of that. If you shoot up the headquarters of a magazine for drawing cartoons, I’m gonna take issue with that. If you kill your child by refusing proper medical treatment for her, I will, you had better fucking believe, be furious about that.
If you find that I’m targeting your religion more than others, it only means one thing: your religion needs to back off.
So, just back off. Simple. Easy. Done.
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