Oh hey

College happened and I pretty much forgot about this thing. But now I need it as a public diary-type thing to talk about what I'm thinking about without (hopefully) my parents reading it. And maybe someone will see it and will give me advice or asspats or damn me to hell or something.

So, let's talk about atheism!

Stumble led me to some interesting sites about the topic and I nearly wrote an email to the guy who runs friendlyatheist.com, but I figured I don't have anything to say that he hasn't heard before.

Well, except for this. I've already come out to my family as a lesbian/bisexual/queer/non-straight thing. I'm very loud and opinionated about queer rights and my family knows, accepts and loves that about me.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to tell my family that I am an atheist/agnostic/non-christian thing. And it's not because I think they'll hate me or won't accept me. I know they will. I just figure my mother has more important things to worry about than my immortal soul. And I pretty much don't have an excuse.

1. I was raised in a white, middle-class christian home. My dad was a pastor when I was growing up. We went to church every Sunday when I was a kid. And then he went into the military. Yeah, not only am I a PK, I'm a Military Brat. Being christian wasn't just the expectation, it was the only option.

2. My dad's proof that you can be christian AND gay, so I can't exactly use that excuse. (By the way, my dad's gay. This was a reason for my parent's divorce, but not the only reason.)

3. Almost all of my friends are christians and many of them are very devout about their beliefs, so I can't claim my peers showed me the heathen light.

How do I explain that I started doubting the religion I'd been born into when I was nine and my dad entered the military, leaving our family with the looming realization that we were going to move far away from everyone we knew? And how, the more I read into the Bible, the more discomfort I felt for it? (Seriously, there's some messed up crap in there. One thing that stuck out in my mind was that if a girl was raped and got pregnant, by God's law, she had to marry her rapist.)

Fortunately, I've been able to get out of going to church by saying that I don't have any friends there and I wouldn't go to the services anyway. Both of those facts are true, of course, but I can't say I'm not relieved that I don't have to go. My mom's accepted that I am an Easter/Christmas church-goer and now that I'm away at college for Easter, I don't even have to hold up the first half of that.

We're not at all a family of Bible-thumpers that refuse to see any logic or reason. I'm sure my mom and dad have all respect for people of different faiths, because they're just cool like that. I bet it'd be a mutual respect let's-not-discuss-it-at-the-dinner-table kinda thing if I did come out as atheist. But I still can't.

If I ever do, I'll let you know how it goes. I suspect my mom will say something along the lines of "I knew all along" because she's like that but you never know.