This I Believe

I am a conservative old woman. I am also a Democrat, a lesbian and an atheist. And you want to know why I’m so angry with the world. Hello! Open your eyes and look around. It’s 2007 and the world has gone to shit.

I knew I was different from the rest of the world when I was 12 years old. I didn’t have a name for it until I was older, but I knew. And I knew I had to hide it to survive. I fought the impulses raging inside me until I could fight it no more. Finally at 27 years old I admitted to myself as well as my family that I was lesbian. The reaction was instantaneous. I was lower than dog shit in the totem pole of this world. I was threatened by my own family. I had to learn to accept myself as a good person even though the people I loved wouldn’t. I was the same person the day after I told them as the day before. One day I was loved and the next I was despised. Go figure.

Being an outcast forces you to look at the world differently. I could see injustices that others were blind to. The war in Viet Nam, the civil rights movement, the anti-abortion movement, the anti-gay movement, etc all made me take a fresh look at the people around me. I became very anti-religion, I became very anti-war, I became very pro-civil rights, I became very pro-choice, and I let myself love another woman irregardless of what the world thought. And lo and behold I was still a good person. My family didn’t know it but I did.

I was born at the end of the baby boomer era. Consequently I was raised in a time when there was always a war going on somewhere in the world. I was raised to believe that Communism was the evil scourge of the world, but I also saw wars between Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Arabs, and here in America between blacks and whites, and between men and women for equal right treatment. I was raised to believe that it was impolite to speak about sex, politics, and religion in public. I always tried to keep my opinions to myself in public. Only around my friends would I allow myself to voice my true feelings about these issues.

When I finally started taking an interest in politics and voting on these issues, I went with the Democratic Party because they were willing to give me the freedom of choice over my own body. They were willing to tolerate my being lesbian. They could care less if I believed in religion mostly because they never expressed their own religious preferences in public either. They were willing to try to make life easier for the black population in our country. And they were open to the idea that women were people too.

Boy, have times changed! Nowadays politicians (both Democratic and Republican) wear their religion like a badge of honor. They make their decisions based on their faith. They let their God tell them what they should do. They implement their faith based policies at the expense of the American taxpayer. They overrule good scientific evidence on stem cell research, environmental research, and evolution because their faith tells them to. They want to take away my right to decide what I want to do with my own body. They don’t care if I don’t want a child. They don’t care that I don’t want to be a vegetable instead of just ending my life quickly. Their good book tells them women should procreate, birth control is evil but so is abortion, and suicide is forbidden.

What ever happened to politicians who decided what was best for our country as a whole? I don’t believe in their good book. I resent paying taxes for any religious organizations schools or projects. I want children to learn about evolution in school not the creationist theory. I don’t want public schools to hold Bible study classes. That should be done at their respective churches not our schools. I don’t care if the pledge of allegiance has God in it or not. I don’t care what our money says, so long as it pays for what I need. I don’t want to discuss religion on my job. I don’t want religion in my government or politics. When I send a letter to my Senator stating my opinion, I don’t expect a reply that tells me I’m not very Christian. I expect a reply on the issue I have raised.

Today, young black people have gone from being segregated from whites, and being killed by white lynch mobs to segregating themselves and killing each other. They have gone from trying their best to fit into society to making their own segregated society right down to the language they speak. They have gone from not being allowed to get an education to being too lazy to educate themselves. They have gone from being denied a job to preferring to live on welfare and not ever working. They have gone from just trying to live a decent life to wanting everything handed to them free of charge. They have gone from being polite in public to being loud, obnoxious, rude and angry. They have gone from law abiding citizens to daring a policeman to arrest them. They blame the police for racism if they shoot an out of control criminal. They have done all of this because their people were enslaved over a hundred and fifty years ago and they deserve it. I didn’t enslave their people. I was on their side. I did my best to help them fight for their rights as American citizens. I am sick to death of the angry attitude I see and hear from young blacks today. I am no longer worried about being PC. I am no longer on their side.

Our religious government officials think the American people want to fight “evil doers” around the world. I think they are wrong. By their actions our great country has become even more fanatic than the Taliban they claim are evil. What right do we have to invade another country and tell them their way of life and government are wrong? I say none. The actions of the Bush administration in foreign affairs over the past six years have put our country in the worst possible light to other nations around the world. We are no longer the great country we once were. We are idiots. We are meddlers. Except that we are too dangerous, we are a laughing stock. What this administration has done will take decades to undo. I don’t even know if that is even possible to undo. I’m beginning to doubt it because this administration still has two more years to screw things up. If we are lucky we’ll survive the next two years without someone dropping a bomb, either us or them, and starting a chain reaction that destroys all life on the planet. I’m very skeptical about this because our good Christian neighbors believe in this “rapture” bullshit.

While we are off fighting “evil doers” across the world, our own borders are left insecure. We are slowly being invaded by drug dealers, rapists, murderers, etc. Our prisons are overrun by Latinos that my tax dollars provide three meals a day for. Our city schools and hospitals are stretched to the limit with illegal immigrants. Our government wastes untold dollars on printing our government forms in multiple languages. Our newspapers print help wanted ads that say you must be bi-lingual to get the job you want. Most often they want Spanish/English speakers. Even our banks automatic teller machines provide Spanish language transactions. Bank of America wants to market credit card accounts to the illegals. The New York Public School district wants to open an all Arabic language school. And our religious government wants to give the illegals amnesty and temporary work visas because it’s the Christian thing to do. Forget the movie “Red Dawn”. They won’t have to invade us all in a day. They are already here and they are already demanding their rights from our government. Unbelievable!

To my way of thinking all religions are a crock of shit. They were all invented by men who wanted power over their weaker neighbors. They have been the root of all evil throughout recorded history. War after war has been fought in the name of religion. The human race will never learn and religion will be the death of us all. Now doesn’t that make you mad?