Soapbox Alert!

I read a couple of blogs. Not enough so you'd call me obsessive, but a few more than... say... my mom. My mom reads several blogs that are not mine, but I think that I can safely say that I read more blogs than my mom, but fewer than your mom (<---- that was a joke for my mom who used to giggle indulgently at each wave of nonsensical  'your mom' jokes that swept through a group packed with teenagers who adored her). My point is, I read some blogs. Some are Mommy Blogs. Some are Crafting or Cooking Blogs. I even follow a few blogs that aren't about being a mom who crafts and cooks.

Today I was looking at a blog that I found when one of her posts went viral last year. Her blog is called Nerdy Apple Bottom, and she is known only by the moniker 'Cop's Wife' (she is obviously more internet savvy than myself since I use everybody's real name...). Last Halloween, the author's young son chose to go to school dressed as his favorite Scooby Doo character - Daphne. Her take on motherhood, her approach to life and her aplomb in handling the tornado of media that followed that post make me want to move in next door to her so we can be friends. Her post today made me stop and stare at the computer in silence. Then I wanted to cry. Then I wanted to wake Lily Ruth up so I could deliver a lecture on love, tolerance and acceptance. Not that she needs a lecture, but one was building up, and she's the only one home who uses English as their first language - the dog and the cat use their so-called 'lack of language skills' as a reason to ignore me and/or lick themselves when I start to rant.

So, here's the deal in Nerdy's post, she links to a blog - this blogger describes herself as a 'scientist turned homemaker and joyful convert to Catholicism'. According to her, she is practically afraid to take her kids out in public as there are too many openly gay people in her community.

You can click on the link that I embedded above, but I doubt that the writer will have the courage to leave her post up for much longer (especially since I'm fairly sure that it has already been edited since I first read it), so I'm pasting the body of it here:

The same people who say I shouldn't impose my morality on them, are imposing immorality on me and my children to the point that I literally have a hard time even leaving my home anymore to do something as simple as visit the park. And this is freedom?

I am a Catholic stay-at-home mother of seven, and I live in the state of Massachusetts where "gay marriage" has been legal for seven years and it's just one aspect of the larger secular agenda. Because we have so many little children, it takes a phenomenal effort to go anywhere. We have only filled our truck with gasoline twice this entire summer vacation. We go to Mass and we go two miles up the road to a small outdoor swimming pool. That's pretty much it.

At the pool this summer there were homosexual couples with children and, while I was polite as my own young daughters doted on the baby with two "mommies", I also held my breath in anticipation of awkward questions - questions I'm not ready to answer. My young daughters are all under the age of eight and they are not old enough to understand why a baby would have two women calling themselves "mommies".

When there were two men relaxing at the side of the pool unnaturally close to each other, effeminately rubbing elbows and exchanging doe-eyes, I was again anxiously watching my children hoping they wouldn't ask questions. They don't see Daddy do that with anyone but Mommy. We haven't been back to the pool for a couple of weeks, except once but it rained. The truth is, now I don't really want to go back.

So what am I harping about?

Today we decided to go to the park. We live near a nice park that is safe, clean and quiet. Two of my daughters were in the sandbox, one on the slide, the other on the swings, and as I lifted the baby out of his stroller I looked up to see four women laughing at a baby boy as he was swinging in one of those bucket baby swings. That seems harmless enough, but I'm so sensitized to the strangeness in my community that I've developed this ever-present jumpiness whenever I'm in public. Sure enough, two of the women, so happy to see a baby boy laughing, embraced and remained standing there rubbing each other's back in a way that was clearly not just friendly affection.

This is my community. I find myself unable to even leave the house anymore without worrying about what in tarnation we are going to encounter. We are responsible citizens. We live by the rules, we pay our taxes, we take care of our things. I'm supposed to be able to influence what goes on in my community, and as a voter I do exercise that right. But I'm outnumbered. I can't even go to normal places without having to sit silently and tolerate immorality. We all know what would happen if I asked two men or two women to stop displaying, right in front of me and my children, that they live in sodomy.

So now I go on a rant.

Our taxes are being used to fund contraception, abortion and IVF already. That offends me in ways that are inexpressible. I read last December in the Wall Street Journal how two men near us are raising two assembled daughters after announcing to the world how they killed two other siblings in surrogate mothers in India. Let me guess? I shouldn't offend them though, right? And what's next at the park? A needle exchange drop-box for heroin users? No joke. These things are not isolated, it is all the same issue at a fundamental level. We're being pushed to accept immorality and it's not just on TV and in Washington D.C. It's right in front of us too.

We fund a lot of illegal immigrants here (just ask the President about his auntie) and helping people who really need help is not something I'd ever oppose. But it's still haunting me that just this week I learned of anillegal immigrant who killed a young man innocently out for a ride on his motorcycle. The illegal immigrant, who didn't have a license, was so drunk he didn't notice when he hit a motorcyclist and then dragged the 23 year old college graduate a quarter of a mile while people were yelling at him to stop. When he finally did stop, the young man was still alive until the drunk driver put the car in reverse and backed up over him before driving away. He's charged with vehicular homicide and "reckless conduct creating a risk to a child." He had a six year old in the car with him.

Do you think knowing this happened about seven miles from my home makes me afraid to leave the house? You bet it does. But that just adds to everything else I'm being asked to tolerate. Seriously, is this freedom?

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Honestly, I don't even know where to start. I guess mostly, this kind of thing makes me so sad. Then it makes me angry. Then it makes me want to go out and publicly rub elbows with every gay man who will tolerate me and rub the back of every lesbian within arm's reach. 

I loathe it when 'faith' is used as a cover for fear, ignorance and intolerance. As Bono said: "The God I believe in ain't short of CASH, Mister." My God is a loving god. My God is a tolerant god. My God created us ALL in his image. That's right, my God looks like every single person on this planet, and he loves us all... except the dummies and the haters. All right, fine. He loves the dummies and the haters too. 

Why is that poor woman so afraid? What is so scary about loving parents? Why does she think that lesbians commit sodomy?

So I let my daughter nap, and I send up a prayer for her. That she live her whole life surrounded by true, real love in any and every form. That she recognize that love and honor it. That she notice and embrace the differences in the people around her. Amen.