23/24/25 part 1

I had an outline hand-written for all of my other posts. I'm only 26, though, so I'm just reflecting now on the last few years of my life. The magic years.

When I met mark I was nineteen. He was the best friend of my best friend's brother. It wasn't until I was thinking about changing who I was spending my time with, to smarter people, that I seriously thought about talking to Mark. I was traveling a lot and I would spend pretty much all my time in the hotel on the internet messaging my friends on AIM.

I started messaging Mark with a serious goal. I knew we could be friends because I knew at one point in my life I used to be really smart. Maybe that would come back to me. Maybe it was like riding a bike. (It wasn't). When Mark moved from living with his friends to an apartment alone, I decided it was time to strike. I invited myself over.

Another absolutely wonderful person to add to my collection! I went from not saying a word around him for hours to aggressively invading his head. Mark and I went through the same childhood. We could relate in a way I have never related with another person. The differences of our lives outweigh the similarities, but when it comes down to it, we were both brainwashed. We were both treated like our honest curiosity was a threat. We were treated like we were evil for asking questions. We never felt a connection with the lord on high who was and is and is to come.

My favorite memory while dating Mark was when we were at his parents' place in Eugene. His older (by 17 years) sister was there, and we were talking about when Mark lost his faith. He told them about how it felt to honestly believe for years and years and years and never feel the holy spirit. He never felt a connection to god. He believed with all his heart and never felt it. His sister mentioned that it might have been because of his doubt in god, and maybe if he gave it another try... I explained it was the other way around completely. He had no doubt that he would feel the same thing the other Christians felt, because he was told he would. He had no doubt until he had actively tried to feel it for years and didn't. He had doubt because he had not felt, not the other way around.

I asked her, "How many decades are you supposed to wait before you feel a little tiny something?" I think it meant a lot to the family to hear that. They understood that it was nothing on the part of the atheist. We tried. We gave ourselves to Jesus and he ignored us. I'm not going to live a lie and pretend that god has a plan for me. When I became atheist, and I made a plan for myself, only then did things really start to work out for me. God's plans are stupid. God's plans are awful.

I have never heard someone call something "God's plan" that wasn't something any nit-wit could have come up with. You know? God's plan is never intelligent. God's plan is never to teach really important lessons of love and compassion to all people. God's plan does not involve peace. God's plan is just man's selfishness, all dressed up like a whore.

The problem for me is when I know what different body parts do, and I know about how the human brain is capable of a panic attack... I know, then, that it is capable of feelings on the opposite end. I know what it's like to feel manic, and I do not relate that to god. It's a man-made state-of-mind. Theists refuse to recognize what the human body is capable of. They refuse to learn, and read, and study. They are extremely ignorant to any science that isn't 50 years old.

In 50 years gay marriage will be the norm. Just like woman can vote now and only a crazy person would say they shouldn't have that right. Remember how women couldn't vote? Remember how there were slaves? Remember how the Bible supported both forms of bigotry. I'm going to try to make this as obvious as possible so that Christians can understand. Woman can vote now because there is nothing about it that harms anyone. Slavery is illegal because there is nothing harmful or evil about NOT owning humans. The opposite cannot be said.

Let's look at homosexuality. It doesn't harm you. You might THINK it does, because it's against your holy text, but come on, grow up. Think. Learn. Progress. It doesn't hurt you, it only hurts them. They are the humans who are having rights taken away from them, not you. You are thinking like a bigot. You are equal to the generations that fought to keep woman from having rights. You are equal to the generations that fought to keep slavery. You are taking away the rights of other humans because you somehow are so much better than them that you get to decide based on your theistic views. That, my friend, is bigotry.

If you think gay marriage will hurt you, you are wrong. Has my marriage with my husband hurt you in any way? If your answer is yes, then perhaps you have a case. My marriage is exactly what you are afraid of letting them have. It's godless. It's an expression of love and nothing else. We made no promises to god nor man. We did it on purpose, too. The reason we got marriage was to prove that a godless marriage hurts no one. We are here to show you what it will be like if gays marry. It will be no different. Our marriage has affected your faith, your marriage, your relationship with god, in no way.

Please, let's stop filling our hearts with hate in the name of god. I don't think that's what he was going for.