Dogmalicious

Family gatherings.

Words that send shivers down my spine.

I've had an aversion to family functions for as long as I can remember. Even in childhood I knew I was not like these people and wondered why the hell I should be forced to spend so much time around them. My aunts, uncles and cousins are a group of some of the most simple-minded, prejudiced, uneducated, unworldly and incurious people I've ever been around. Anything not of the white, Judeo-Christian, rural world is just odd to them. Anything different is a target for scorn and contempt. That eventually included me. Whether it was the kind of music I listened to, the haircuts I had as a teenager or the pierced ear, I was a weirdo. Different is bad, after all.

The shit thrown at me wasn't nearly as bad as having to listen to the subtle and not so subtle bigot-speak. There wasn't a racial joke they didn't love and the word fag was thrown around without thought. Ever since I hit adulthood I've tried to spend as little time as possible around it all. With the exception of funerals and maybe one of my grandmother's landmark birthdays, I've kept my ass away from Waterloo, Iowa, where most of my extended family lives. I'm already dreading my grandmother's 90th birthday next May. It will be the first time I've been there in 5 years, the last time being her 85th. I get to look forward to being the black sheep who lives in the "big city" and putting up with lots of dumbass questions. Half will be about how I can live in a place like New York (most of them can't see the difference between that and living in Baghdad) and the other half will be about "Ground Zero."

I've been able to shield my wife from it for a long time but at that event she may finally be exposed to the backward-ass bumblefucks that are my family.

For the most part I stick with immediate family gatherings. That isn't very often since we are all pretty scattered. We got together a couple of years ago at my dad's place in Arizona (parents are divorced of course), and I just got back from a gathering at my sister's in Gainesville, Florida.

My sister called me a couple of months ago to invite me down. My brother and his family we're going to go there as a surprise for my mother, who lives in the Tampa area, and she wanted me to come down too.

I wasn't sure about going at first, but my sis sounded like she really wanted me to come. My sister is the person in my family that I actually like and it is hard for me to say no to her.

So a gathering of my brother's family (wife and four kids), my sister's family (husband and two kids), my mother and me. My wife couldn't come on this trip due to work commitments.

My brother is basically a huge prick. He has a picture of Ronald Reagan hanging on the wall of his office and voted for George W. twice. He honestly thinks using "tactical" nuclear weapons is a good idea. He believes that solution to the problems in the Middle East is to move all of the Jews from Israel to America and then nuke the whole region. And this guy is a father to four kids under the age of eight. He screams at them a lot

My mother is her own kind of crazy. She went from being an angry single mother who beat and emotionally abused her kids to being a Born Again Jesus freak. Though that hasn't stopped her from being an angry control freak.

The most sane person in the whole family, including me, is my sister. This is probably why she also has the nicest kids. She is usually the peace maker of all of us.

The weekend went along as it usually does, with everyone getting along for a few hours at a time until there is a blowup over something stupid. Like parking spaces. Seriously, that can be the subject of a major fight in our family. I usually end up drinking way too much just to try to numb the whole experience and to keep me from trying to strangle my mother.

Now I knew that my brother and his wife were churchgoers, but I had no idea how crazy it had gotten. Well, I had a little clue at Christmas when my sister-in-law sent out one of those form letter cards that praised "His" name and all that. But I really hadn't seen it in person. They make their kids pray out loud even in restaurants, and this includes a singing version I guess they learned recently. Fuckin' creepy.

It wasn't until dinner on the second night that it became a "thing."

When they were praying my oldest niece Alex, who is seven, noticed I didn't participate.

"Why didn't you pray Uncle Deni?"
"I don't believe in it."
"You don't believe in God?"
"No, I Don't."
"You don't believe in the Bible?!?!?"
"No Alex, there's a lot of people that don't."
"But it's true!"
"Not to everyone."
"So you're going to Hell?"
"No, I don't believe in Hell."

At this point she got fairly upset and said to my brother, "Daddy, Uncle Deni doesn't believe in God."

He told her that he knew and that "we are working on him." See, I told you, a total prick.

My niece actually got upset and left the table, I imagine thinking that her uncle is going to Hell. My brother went and spoke to her and she came back but would barely look at me. No way to know what he said to her, but I imagine that they spoke about working on saving me. When her mother showed up in the room she noticed she was upset and also took her off to speak to her.

My sister-in-law then came back and said to me, "Deni, when you have those kind of conversations with Lexi, just remember that she's seven."

I said, "All I did was answer a question honestly. Would you rather I lie to my niece?"
"No, just remember that she's seven and doesn't understand."
"Maybe you shouldn't be raising your daughter to be intolerant and bigoted."

This caused a big uproar. They tried to convince me that they weren't raising her to be intolerant of other beliefs, but I pointed out that they are teaching their kids that their uncle is a bad person and is going to Hell.

My sister-in-law actually tried to feed me a line of bullshit about people who don't accept Jesus as their savior going to Hell, but that you can be a good person and still go to Hell. What a crock. And I'm the one that is supposed to remember that she's only seven. They send them to Sunday school and tell them tat Hell is this horrible place that you don't want to go so you better be good, and they are supposed to understand that you can be a good person and still go there?

My mother and my brother chimed in at different times to argue with me. My brother even used the phrase "the truth" when talking about what they are teaching their kids. How arrogant can you get.

My mother denied that Christians are trying to convert everyone else, despite the fact that I had to sent her an insulting email to get her to stop sending me her religious propaganda email messages.

At some point my sister-in-law tried to tell me that they do want their kids exposed to different ideas.

That is always the thing parents like these say, but it is such a lie. What my brother and his wife are doing is feeding their children full of dogma so that when they finally do get exposed to some other points of view they will resist listening to it. Nobody who really wants their children to hear other philosophies and theories teaches them that the religion they believe in is the absolute truth and that all other religions are "false."

Another generation of intolerant bigots being primed in my family. How wonderful.

Luckily my sister and her husband are raising theirs to be smarter than that.

There is hope.