I'm white. Do you ever just get sick of white people?

[hunter]

118. In the U.S.A. the Catholic Church is as diverse and as divided as the U.S.A. in general.

I don't think anyone can say "I know what the religion is like" any more than they can say "I know what gay people are like."

Nah, I don't have anything nice to say about "conservative" Catholics, or religiously conservative people in general. The "Love the sinner, hate the sin" sorts are vile when they go on to tell you all the harmless an ordinary human behaviors they think are sinful.

When my mom was young she became a Jehovah's Witness because the Catholic Church hadn't lived up to her high expectations. That was a good thing for me, I wouldn't have been born if she'd become a nun!

Good thing for me again when the Witnesses gave her the boot because she couldn't stay out of politics. Then we were Quakers. I never said the flag salute in school, so that was cool. Mostly I'd just sit there reading, drawing spaceships, or simply daydreaming because everyone who said the flag salute was disobeying God and probably going to hell too. Didn't celebrate birthdays either.

I haven't told the entire story here on DU of how much of my PTSD is related to religion, but it is. Religion can kill. So do certain ideologies. Thankfully none of that came from my parents. I was always safe at home and loved unconditionally. But the "real world" kicked me around something awful from the time I quit high school until I graduated from college nine years later and decided it was okay to just be myself.