BenmfnCollins

So my family as a whole is a moderate, Northeastern Catholic family. My atheism is an accepted fact and causes very few issues with any of them. I’m sure they’d rather I not be but overall my family is fairly liberal and doesn’t let belief in God stand in the way of their politics. On the whole most of them are in favor of abortion, gay rights, gay marriage, ect. And while they know the Pope would frown upon them all their faith is more of the personal variety than the public activism kind. My father’s brother Pat, however, decided that the religious beliefs of his family were too moderate and about 6 years ago left his six figure job to become a minister of the Presbyterian Church. Now this alone bugs me because he has two kids who went from living semi-privileged lives to poverty level by the time they hit middle school but more importantly it bugs me and my family at large because of his fervent anti-gay views he now holds. And this would be all well and dandy if his 14 year old son were not incredibly flamboyant. Now I am not saying that his idiosyncrasies instantly make him gay but the possibility is certainly there and that possibility alone makes me worry about his mental state if he were to come out some time in his life. I myself am not gay but I have always been on the sides of gay-rights because of friends and just general common-sense fairness of treating all people as equals. So my Uncle and his two children are up and visiting my grandparents and I am there along with my father, my sister and my other uncle and his family. At one point the conversation between me, my father and my two uncles turns to his views on homosexuality. He goes off on one of his long diatribes about how he has no problem with homosexuals, just them acting upon their impulses. His style of arguing is just to keep talking so no one can get a word in edge-wise while painting all dissenters to be infringing upon his beliefs. It’s at the point that he mentions that he has homosexuals in his congregation that he tries to ‘help’ that set me off. The conversation from there loosely followed as such. “So you are saying you are allowed to deny homosexuals rights because it is part of your beliefs?” “Yes.” “And you are saying that I am not allowed to criticize such beliefs because they are based on your holy book? That’s bullshit. I have beliefs too and you can not infringe upon them. I believe that your beliefs hurt other people. That your condemnation of homosexuality makes other people miserable and that by telling people to lie to themselves and live an unhappy, lonely life in order to get some unproven reward upon death contributes to the hardship of people who have faced more adversity before their 18th birthday than you will likely face in your entire life.” What followed was a stunned silence from my uncle who is still adjusting to the concept of me being an adult. The entire room was nodding their heads in agreement and had my back when my uncle finally did stammer out a response that boiled down to ramblings about me not having enough life experience. It was then, to put the cherry on the top of the sunday that my fairly religious grandmother came over and said “Pat, he more than held his own against you, I suggest that instead of insulting him you find a reasonable response or drop the subject because you are winning no support after that exchange.” I love my grandma.

http://www.reddit.com/r/atheism/comments/d6w0t/my_confrontation_with_and_public_shaming_of_my/