Truth be told I never asked the “how” part.
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Mainers from way back. We certainly have issues, but we’d never talk about them. It would be… impolite.
Drives me nuts sometimes, but most of the time I’m thrilled I don’t have to tell my gun collecting family members I’ll never be comfortable staying in their house. Because talking about our problems is Just Not Done.
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I’m deciding whether I should delete my facebook account.
I haven’t had any homophobia or transphobia from my family (I unfriended my US based great uncle* long before the supreme court ruling), they have been generally supportive. Then they share stuff from Britain First and Nick Griffin’s post-BNP organisation, and can’t see the contradiction.
The only reason I have stayed there for so long is because I have a few other, non-fascist supporting, relatives who are nearly impossible to get in contact with any other way.
*My great uncle describes himself as a moderate republican, yet he would constantly share British fascist stuff. He also thinks he knows all about the left wing because he was a member of what became the SWP when he was at university.
Is that you, sweetheart? 
Speaking as a mom, I don’t friend my kids on social media. I also don’t eavesdrop on their phone calls or show up at their friends’ parties. Those are exactly the same intrusion on privacy. They’ve chosen to include me on Snapchat and a couple other messaging apps but otherwise they have their lives and I have mine. Of course, I taught them how to be safe online when they were very young, which among other things means I couldn’t find them if I wanted to!
If I want to know how they’re doing, there’s always the old-fashioned way: texting, like God intended.
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I’m actually happy to have my family on Facebook, but then I’m well into adulthood and never used it as a forum to share details of my dating life or drinking exploits or anything else I would be embarrassed to have my parents read about.
BB, on the other hand…
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My problematic facebook mother and sisters are all many generations Mainers, but we have the exact opposite problem of airing anything and everything. Their lives play out on facebook like some experimental new form of narrative fiction.
My mom’s a new-ager no-one-can-tell-me-not-to-speak-my-mind i-am-woman-hear-me-roar type who raised me bleeding heart liberal, but whose opnions of late have somehow bizarrely veered casually racist, anti-choice, pro-teen-pregnancy and anti-my dad (her ex). She’s also said some choice things about my being overeducated (in response to my gentle criticism of some of her “musings”) when she didn’t understand that her comments weren’t private…
My sisters and their kids are just openly racist, anti-immigration and homophobic. And despite all being poor, state-dependant teenage parents, all bizarrely hateful toward the “welfare” boogeyman…family, Who can understand 'em.
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My father and father in law are both pretty conservative evangelical pastors. My parents post very little, but my in-laws are pretty convinced by young earth creationism and a few other views, and my father in law is particularly keen to use Facebook to share them. While we obviously have very different views, I get on well with both sets of parents and it’s important for them to see how we’re getting on in our lives. My Facebook profile is not that private and almost anyone who wants to keep in contact is welcome to be friends. I don’t mind unfollowing people though - sometimes it’s just not worth reading what they’re sharing and responding to it isn’t going to help anyone either.
This is one of the things that turned me off organised religion, despite having very religious parents who obviously don’t just use it as an excuse to be bigoted: we grew up with Irish travellers coming regularly to our home, because my parents wanted to befriend them and give them opportunities that were being denied to them. One time a family we knew were being threatened, so we hosted over twenty of them in our house for a few days until things calmed down. When I was a teenager, we often had drug addicts living with us and my parents would spend a lot of their time and effort helping to organise accommodation, employment, rehab etc. for them. Even when my parents had things stolen from them and loaned/gave away large amounts of money that they were never going to get back, or the people went back to drugs, they continued to support them. When some people in the church started to express discomfort about drug addicts and prostitutes coming to the church, my dad made it clear that he would rather stand with them than keep the church as a comfortable middle class enclave in the city. When we visited them last month, they were supporting a family that had arrived in the UK in a refrigerated truck - that family is now recognised in the country and is in the process of getting asylum. When we told them about a young family where the woman was being abused, they gave hundreds of Euros of their own money to help get her out of that situation, despite never having met her. When I came out as an atheist, they and the church always supported me; I still have many close friends there and visit the church when I’m in the UK. The point of this isn’t to boast or anything, just that despite coming from very middle class, conservative religious backgrounds, they have never had a problem associating with people from out of their social group and I owe a lot to their example.
Still… when my dad talks about homosexuality, he seems to view LGBT as a pretty monolithic entity (essentially people in gay pride parades wearing very little and making out with each other) and he’s very happy to talk about ‘the gay agenda’. Despite my pointing out that it’s not true, he talks as if the church will be attacked for refusing to marry gay couples. Why would they want to get married anyway, if this is what they’re like? After all, he’s not homophobic: earlier in his life, he knew a gay couple living near him. Everyone knew they were gay, but they weren’t pushing it in everyone’s faces and nobody had a problem with it. If people could be like that, it would be fine. True Christians aren’t homophobic either: they welcome people whatever their background or sin (and I really believe that they would do what they could to help LGBT people who were in trouble for some reason). It’s a mess even if they aren’t hateful, and a lot of the same problems come up as in the main article: their fear leads them to spread lies about gay people, vote against these issues and use their influence to oppose people’s rights (even if they don’t see it that way).
While it isn’t necessarily working, I try to present the similarities between homosexuals and non-conformist Christians like my parents: they would consider it to be religious persecution if they were told that they had a right to be Christians in their own homes, but not to show Outward Displays of Religion and shove it in people’s faces, or otherwise have a visible presence in society. Neither should they be allowed to have children, as they may corrupt their young minds and make them Christians too. Christianity is a lifestyle choice like homosexuality, so they are free at any point to stop being Christian - nobody is attacking them; it’s their lifestyle that’s the problem. Furthermore, we know how bigoted and sexist the Christian idea of marriage is (all of Christianity being the same, of course), so why should Christians be allowed to corrupt the sanctity of marriage by being recognised by the state? What we need to worry about is the ‘Christian agenda’, which has been shown to be opposed to many fundamental rights over the years. It’s the thin end of the wedge! After all, there are recognised leaders who have proposed all sorts of terrible acts against homosexuals and other minority groups, so this must be what Christianity is all about.
From what I can tell, a lot of people who have changed their minds on this issue have done so because they saw the humanity in individuals who are (not necessarily all that) different from them. While some people won’t care, I think there is some hope for people like my parents in continuing to point out what is at stake and that they would never accept the compromises that they suggest for others. Still, as conservative Christians I don’t think they will ever accept homosexual relationships as equivalent to heterosexual ones, however ‘nice’ they are about it. While I recognise a lot of the value that has come from their beliefs, this is a big problem (as can be seen when people with similar views achieve significant political influence, for example).
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Well, in my opinion… uhhh…
… mom? Dad? Are you listening?
Nevermind, can’t be too sure.
Oh Mommy Dearest
Your hair it’s so blue
and all of them bunions
from an over tite shoe
that weepage
that seepage
from I don’t want to know where
I’m so glad I live here
and you live way the fuck over there.
Calling someone “homophobic” just because they disagree with the Supreme Court ruling is a cheap trick.
I think the ruling was unconstitutional (as did 4 of the Supreme Court justices) because it violates religious freedom, but I am not “homophobic.”
People need to realize that the world isn’t divided into allies and bigots. It’s more complex than that.
What an interesting and original inversion of the form.
I don’t see how denying anyone the opportunity to enter into a contract that grants legal protections and ‘extra rights’ could be constitutional; see
Maybe, legally, we should use a more descriptive term like civil union.
WRT the first amendment I think
(and freedom of expression) to tell people what words they are allowed to use to refer to the spiritual aspect of their union.
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Both Yaweh and Allah appear to be homophobic on a fairly grand scale ( murdering queers and so forth.)
Make your fucking choice.You gonna be religious or ethical.
If your God tells you you gotta murder fags it’s up to you.
You gotta make the call.
Be a homocidal dick----Heaven
Be a ethical human being----Hell
It’s a important decision
Flip a fucking coin.
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The world boggles my brain.
But when it’s denying the religious freedom of millions of American citizens who have different beliefs than those 4 judges, that’s hunky-dory, right?
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And what about the religious groups who don’t have a problem with same sex marriage or encourage it, like the quakers I know. Why are their beliefs lesser than the irrational fears of the religious bigots?
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Maybe if the previous laws that prevented homosexual marriage weren’t homophobic then disagreeing with this ruling wouldn’t be homophobic. But they were and thus, this is.
Welcome to Boing Boing.
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Please explain how this ruling violates the first amendment of the US Constitution.
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He’s not slurping!
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Me, I have decided to not connect to anything my kids use regularly. I won’t touch Snapchat, which is their regular mode of conversation with friends. I don’t want to be a dad making that stuff awkward.
Facebook… Well, again, I don’t want to snoop on their world too much, and amongst us oldies it becomes lots of photos of families and babies who I really don’t want invest mental energy over. So its a very domant Facebook account.
