Brokeback Mountain was a great movie. I don't even remember the point of V for Vendetta; it just looked cool and starred my girlfriend. My dad's martyr comments drive me nuts. I'm the intolerant one! How dare I be intolerant of intolerance! But, yes, the Christian label is very useful in these cases. And I have never seen him so much as enter a church so whaaaatever.
At least you recognize you're basically Christian In Name Only. My dad calls himself Christian and seems to think worse of non-Christians in general... and I asked him straight-up if he believed in Jesus as the virgin birth/son of god thing and he said "No." The precise amount religion has taken up in his thought in the past 10 years has been devoted mostly with, along with me, trying to get out of going to church when we visit family. I also love the "criticizing religion for bigotry is bigotry" arguments. Best example.
See, that's the benefit of retaining my Christian title: I still get to throw around my Christianity in family debates. Notice after I told my dad I rented the implication that my aunt's values were "Christian values" as though mine weren't, he stopped with the "you're belittling people of faaaaaaiiiith" crap. Jesus is useful like that.
A lot of my step-dad's friends and the people in this area in general are real white trash. The one time I did speak up at my step-mom's was during their ranting about illegal immigration, trying to point out that easier legal immigration would cut down on all of the concerns that can be readily controlled, and the counter-intuitive result of stronger borders keeping more illegal immigrants here. The friend's wife actually seemed to listen to some of it (or just didn't have a counter argument and just shut up). Now, of course, they probably think I'm some sort of hippie communist (I know my step-mom knows I'm not, but I also know my dad told her I'm an atheist due to one joke she made about me not being struck by lightning if I entered a church). On a related note, I do sometimes wonder what some of my major Republican relatives would think of the fact that I'm an atheist.
OMG that might be worse than my family. We, at least, are down with the negros. Wow. Slavery isn't bad as long as you treat your slaves better than someone else does. That's brilliant.
I had to survive a weekend with some of my step-mom's friends (all wealthy, white conservatives). One proclaimed that criticism of the US for slavery is unjustified because other people had slaves. US slaves had it good, understand. I was biting my tongue throughout most of the evening. Later I had to hear my step-dad's friends talk about how the "damn blacks" run everything and if you even dare to say the word "nigger" you'll get hauled off to court (I'm waiting for my summons now). And then I have to semi-regularly hear from my step-dad himself about how Obama is a Muslim terrorist, and whatever latest talking point has been spouted by Sean Hannity. So yes, I know your pain.
Well it's true. I mean, you now see the that comes out of their mouthes. The person I'd really like to get into it with is BJ's mom. Oh man, her argument last time gay marriage came up... I had to literally bite my tongue to keep from laughing my ass off.
A high school friend posted a link encouraging bans on burqas in Western countries. We've had an interesting facebook debate on the subject which I thought about posting here, but I figured that our mutual disparagement of certain Islamic practices would get some people in a hissy fit. Still it might be interesting. Or entertaining. Or both! And I would say our debate was better than you and your dad's, but then you'd counter with something like "toddlers burping on each other would have more intellectual value than what comes out of my family's mouths" and then I'd just be letting you mock yourself (or your blood relations, anyway) instead of me mocking you. I can't have that.
I didn't fail, the memberbase failed.
Positively. Also, if any part of my PM didn't make sense, it is because I am exhausted and up way too late for me not sleeping much ever. I tried to be coherent as possible under the circumstances. P.S. you totally failed at Family Feud. Failure.
