Warning: religious rant ahead

I couldn't sleep tonight.

I usually don't have problems sleeping, but tonight I've been awake most of the night. My thoughts have shifted back and forth between different topics, but always settling on one thing: a conversation I had today with my oldest friend. I don't mean that as a figure of speech, she actually is the friend I've had the longest.

M is smart, funny, and tells great stories. She is very much a leader-type where I have always been more of a follower-type. She's the kind of friend who is a total riot and so much fun to hang out with.

--A SIDE NOTE--

To set up this story properly, allow me to go into my personal feelings on religion for a moment. I thank my lucky stars that my semi-hippie parents chose to raise me with zero religion whatsoever. Whevever I would ask my mom what religion we were, she would tell me, "Your religion is your own choice, when you get old enough you can research all the religions and choose one." I guess once I got old enough to really critically evaluate the religions, none of them made any sense to me.

Instead of using religion as the moral code, my mother managed to instill in us a clear sense of right and wrong which I would say is based more in society than in any given religion. I feel like I'm a good person and make mostly good moral choices in my life (of course nobody's perfect). Although I am by choice totally non-religious, I definitely feel that each person should be free to make their own choice about which religion they wish to belong to. Where I start getting irate is where people want to start pushing their religion on other people.

--BACK TO THE STORY--

This brings us to the inciting incident of this story: in the past few years, my oldest friend M has become very Christian. When she first turned Christian, I asked M a lot of questions about it. Her reason for turning seemed to be that Jesus forgives everything and will take you to heaven. I knew she had done some pretty terrible things to other people in her past, and I figured this was her way of saying she was sorry.

Over the years, as her Christianity grew stronger, I was surprised to see that M's life was the same. She still does the terrible things to other people at about the same rate she used to. I figured that she found some inner peace out of going to Church and if that was good enough for her, then it's good enough for me. I never questioned what she did in the past, and there was no reason for me to start now.

One of our old mutual friends was gay, and I mentioned it to her today in a gossipy way because I just found out about it. Bizarrely, she immediately starts spouting off about how she is against Gay Marriage because our Founding Fathers built this country based on God and Christianity or something like that. No one had mentioned gay marriage, and to my knowledge she had never been interested in any kind of politics before, so I was very surprised and put off. I wanted to say "SHUT UP WITH THE RELIGION ALREADY" but instead I ended up cutting her off with a weak, "I don't want to talk about this, M." After that, we had a little more stilted conversation and awkardly hung up.

I can't sleep tonight because all the things I should have said to her are going through my mind.

What is wrong with M? I don't even know if our mutual gay friend ever wants to get married, but it really really bothers me that M wouldn't think twice about not allowing her to do so if it were up to her. Because why? Because of what her Christianity told her? What else will she believe that her Christianity tells her is right/wrong? Her willful self-brainwashing has totally changed her personaity, M really has become someone else and that someone else is not pleasant to be around. It's like she's really quick to judge everyone but herself. It really bothers me that her first comment on finding out our mutual friend (OMF) was gay was to spout off about what she thinks OMF should and shouldn't do with her life. Maybe she should turn some of that spouting indignancy on herself and leave OMF alone.

About Gay Marriage specifically there's a lot of things I wish I had said. I just don't understand why God or Jesus would not want two people to be happy together forever. If they are happy being gay, I see no reason why God or Jesus would say that is bad. They are hurting no one. And even if it is a Sin under God or whatever the Christianity tells people, isn't something that hurts someone, even a little, like punching someone out of anger, or cheating on your boyfriend, or not returning money in a wallet, worse than something that hurts no one? Why is all the religious focus these days on gay people and not on sins that actually HURT people. And my final point I wish I had said is that not everyone believes in the same religion, so who is she to tell someone else what to do? Let other people make their own choices, if the religion is right then other people will naturally be drawn to it like she was. She shouldn't want to or even have to pass laws to force people to act in ways they just don't believe in.

I don't know if I can be friends with her any more. I just can't take the psuedo-religiousness/judgmental thing. I will probably never tell her any of this.

Sorry for the rant. You can't say I didn't warn you :)