Two Crazy Rooms in the Church Lady’s House

So this morning I find email chastising me for yesterday’s Remembering the Fundamentalists’ True Love of Christ.

“I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that you are now trying to make us love and respect the same people who DENY US OUR CIVIL RIGHTS!” said one.

“Please don’t try to play fair with people who only want to repress and hate everything and everyone they think is against their ideas of who God is,” said another.

Sigh.

First, I don’t try to play fair. I do play fair. With everyone. What kind of dinkwad doesn’t?

But more to the point: fear not, friends, for I haven’t gone fungible on the fundies.

It’s like this. To my mind, most fundies are like 50’s-era, ranch-style, single-level suburban homes.

They’re neat, dependable, sturdy, comfortable, spacious, there’s a gazillion of them, the plumbing usually works. They’re great. It’s just that they also contain within them these two bizzaro-world areas where insanity is the norm.

It’s like you’re at the Church Lady’s house on a pleasant Sunday afternoon. The two of you are sitting in her sun room, sipping sweetened tea and nibbling Cheese Nips, or whatever, having a lovely chat.

In the course of the afternoon you ask to use the restroom. “Why, it’s just down the hallway there,” says the Church Lady. So you go down the hall, find a door, open it, and instead of a bathroom find this:

“Whoa!” you exclaim, and yank the door shut again.

And then you open another hallway door, and find:

So that room you pee in.  Because, you know: fire.

Then you stumble back into the tea room, crying, “Church Lady! Church Lady! You’ve got serious craziness happening back there!”

“Whatever do you mean?” she asks.

“Back there! In the two rooms! One’s got some gay guys being rounded up by Nazis, and the other’s got people being burned alive! C’mon! We’ve got to do something!”

“Oh that,” she laughs. “Oh, you don’t need to worry about that. That’s nothing.”

“Nothing? It’s horrible!”

“Why dear, no it’s not. It’s perfectly fine. That’s just the way it is.”

“But how you can you live in a house that’s happening in? How can you be comfortable here?”

“I don’t understand what you’re so upset about, dear. Those rooms, and the people in them, were here when I moved into this house.”

“But that’s so crazy. And why would you buy a place like that?”

“You’ve seen the view from my living room, haven’t you? It’s wonderful; you can see forever. Now stop worrying your little head about all this. We can’t change all the things in the world that aren’t exactly like we’d like them, now, can we?”

“But you could change this! You don’t have to live with this! You could open those doors, and — ”

“Would you like a little more sugar in your tea, sweetheart?”

See? Like that.

It’s not like the Church Lady is a bad person. A tad dense, perhaps. Not as empathetic as she might be. Definitely too stuck in her ways.

What she’s mostly doing, though, is ignoring the fact that between the roaring fire, and the gays and lesbians who will not be content to remain in her little room back there, her house — and sooner than she realizes — will be destroyed.