This is, unexpectedly, the second post of today. I suppose I could hold off on writing this until Monday, but it's a topic heavy on my mind this afternoon and I'd rather get this out so I can stop obsessing over it.
Between classes this morning, my mother called to tell me the news: my grandmother and (step)grandfather (mentioned here) have excommunicated a fourth of the family because of their "unChristianlike" lifestyles. They are out of the will, their children will no longer receive Christmas or birthday gifts, they are off of the Christmas card list, they've been removed from the "In case of emergency, contact" cards, everything. They prayed to God and made their decision.
This stems from one of their granddaughters recent marriage. Not only was it to a black man, but the service was held in Florida, where she goes to school, he is stationed in the air force, and where they live. The grandparents are upset that they didn't take the extended families into account when they got married, saying that the college student and army private should have paid for the family's airfare to the wedding, or should have moved the wedding back to Wisconsin. Not only that, but when my grandparents went to the wedding, they felt that God wasn't mentioned enough during the service for the union to be sacred. Couple this with the family's decision to go to a church with a gay pastor and a bumper sticker criticizing the Pentagon ("What if schools had all the money they needed and the Pentagon had to hold a bake sale to buy a warhead") and you've got yourselves a bunch of Satan-worshipping heathens who are off the family tree.
Now, I've never been baptized. Neither have my sisters. My nuclear family are the unChristians in the bunch, married, born and raised in the most liberal church possible, with a lesbian in charge of Sunday School and regular anti-war protests. As a result, we don't really associate much with that side of the family. We never really thought this sort of mentality would affect us, but I guess we were wrong.
Of course, I'm worried, because my (step)cousin lives two floors down, and while he seems like he's fine with my whole preoccupation with sexing up hot guys, I'm just hoping that he doesn't let it slip during Christmas dinner, or that while his parents are visiting I don't accidentally make out with a guy in the hallway. (Not that it's likely that that'll happen, but I still have hope.)
There's a lot more to be said about the subject, but I'm going to hold off on that for a while. Hopefully just getting that off of my chest will be enough.
