My wife is having surgery this week. It's a moderately routine surgery, everyone assures me that it will go well, but it is not without some risk.
For this surgery, several relatives have come into town to show support. I'll be open and honest in saying I can't really see the point of them coming. One set of relatives are only coming for the day of the surgery, arriving after she's gone under the knife and departing before she returns from her medicated recovery, meaning she wont even see them. Another set came a couple of days before while my wife has been on an all liquid diet (to prepare for the surgery) and leaving the day my wife gets out of the hospital, meaning they wont be around to help during the few weeks of recovery thereafter. I guess the "support" they are giving is the kind where you don't actually do anything, but whatever. I appreciate it. Sure I do.
Anyway, one set of relatives are staunch Christian Conservatives, or more accurately, Christian Fundamentalists. They view the Theory of Evolution as an attack on their beliefs and refuse to even try to understand what the theory actually says, instead they spout the same tired and misinformed rhetoric that persons like them have spouted for decades. They make horribly off color jokes about Terrorists threatening to burn Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama while Christian Fundamentalists go door to door to collect gasoline donations (the sorts of jokes that somehow wind up offending on multiple levels including being sexist, racist, and morally reprehensible). They also sit there watching Fox News every waking moment of the day without giving a second thought to the hate and lie laden faux news filling their closed minds.
Well, I usually try my best to keep my mouth shut around these relatives, mostly because they are quite old and it doesn't do any good to debate with them anyway (save your strength for the school boards that are trying to insert Intelligent Design into Biology classes). Yet, somehow, something is invariably said that is so grating on my intellect that I have to speak up.
Last night, it was a discussion about how America is a "Christian Nation", founded by Christians, for Christians, and nowhere does it say our founding fathers felt that church and state should be separate. Well, naturally, that made my blood boil, and I had to say something.
