I got comment and post blocked on Facebook for a full thirty days because someone that I was having a discussion with about religion did not like the fact that I refuse to consent to Bub’s infantile (or childhood) baptism and am not comfortable, or willing, to allow any children of mine to undergo religious indoctrination. It seems like Facebook protects Christian, white-passing men more than they protect any other people, because as soon as those people make a report against you for anything it stands, and no matter how many rules they break, you can never successfully report them for anything because no matter how many times you report them and appeal it Facebook won’t punish them at all. And attempting to hold Facebook accountable for any of this is nearly, if not actually, impossible. I don’t think the platform will ever change.

That discussion did remind me of the fact that when Bub’s paternal family actually coerced me into attending Masses with them against my will, for all but the first Mass and when I was not taking care of our child, I actually brought my PSP with me to Mass and played video games for nearly the full hour because I literally physically did not want to be there and was being drug there against my will. I would hide it in the arm of my sweater (“your church is cold”, and I mean, although it was, I also did not want to be there). I had to have attended something in the ballpark of twenty Masses with them and, to this day, can not tell you what goes on at Mass or what they do when aside from the fact that sometimes they stand, other times they kneel, and I refused to do any of these things. (Although I will take the time to mention that the first time I attended Mass with them I had to sit in the main area of the church with Bub’s father’s family and he had to tell his mother that I was refusing to stand when… they did various things. I’m glad that they chose not to make a scene out of it because, let me tell you, I would have risen to the occasion with my Scottish DNA…)

I can, however, tell you the games that I played while I was intentionally ignoring everything that went on around me, and when I saved my progress and turned off the PSP… when they began to walk up to receive the Eucharist. Bub’s paternal grandmother once forced me to go up there to get a blessing and I remember literally running from the priest afterward. Seriously, I really ran from the man. The joke must have been on him blessing someone who didn’t believe in God… I wonder if the irony was ever lost on him at any point.

There also came a point in time when I was breastfeeding my son outside of the cry room and main area where they have Masses (what do you call this?), and Bub’s father insisted on following me. He could have gone back into the main area of the church where they… do this stuff, but against my will, regularly being informed that I did not want to attend Masses, the church functions, and the church get-togethers that I was being coerced into attending, he attempts to involve me in the “peace be with you” part of whatever it is that they do. I actually yell at him to leave me alone, and I yell so loud that were the Mass not already loud the entire church would have heard him yell at me. One parishioner that happens to be outside hears me and asks me if I’m alright. I literally tell him that he won’t leave me alone, but nothing gets done about it, and it does not take until the end of our relationship (although I don’t think he or his family will ever learn, or see, what they’ve done wrong here) for him to even remotely start to see that I’m saying that I do not want to attend or be part of any of this for a reason, I do not want to convert, leave me alone, just leave me out of it.

Of course, Bub doesn’t jump as any of this happens. Maybe he was used to his paternal family screaming.

In case you need to know what Satanic Panic is: here
In case you need to know what Hexennacht is: here

One of the things that I wanted to take the time to touch on, as someone who gradually “came out” in her blog as a Satanist (affiliated with The Satanic Temple, at that), is that even though we may have, comparatively speaking, made strides toward being more safely and easily being able to declare our religious affiliations in some places — or lack thereof, depending on how you want to word them — it can still be dangerous to “out” yourself as a religion that is not the majority religion, especially under the Trump Administration (and especially if it becomes clear through whatever means that you are LBGT, or as I have sometimes worded it, “not an able-bodied, white-passing man”). Outing yourself as a Satanist is perhaps the diciest of all, and it can potentially have repercussions in child custody cases and job applications if it is revealed in the former or disclosed in the latter. One word of advice, though: you do not have to disclose your religious affiliation on a job application, even if the interviewer asks… and for them to “require” that is illegal.

However, plenty of divorced or separated parents — and I mean plenty — have fought over the most banal of religious issues as they pertain to their child or children, so for one parent to be outed as a Satanist, or volunteer the information that they are one, is pretty much analogous to throwing a hand grenade into the proceedings if you ask me… at least assuming that both parents are active participants in their children’s lives and are litigating with the intent to be able to have an equal say in the upbringing of said children’s lives. Sometimes it is actually court-ordered that one parent is to be the parent that has “final decision-making say” in the religious instruction of the children (or, conversely, if this becomes something that it is clear that the parents will never agree on, that both parents are forbidden from making their children “active, registered participants” in their religious denomination… which basically means that they can not baptize them or enroll them). However, for one parent to be the individual that is granted that final decision-making say is only generally done when the child (or children) have had a history of being brought up in that religion so that they can continue to be brought up in it to give them the continued regularity of that religion’s influence, especially when their lives will be shifted with the divorce or separation of their parents. Unless, of course, it’s Satanism. And then it’s, like I’ve said, like throwing a really judgmental hand grenade into the proceedings nearly all of the time because of nearly everyone’s misconceptions as to what Satanism entails.

And yet perhaps it is the most ironic of all that Satanists are generally the least judgmental and pushy.