Fight! Fight! Red vs. Blue (another Us and Them story)

  So, I grew up in Canada.  We were quite hardcore traditional conservative fundamentalist, but then again we weren't.  We were pretty conservative in that we thought that rock and roll music was of the devil, that people shouldn't drink alcohol or swear, we were quite progressive in thinking no one should smoke, but yet... when we heard a woman at our church had had an abortion because the child wasn't going to live, we thought maybe that was okay.  We knew there were gay people around, and we thought being gay was kind of funny, but we didn't think they were a threat or anything.  If they got the right to marry around these parts (and they did) we certainly didn't feel it was our business. We certainly didn't feel it affected us one way or t'other.

  And we knew some of our counterparts in America. They were really different from us.  Where we were taught that the whole world was condemned by God, under the rule of Satan since the garden, and bound to burn up one day, and that our country and its best attempts at charity and doing good was cute at best, the Americans were fiercely proud of their country, and didn't include it as part of "the world" in any of the bible verses about that. And where we saw the whole world as messed right up, by Satan and human beings working together, they saw America as somehow a "Christian country."  The fact that they took the land for the Christian country by killing the people God gave it to, and then abducted and enslaved the citizens of various parts of Africa didn't make it any less Christian, and it was very bad form to bring that stuff up.  Not only did they think their country was "Christian" ("How did that work," I wondered.  I grew up understanding that we were Christian, and that was defined by being something other than the people, country and world around us.) but they also felt that they had to "fight to keep it that way," which again made no sense to my fundamentalist Canadian ears.  "You're country's not Christian," I thought.  "It never has been.  You can't 'keep' it that way because it isn't."

  And they fought. They fought wars across the planet because people were being communists (or even just socialists, which to them was just as bad).  They fought wars on hunger, poverty, drugs and rape.  That didn't do much harm.  But there were these little civil wars going on too.  They called them "fighting to keep the American family sacred" and "fighting for the biblical definition of marriage."  I never understood why if someone else disagreed with you about how they defined something, that this hurt you.  I am an inveterate correcter of people, as to grammar and facts and things, but I've never felt that if someone disagrees, they should be legally sanctioned.  (well, maybe for saying things like "I seen youse yesterday when yuz were at the mall.")

  And I made this video with me dressed a bit like Chuck Norris in Walker: Texas Ranger to kind of express my distaste for something British theologian N.T. Wright identified: he said that in England, if you tell someone your religion, they certainly don't feel qualified to know how you're going to vote, nor would you be handed a "beliefs package" as to how you will all be standing on sensitive issues like abortion, gay marriage, gay priests and so on.   I was sick of worrying that if someone found out that I was a Christian, they would assume that I was a simple-minded bigot who was going to give anyone gay nearby a hard time.

  And just like clockwork, the Chik-Fil-A thing hit the 'net.  (to pronounce the "illiteracy is good marketing" title, think of someone filleting baby chicks.  Chick Fillet.  To keep Americans from saying the "t", they left it out.)

  Right when I put up my video, suddenly I found out about this thing.  It had been going on for a few months prior, and I had been wondering why RepubliAmeriChristians were posting about 'being at Chik-Fil-A like they were planning a revolution of some kind.  This guy who owns Chik-Fil-A, this low-rent KFC in America has been quoted as saying he doesn't think gay people can be described as, nor should be allowed to marry.  Whatever, right?  But then his funding of "pro-family" groups starts to come out, and officials start (unfairly) trying to block these chicken restaurants from expanding up toward our fair border.  Chicago was a problem, I think.  And harsh words start getting tossed around:

 
"Chik-Fil-A are hateful bigots like the KKK." 
"We're being attacked for our God-given, American civil right to have our own traditional beliefs!" 
"You hate gay people! Nazis!" 
"We don't hate gay people. We just don't think they should have any rights we don't have.  Every American man has the right to marry a woman, and every American woman has the right to marry a man. Now why should anyone get special rights?"
"Go put on your pointy hood, KKKristians!  There won't be a Shit-Fil-A (clever, heh?!) sandwich up in Boise anytime soon!"

  And I kept getting sucked into stupid arguments on Facebook.  There was plenty of evading points, not answering people's questions, talking past rather that to people, colossal lapses in argumentation and all the smugness and bitchiness one could ask for. Gay atheists, gay Christians, straight atheists and straight Christians all acting the same stupid way.  And it took me a week of this crap before I really got sick enough of it to see what was really going on, and what was actually bugging me.  They were pretending it was a "hate," issue.  They were pretending it was about rights. But very clearly, the old American "put one colour jerseys on the left side of the field, and another colour jerseys on the right side of the field, and the more fighting the better!  Red vs. Blue.  We'll soon see who's right, based on who can put down the chicken sandwich, get off the couch and overcome their native apathy to be more aggressive than the others!"
  The smugness annoyed me.  I was ignoring it on the "leave gay people alone" side, and getting inflamed by it on the "fight to keep America Christian and preserve the sanctity of marriage" ones I am pressured to take a solid stand next to.  But eventually I realized that I was hating the behaviour of all of them.  And mine too.  It was a bunch of stupid fighting.  Now I am not a typical Canadian, in that I love controversy, debate, gentle argument and other social perversions of that sort. Not for me the passive aggressive smugness and silent that screams vitriol.  Yet this was leaving me... cold?  The opposite, but you understand what I mean.
  I think the thing which actually caused me to turn the corner was the point at which this "made for being blown out of proportion by the rabid media" shitshow resulted in the "tolerate" side being unaware of the irony in what they were videoing. If anything is to believed, the CFO (now ex-CFO) of a large medical supply company specializing in catheters got pissed off at the whole Chik-Fil-A thing, and hating haters as he claimed to, went into a Chik-Fil-A and camera phoned himself taking a giant chicken strip off an unassuming little teenaged girl working the counter there. That's the sort of behaviour, the sort of lack of an irony sense, the sort of self-centred meanspiritedness that makes me cringe when Christians try to get me to join in.  But this showed me more clearly than if it had been a Christian doing it, that everybody's acting the fool here.

  It was embarrassing.  The usual fight as to who got to wear the white hats and who had to wear the black hats, of who was a traitor to their country and who was a noble patriot fighting to preserve it rag(g)ed on. And I was, typically, obstinately, playing devil's advocate, being contrary, swimming against the current, breaking the mold prepared for me and generally trying to shovel shit uphill, when at this point I suddenly felt stupid.  Simple reason: I was being stupid. I was getting sucked into the same stupid game of Red Rover as everyone else.  

  Which was no doubt the point of the game all along. To make us fight. Shame on us.  All of us.