Do you know what I love about the First Amendment?

It's time to make this clear, since there was a hefty dose of unintentional timing: this 'Belief' series is neither fictional nor an April Fool's joke, despite part of it being posted on April 1. Ricky Ellis is a real person, a high school classmate of mine I have not seen in fifteen years, and those words are truly his. His profile on facebook, if you have access to it, contains more of the same, and specifically references me, once by name:

Ricky Ellis:  atheism= WHAT A JOKE!! Iv been standing my ground for 2 days againsnt some of the smartest people in bauxite......but thats not saying very much is it! LOOKS AS IF THE DUMBEST OF BAUXITE HAS GOTTEN WAY AHEAD OF THE BALL GAME!! AND MY SALARY IS TWICE IF NOT 3 TIMES AS MUCH AS THERES......NOW YOU TELL ME GOD DOESNT HAVE GREAT THINGS INSTORE FOR

At this point, I'm just logging for posterity. Everyone gets to stand by their words, and I'd rather them be archived publicly rather than privately. Remember, this all came about because I replied to a piece of hateful anti-Muslim email, pointing out the email was factually incorrect as well as insulting.

In response to the following automatically-syndicated one-liner indicating a new post:

Everyone else has had their say today, and I wanted to wait some number of hours to let my opinions fall into place before providing my response. A full, measured, and honest response here will include nothing new to longtime readers of domesticat.net, but which may come as a surprise to quite a few of the people who knew me only as a child or a teenager, and have only recently found me again on Facebook.

First, the initial introduction.  My name is Amy.  I am in my early thirties. I am married. I have, by choice, no children -- and I am not Christian. That last statement is of little consequence outside the Bible Belt, but of tremendous consequence inside it.

What follows is the transcript of a discussion on my facebook wall regarding the entry 'Belief,' which was posted this morning.  I am posting the transcript from Facebook for archival purposes, and for those reading this site who do not use Facebook. The next post (part 3) will be my response, and would make little sense without this transcript.

I sent this through my work account just now. It makes me angry that such things even have to be said at all.

I know we covered this with breathless abandon over at geek-chick.net, but I couldn't let another day go by without discussing Vanessa Carlton's upcoming album on my site. For those of you who haven't heard, you should take a look at Vanessa Carlton's interview/blurb available at Rolling Stone. Let me start with a choice quote:

"I'm singing about suicide, insomnia and paranoia," Carlton says about the album, which isn't due until next year. "There's nothing piano recital-y about it. It's goth." Asked to explain, Carlton answers with a question of her own: "Do you know what Wicca is? I believe in like spells and stuff like that..."

I'm just gonna say that again for those of you who didn't fall over laughing the first time.

"People get uptight about the most bizarre things," Jeff said, nodding, as I showed him the pictures. I agreed.

I'd been zeroing in on a sweet little parking space at the store when the battered blue Dodge had caught my eye. I tossed my car into 'park' after whipping around the row, and had my camera ready before I walked by the car.

While I'm legally allowed to photograph cars, I prefer to do it as inobtrusively as possible.

I had the lens cap removed and the camera turned on before I even came in view of the car. Thus prepared, the actual process of taking two photos took less than four seconds. There was plenty of light; I didn't even bother to check the photos to see if they were acceptable. I just shoved the camera back in its little bag, turned, and went into the store to do my errands.

You can determine a lot of things about a person from what bumper stickers they place on a car. Most folk don't take bumper stickers lightly; the sayings and emblems they place on a car are likely to represent their most strongly-held beliefs. Owners don't put "I like ice cream" or "Blue is my favorite color" stickers on cars. They put things like "Re-Elect Gore in 2004" or "One Nation Under GOD."

Bumper stickers are our casual way of stating beliefs too forceful to be bandied about in most polite conversation. (For those of you who ask, the sticker on my car is "Go away or I will replace you with a very small shell script.")

I'm thinking that Mr. Blue Dodge is a wee bit wrapped up in semantics. Anyone whose most strongly held beliefs end up leading him to put up a bumper sticker that says "W.W.J.D.? He'd Use His Own Name - YAHSHUA!" (and another that says "HalleluYAH Means Praise His Name")....I'm thinking we've got some semantics issues at work here.

I mean, shoot me if I'm wrong here, but if you're going to get real cranky about how a name is spelled or written, shouldn't you just go back to the original Hebrew letters and be done with it? Isn't there a certain amount lost in the transliteration from Hebrew letters (which, if I remember correctly, don't indicate vowels) to Latin ones (which do)? Yikes.

Call me theist, but I've always favored the idea of a Creator intelligent enough to know when it's being talked to, no matter what name we call it. I have trouble getting terribly upset about such things, but, at the same time, I know a lot of other people take this sort of thing with a deadly seriousness that leaves me just bewildered.

Take, for instance, the Pledge of Allegiance. Granted, I dislike the actual concept of a Pledge of Allegiance; it always had the distinct odor of Heil Jackboot about it, what with requiring kids to stand up in rows in class to recite words they don't understand while staring at a flag, and all. To me, civilian acts of informed voting and governmental criticism speak more of appreciating one's citizenship than any recited pledge ever could.

- but, in the midst of that pledge, is a sticky little two-word phrase that riles up a good bit of folk, and I'm not so certain that I blame them. I like a rollicking argument over semantics as much as the next guy, but I draw the line at dropping phrases like that into laws (or on money). Cementing specific religious phrases like that one into law will do nothing but hurt those whose beliefs fall outside those whose particular version won the day.

The standard Christian response I've seen to complaints about the "under God" phrase is, "But everyone knows what the phrase means! No one should be offended by a reference to God!"

Hate to break it to them, but that phrase, no matter how trivial, is an endorsement of a religion - Christianity. If we're all talking about the same God, and it doesn't matter how it gets referred to, perhaps we Americans could change to a slightly more inclusive version of the Pledge that would alienate different religious groups on different days of the week.

(See this page, the section marked 'the stand taken', for far better thoughts on this subject than my tired brain is likely to craft tonight.)

Perhaps on Mondays we could say "under Goddess," and on Fridays "under Allah." After all, it shouldn't matter - it's just semantics, right?

I'm guessing the guy driving the blue Dodge wouldn't agree.

Aren't the freedoms of religion and expression just ... grand?

Those who want to see firsthand evidence of the American love for alternately-spelled words have to look no further than the myriad Southern spellings of the word "barbecue," or the vast creativity that goes into Southern church names.

I'm not much for proselytizing. Nor much, outside my close circle of friends, for expounding upon my spiritual beliefs. I tend to draw the line at random strangers publicly announcing religious beliefs, especially with intent to convert. (We should so make that a tort.) For me, there's a vast (and only rarely blurry) difference between two friends talking about the things that matter over coffee, and some random, unknown person trying to take a few minutes to convince me that their belief system is the right way to go.

This, from the person who still takes a quick look up at the sky every time she sets foot outside. "Yep, still blue," I catch myself saying, before carrying on with whatever life-fulfilling activity I was doing in the first place. (Trying to convert me is like trying to talk to a cat. Expend as much effort as you want, but all you'll do is wear out your voice and annoy the cat.)