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:

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.

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.