Saturday, March 19, 2005

12:45 AM | Karma*

Let me tell you why I have such vitriol against religion lately. It's the blind dogma most of all, but there are so many other reasons, many of them historical, psychological, and sociological. But mainly it's the people who parade "religiosity" around like a halo above their head. I suppose the halos are there to mark them as something holier-than-thou. I don't mind if they want to be that way, but once they become so narrow-minded and step on my foot, hello baby.

Which is why I am going to tell you about this girl. Let's call her Cara de Achay. She's a graduating college student, a professed Christian, and sometime last year, she filed a case to remove or suspend a friend of mine, a teacher from one of the Colleges, from her teaching post.

The charges were various, one of them being "incompetency," which was a piece of crock. The teacher is brilliant, and hardworking, and possesses one of the rare socio-civic spirit in academia. That she is not "conventional" may be true, but who wants that?

The main complaint in the charge was, of course, "immorality." (Don’t let me explain why.) Of course it didn't help that her boyfriend, a teacher from another college, seemed to be egging her on. He had found the Lord, you see, and I even remember two years ago, he was trying to persuade me to join Logos, that missionary ship. He was the reason why we almost couldn't hold The Vagina Monologues for the past four years. He'd been badmouthing us, and he belonged to a body who decided on the holding of such things. I've been also hearing rumors from students that his classes were no longer about his subject. Fifty percent of his teaching time daw was supposedly being spent on proselytizing his students. Which is fine, if you are teaching Religion. But a **** **** class?

But I remember, most of all, my friend's anguish. She was crying so hard, and she was having nightmares. She couldn't sleep, she couldn't eat. But I was so proud of her because she went on with her life, despite the fact that she felt shattered.

The case was dismissed for lack of merit.

(It was also last year that another religious buang berated me in public for failing her daughter in Research Writing. She alluded that perhaps I was "kindlier" towards the boys in my class because I was gay. Gisapot jud ko. I wanted to shout at her, "Ma'am, I failed your daughter because she plagiarized her paper! And my being gay has nothing to do with anything!")

See why I hate these hypocrites so much, XP? Pink Idiocy? Personal history. I'm soooooooo tired of vipers like these. You know, those who use God's name to pursue their own perverted existence.

And I grew up practically a pastor's boy.

...

Today, I heard that Cara de Achay is pregnant. The boyfriend-teacher's the culprit. And that she is in danger, health-wise, because of the baby. Accordingly, she can't carry it to term, or else she might die.

So for this religious girl, a double dilemma of "immoral" proportions, at least for her: revelations of premarital sex, and now the specter of abortion. Yesterday, straight from the check-up, she came to speak to a student gathering, and declared that she just came from the hospital, because she had a demon inside her.

Psychotic, no? Reminds me of the mother in Carrie, the Sissy Spacek version, where Piper Laurie embodied for me an extreme form of Christian moralism that bordered on the monstrous.

For a "Christian," Cara de Achay is not a very good witness, after all.

But why is it that it is always girls like these who end up in trouble? The pure, religious ones? I had a college classmate whose parents were so strict and religious. She was shocked when I told her about how people have sex. She always thought that one got pregnant from kissing. She didn't even know about what penises and vaginas do to each other. Which was why I wasn't surprised that a week or so after that, I found out she was pregnant. (Maybe she was thinking, "Hey, my boyfriend is not kissing me, so I won't get pregnant. But what's that thing he's poking inside my coochie snorcher? Ano ba yan? Ano ba? Annooooo baaaaa... Ummmm...")

She never finished college.

As for Cara de Achay, three words: karma ka 'day.


*This will be the last of posts like this. I figured I've said enough. I've exhausted all the pain from within me. This is enough.

[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich

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