Strong Men...

Over Father's Day weekend there was a gathering of conservative Christian men in Washington. During the retreat one of the pastors (disgraced pastor formerly from a mega church in Seattle) announced from the stage that Hetero, Christian, men were the new punk rock.

I made the joke that they finished the weekend listening to a cover band called Engaged With The Machine.

These guys have never been punk rock. They don't know what it means. They just think angry means punk. But they are the status quo that punk has raged against. (that type of punk, there is a whole brand of punk that they really are and always have been, Nazi Punks Fuck OFF!)

These are the guys who get Punisher tattoos and claim that they would be the rebellion in Star Wars, or worse that the Empire was right.

They've missed the point of almost all popular culture ever. But they so want to be cool. And they really need to be oppressed. Not like it's a kink, though for some of them I am sure it is, but that they believe they are oppressed and are fighting the good fight. When they are the ones doing the oppressing. And they try to balance their "help, help, I'm being oppressed!" bullshit with WE ARE STRONG MEN DON'T QUESTION US nonsense. Like, which is it? Are you oppressed or are you large and incharge?

This group is a spin off of Promise Keepers. When Promise Keepers first started my Dad and my two brothers actually went to a big revival meeting in Colorado. It was billed as a Christian Men's organization. The weekend was supposed to be all about how to be better men through Christ. It appealed to my father. He went and then he quit the organization.

The weekend, he felt, was more about politics and about selling stuff than it was actual biblical teachings. He wasn't impressed.

And that was my dad.

Which is kind of funny. I've written about it before, my dad hadn't been raised in the church, but my mother insisted that he convert before she would marry him. When he died and we were writing up the program for his funeral all of us kids found out that he was baptised the morning they got married. He waited until the last possible moment to make sure she wasn't bluffing before he did it. But once he did it he was all in.

He was an elder in our church, until my sister's issues were too big for them to solve and he decided that if he didn't have control of his own house he had no business trying to lead others. Again, that's who my dad was. He walked the walk.

So when he left Promise Keepers it was a good sign for me that they weren't who they said they were.

Which is kind of the theme of most Christian organizations now. They aren't actually representing Christ. Even this group was heavy into Old Testament teachings. Not so much on the compassion part of the New Testament as the retribution part of the Old Testament.

There were women there, to serve meals and clean up the place, and they were instructed to listen to the speeches from their own area set back away from everyone else and to be quiet. Like literally a sign telling them to be quiet and respectful so the men could focus.

Yeah, it's all just a big reminder of why I left the church. And why I'm never surprised when there are women out there who vote to have their own rights taken away. Women who believe (TPUSA just had speakers on this) that there should be a household voter, the male head of the house, and that they didn't need to have the right to vote. That women need to be subservient to their husbands. I was raised in that. I was taught that from a young age. I never believed it.

My dad was a devout Christian. The sort of man that led Bible studies and prayed before every meal. A righteous man. Like Lot. But I can guarantee he wouldn't have offered up his daughters to be raped and if god had turned my mother into a pillar of salt just for looking back at everything she knew being blasted to dust he would have left the religion. He might have been a devout Christian but he was devoted to my mother above all else. And he didn't believe his daughters were powerless. When people would talk about my big brothers having their hands full when I started dating (weird way of saying I was pretty) he would say that they didn't need to worry about my brothers they needed to worry about me. He was never worried about me being able to handle my own shit.

That's the vision of a strong man that I was raised with. Not the one that says you sit over here and be quiet so I'm not distracted. Not the one that thinks only he has the right to an opinion and that obviously I would just agree.

And I always say that I walked away from my parent's beliefs, but I didn't actually walk away from their teachings. I believe there is a right and a wrong. I believe that you need to leave organizations that are not what they say they are. And I believe a devoted husband is a true gift. Especially one who knows you can handle your own shit.

Except really big spiders. He needs to handle that.