Or a God that hates at all. Don’t use God to push your own agenda.
I got a friend request from a stranger on facebook. His profile said he was a divorced officer in the army and lived in Austin Texas, but something about his profile felt absent, vacant, and strange. It was as if this wasn’t a real person, but some sort of robot. There weren’t enough photos of him, the posts were too far apart, and even then they didn’t say much about him. The few pictures were all from the same time period and looked like stock photos.
I wanted to make sure I wasn’t about to snub some long lost acquaintance from a bygone era of mine, so I messaged him.
Me: “Hey, where do I know you from?”
Him: “Hi! My name is Williams, what’s yours?”
Then it was clear I didn’t know him at all.
Normally I would have just left it there, and declined the request, but for some reason I was amused and kept chatting with the fellow.
He wrote in broken English with numerous grammatical errors, which could be indicative of the annoying direction auto-correct has been going (I too am a victim of this), or maybe, just maybe, he isn’t who he says he is. He certainly didn’t sound like he was from Austin, or even the US.
In addition to broken grammar, he started commenting on my appearance, my body, telling me I’m pretty, addressing me as “my dear” and calling me “sweet,” there was even a wink emoji. My goodness a strange man on the internet is flirting with little ole me! I took this as a sign to lay down the law.
Me: I have no interest in ever having sex with you, I am a lesbian.
Okay, okay, I guess you could call me bisexual, but I have no interest at all in dating any men, only women. I don’t want him to waste his time (or mine).
It took him a long time to respond.
Him: What made you choose that?
Me: It’s not a choice, just the way I was born.
He then chatted more about the army, but eventually he circled back.
Him: Ever think stopping being [sic] a lesbian and marrying a man?
Me: Why would I do that?
Him: So that you can have good [sic] man who love you.
You can only have lovely children if you marry a man.
So that God won’t hate you.
The air in the room went stale with the evil I read in the last line.
There were a lot of things I could have said. I could have explained that I was married to a man, and am now divorced and prefer it this way. I could have explained I am perfectly capable of having children without a male partner, it’s called a sperm bank.
I wanted to say that it is cis men who need women to make babies, and this emotional blackmail he just fed me to force women into relationships we don’t want for their procreation is bullshit and I’m not buying it.
I thought about telling him my sexuality was born into me. God themselves made me attracted to women, why would they/he/she do that if they didn’t want me to be with women? I thought about telling him there is no logical reason for a god to hate lesbians.
I could have explained that this entire argument does not stand and is just designed for someone else to own my body and my life.
Maybe explain that it’s not my job to please anyone, let alone an invisible entity that he himself or anyone else assigns attributes, opinions and emotions to.
That it’s blasphemy to use religion (which I do respect, but may not participate in), to manipulate, subjugate, and control others to make them do things they don’t want to (like lesbians marrying men).
Perhaps mention that no god belongs to him and he doesn’t get to decide what god feels, that’s not his right. God doesn’t answer to him. He has no right to claim his voice as his own.
Maybe explain to him that many people disagree that God hates me, or is even a hateful creature.
Instead all I wrote was:
“Why would I try to please a god who hates me?”
I then told him I had to stop chatting, my beautiful girlfriend wanted to have sex. Then I blocked him.
Sorry Williams, that line of emotional manipulation does not work on me. Stop using religion to shame me into a life that isn’t mine.
Leave God alone and stop using him to push your own agendas and control others.
