And today, Vermont’s senate overturned the governor’s veto — with a rather impressive majority vote — of a gay marriage bill.

Is America collectively coming to its senses after the disappointment of November’s election results in regards to gay marriage?

It feels like we’re finally really starting to win some of the fights. How many more battles will we fight?

I had a very rare (near as I can tell) mish-mash of an upbringing when it came to religion. I remember going to church with my parents once in a while when I was very young, but neither my mother or father were particularly religious folks. My mother is probably closest to being agnostic as anything, and my father occasionally surfaces with a new belief system (he has at times regarded himself a christian, a unitarian, a universalist, and has briefly from time to time veered into agnostic territory). I can only surmise they made these infrequent church outings before they divorced (when I was 5 years old) to satisfy some community image — I was born and raised in the Southeastern United States, where this is expected of you — or to mollify my paternal grandparents. MaMaw and PaPaw were hardcore Southern Baptists. Neither of my parents has ever pushed me into any religion, but my MaMaw certainly gave it a good try.

After my parents divorced, my father would frequently go on little quests to find himself (this is another story for another day) and so was more or less an absentee father for most of my childhood. This is where MaMaw and PaPaw came in. When my mom needed time to herself I spent the weekend with them. I loved them dearly and they absolutely doted on me, and so I looked forward to these weekends and came to relish them overall. However, spending the weekend with them invariably meant attending church services on Sunday. When I was very young this was no big deal — during regular services the little kids were all whisked away to a room in the back of the church for youth service, which was basically juice, cookies, and coloring books. I was too young to grasp anything they were trying to teach me so really, it was just a fun time to hang out with other kids, and since I was only there every couple of weekends, it wasn’t really a consistent thing. As I got older and started having to sit through the regular service during my weekends with them, it was just a rather boring way of spending a Sunday morning, but I didn’t find any real displeasure in it. I did eventually start shrugging off church on Sunday, much to their dismay, but not long after I reached that point it became moot anyway. MaMaw’s health was failing so that she was only able to attend church every once in a while, a failing which she atoned for by watching every fundie preacher on TV. I’m still thankful that she never fell in so far as to give them all her money, though she dutifully tithe her 10% to the local church until her death.

Around the age of 9 I started going to a Wesleyan church a block from my house, mainly because my friends at school went there, so it gave me more time to hang out with them. My mother did not attend church with me, but did not discourage me from going either. MaMaw was happy I was going to church on my own, even if it wasn’t a Southern Baptist one — in her mind, at least I was talking to Jesus. I decided I wanted to join the church, and to do this I had to be saved. I had no real reference for what this meant other than I had to talk to the preacher and tell him I was saved. So I “accepted Jesus into my heart.” I was baptized — a good, old-fashioned baptism in a real river even. I joined the “Christian Youth Crusaders” (a name that makes me shudder a bit now), the church youth group. For about a year solid, I went to church on Sunday mornings, Sunday nights, and Wednesday nights. When summer came around there was the summer camp for the CYC (that my mother scrimped and saved to be able to send me to) where we did lots of regular summer camp stuff but spent a long time in services too. Strangely I don’t remember much of the indoctrination that must have been being thrust at me; I mainly remember that the CYC group was structured a lot like the scouts, with projects to do and merit badges to earn. The only reason I stopped going to that church was that we moved to another city when my mom married my likewise non-religious step-father, and there was no church within walking distance there. Other than missing my friends, I don’t remember feeling any particular sense of loss over leaving the church.

During my junior high years I briefly attended another church with one of my new friends in the new city, attending church lock-ins (like an pajama party for the youth group) and BBQs and the like. Again, I don’t really remember much about the dogma — I don’t even remember what denomination this one was — just the social events. (And lying about going to church a couple of times but actually spending the time hanging out with some boys who lived down the street.)

To me, that’s what church was — a social event. Nothing more, nothing less. I had to sit through a few boring lectures about being a christian, but then I got to party with my friends. None of the rest of it really mattered to me. I didn’t put much thought into whether god existed or not. Even when MaMaw wanted to talk to me seriously about church, I just kind of hemmed and hawed my way through the conversations, knowing it made her happy that I went to church.

When I reached high school age, I’d more or less left church behind, choosing to spend my social time participating in more illicit activities. Well, in my mind. In truth I was a pretty good kid — didn’t really drink, didn’t touch drugs, didn’t do many things that were actually unlawful, and I was always a model student in school, making honor roll every report period. But my friends and I were into rock music and the rock scene, and we went to nightclubs that we weren’t actually old enough to be in to see the bands play. Religion had no place in my life and I didn’t devote any thought to it.

Around age 18 or so, I started feeling this pull toward something with more meaning. So I began looking into religions. By this time I already knew that the christians — at least the ones that were part of the organized religious world — were full of it. The little knowledge of the King James bible I had gleaned through my short bursts of church membership had never made sense to me; other than the “Golden Rule” I thought it was useless. Contradictory, misogynistic, and at times just plain evil, the christian god was certainly not a deity I wished to worship. I will never understand how so many people don’t see this. To me it was all right there.

I read up on many different religions. Islam was right out (that whole being a freethinking woman thing really got in the way for me there). I dabbled with some of the “new age” spirituality stuff, finding no real satisfaction there (that crystal I wore brought me no special peace, and tarot cards were mainly silly), and read up on wicca and paganism a bit, even going so far as to try a ritual or two on my own. What I mainly took from that was the core idea behind it, “Harm None,” which really was just the “Golden Rule” in a different form. Buddhism I thought had some nice points to it, but meditation never did anything for me other than make me feel really mellow (which you know, is nice, but it wasn’t a religious experience by any means), reincarnation seemed a bit of a stretch to me, and I was quite attached to my worldly things and couldn’t quite figure how they were causing any suffering.

That was where it hit me — I was not suffering. I mean, no more than any other 18 – 19 year old American girl. Sure I had uncertainty about life, and living, and how to keep those mean boys from breaking my heart too many times. I asked myself, “Would religion – any religion – actually alleviate any of the things I perceive to be stresses in my life?” The resounding answer was no. I was the only being who had any control or reign over my own happiness. Even though I’d never really professed an undying belief in any religion, this epiphany was astounding to me. Religion was simply a crutch that people leaned on to deal with life, and historically a way for the masses to be controlled. There was no fulfillment to be gained by praying, meditating, or burning incense on an altar. I made my own fulfillment.

For many years I clung to agnosticism, unable to define any exact belief or truth in terms of spirituality or religion, but unwilling to flat out not believe in any greater force. I was the epitome of the pragmatic agnostic — didn’t know if there was a god (or goddess, or whatever) or not, but it really didn’t matter either way to me. As I’ve grown older though, I have had to admit to myself that I am indeed, an atheist. I see no proof of any higher being controlling or guiding the universe. We are to make our own paths in the world with what we’ve got. I am moral or immoral because of the choices that I make and how they affect other people, not because someone else tells me I have to be. If I wrong someone, I feel appropriate guilt for that wrong simply because I have caused someone else grief and I try not to repeat that pattern. When I do good things it’s because it brings me joy or to bring joy to someone else, not because some being is telling me to.

My MaMaw and PaPaw both passed away not knowing exactly what I believed — I never saw any reason to really talk to them about it in detail, and it would only cause MaMaw to worry needlessly. My father and I long ago decided to agree to disagree in a sense, and we just don’t really talk about beliefs. My mother is fully supportive, proud that when given my own choices to make in the world I thought about them and rationally came to more or less the same realization that she did. (Though she still clings to some of the hope of something more, where I’ve mostly just shrugged that off as a weakness that I don’t share.) So I’ve been quite fortunate to not have to go through a “coming out” process with my family, and I don’t really talk about religion except with my closest friends. Of course, these are the people I went to see Religulous with, so that’s not really an issue either.

I’m not particularly outspoken about being atheist in most places, unless you count listing it in my Facebook profile or the red A on my MySpace page. (Which only served to convince me that NO ONE actually looks at your profiles — many of my long time friends from my childhood are fundies. They’d probably be appalled to discover I’m an atheist, but it’s been there all along…) I will be far more outspoken here — but the cloak of anonymity makes me a lot bolder about that at the moment. I’m not afraid of people finding out so much as I tire of THE conversation that happens every time someone who was previously not clued in discovers the fact that I do not believe in their god. The last one of those ended up with a person I’d been getting on well with previously declaring that she “felt very sorry for me.” She and I are still acquaintances, but something has changed in the way she speaks to me now. (And she’s not even a particularly religious person!)

I think part of the reason I feel drawn back to blogging is to be able to share my thoughts on the topic with more than just a few people in my life without feeling like a pariah.

In what might seem to be a pattern forming (blog a couple of years, take four years off) – I find myself drawn to blogging again. Why exactly, I can’t really say. I just need a new outlet I think. My job is something I cannot talk about publicly, so I have to forgo the amusing anecdotes of idiocy I encounter there, and I don’t know that I have a fresh voice or new idea to add to the world. But that urge to write — that demon that plagues me occasionally — is growing strong and so I’m finally making use of the WordPress.com account that I started just to get an API key for Akismet many a year ago. This time I intend to move a little more anonymously through the blogging world, but I will still be me, warts and all.

Wonder where it will take me now?