Responding to the Responses.....

Responding to Responses from ‘Open Letter to Christian Homeschool Groups’

While not my most popular blog post, ‘An Open Letter to Christian Homeschool Groups’ garnered the most comments of any blog post I have written, both on the blog and on my facebook page.  The vast majority of the comments were positive or neutral.  I did however receive a few responses, a couple via private message, that are now fodder for another blog post.

1)  In defense of Christians, they homeschool because of their religion – they want to be separate from the secular world (and people) otherwise they would send their children to public school.  That is why they don’t allow non-Christians into their homeschooling groups.

I originally had a long response to this.  After careful thought however, I only have this to say:  That’s not what it means to be a Christian, as I understood it when I was a Christian; but that is the way to be a bigot.  It is one thing to avoid having your children taught evolution in public school or that there is no God.  It is an entirely different thing to avoid having your children meet, talk with, and learn to deal with people who believe differently than they (or you) do.

2)  Secular groups can be as judgmental and unwelcoming as Christian groups.

This is the harder point, because it is true and so sad.  The bottom line is that people are difficult.  Yes, all of us.  Women can be especially catty and mean – we should have been forced to play team sports in school where we would have learned that you don’t have to like a person to work with them and get the job done.

I say shame on the Secular groups who are judgmental and sanctimonious with their beliefs for they are acting just like the religious groups they bitch about.  I’ve been informed that there are secular groups who judge you based on what curriculum you use, whether you breastfed, buy organic, and all other sorts of nonsense.  Yes, nonsense.  When will we wake up and realize that we are not the brand we wear, the products we buy, or even the choices we made.  Good people can make bad choices.  More importantly good people make different choices that mine or yours and that should be fine!  Women need to get the hell over themselves.  Stop feeling so insecure and shaky inside about who you are that you need to nit-pick and judge every other woman’s choices.

We want to feel secure that our choices are the right choices.  We look outside ourselves for that security.  Meeting people who made the same choices we made makes us feel good, right, and secure.  Meeting people who made different choices than we did makes us uncomfortable, scared, and insecure.  Now whose fault is that?  It certainly isn’t the other person for making a different choice from ours.

Hating anyone for a difference is the worst thing any human being can do.  There isn’t a ‘right’ side in hate.  It is hate and hate begins with judgment.  It is our ego that is controlling our minds allowing us to build a case of ‘differences’ against another person so we can feel better about ourselves and so we can feel justified for shunning them, or worse.  So, to any secular homeschooling group that is unwelcoming of homeschoolers whose choice of how they school, what they use to school, how they dress, what they feed their children, what charities they donate to, what their political position is, etc…is different than theirs I say the same thing:  Shame on you!  We are all homeschoolers and the world our children will enter one day will be filled with DIFFERENCES.   

We all have two, and only two, choices.  Either we teach our children to work with and respect differences or teach them to be bigoted asstwats.

3)  I don’t take anything you say seriously.  *Your just an idiot with a blog.

*The grammatical error was theirs, not mine.

Yeah, uh…this one I don’t really have a response except to ask, “Why do you read my blog then?”  Of course, I suppose I could take the low ground and respond with, “And clearly you’re just an idiot with internet,” but that would be inappropriate.

~Mari B.