I was born into a very conservative family headed by a jaded conservative patriarch in the buckle of the Bible Belt. My being a Christian was a foregone conclusion. We were a church of christ family, and a very traditional one to boot. Every other denomination was wrong, and they were all going to hell. Having this view hammered into my head, along with conservative.. er... RIGHT-WING politics as well, it was only natural that the child I was should follow their examples. I always had to struggle a little more with it than others, but I followed both the politics and theology well. When I was in 7th Grade, that all started to change.

I was going to public school, and my dad came home and caught me listening to Coolio. He freaked. It was what he called "Ni**er music". So he pulled me out of public school at sent me to a baptist school in the nearby town. By this time, I was struggling with my sexuality, but I kept that suppressed for a few more years. These next two years at the baptist school would first make a baptist out of me and then an atheist. I tried to fit in, but was never 'good enough'. I listened to Metallica, Kiss, Korn and the like. This was deemed to be "satanic". Add to that the fact that I had begun to support reproductive freedoms for women and the abolition of the death penalty, and I became a pariah. Not only would people insult me and avoid me, but they would actively try to get me in trouble. Someone desecrated the bathroom and blamed it on me. They suspended me. In class, even the teachers would give me shit. I wondered how the childern of a supposedly loving god could do this. I began to read the bible for myself -- and what I discovered shocked me.

There are too many examples of Yahweh's barbarism and brutality to mention in the old testament. But revelation.... Revelation depicted a catastrophic destruction of all human life perpetrated by our 'loving' creator, just to prove a point. Worse still, the vast majority were to be cast eternally into a burning pit of torture. This is certainly a contradiction in action for a loving deity. And a certain part of my identity -- my homosexuality -- was considered punishable by death. All of this together prompted me to leave the faith. I suffered from guilt and fear of hell for some years afterward. You must understand that deconversion is a process: It takes time to un-learn all the superstitious nonsense religion drills into you.

In recent times however, I have been doing well. I have completely let go, and now all religion seems so silly to me. Especially as one who follows Science and History closely. I also found that I became the political opposite of my family -- a staunch Marxist. My journey has been long, and I have lost many friends because of it. But I would not change it for the world.

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