My oldest friend no longer speaks to me.

[Are_grits_groceries]

She is Catholic which was neither here nor there for me. I have been to Mass with her. However, over the last few years she has become more vocal and has seemed to be taking the Vatican's edicts rather fiercely. Maybe she was always very strict about her views, and I had no clue.

Something came up in a seemingly innocuous conversation about Africa and AIDS. Condoms were mentioned and she went off. I mean she was ranting and off the charts. She said they weren't foolproof. I said nothing was, and she was off again about abstinence only. I was speechless which occurs rarely.

I put my head down and listened to the screed coming over the phone. As I was listening, I was thinking that she teaches health to 7th graders. While abstinence is stressed, contraception is taught. After she wound down, I stepped in where angels fear to even use a GPS for a location.

I asked her if abstinence was the only concept she taught in her health classes. She said yes. I then told her that this was not only a matter of unwanted pregnancies and possible abortions, it was a matter of life and death. STDs cannot be overlooked and by only talking about abstinence she knew those kids might find themselves with a deadly disease. Off she went again.

I told her that she should let someone else teach that section if her beliefs didn't permit it, but that the school wasn't an arm of the Catholic church nor any other faith. Off she went again, and then she slammed the phone down.

She has since taken a non-teaching job so I was spared reporting her to the AUTHORITIES. I would have done it as bad as I would have felt.

So one down and no more to go. I have such a way with people. *sigh*

[saigon68]

1. I wonder what she would say about this?

[potone]

2. That is a sad story.

It is always hard to lose a close friend. You have my sympathy.

[monmouth]

3. At one time my e-mail address list was quite lengthy, including friends

from school and relatives. Down to under ten now. I don't miss them and am relieved I don't have to read their vitriol. Mostly Catholics also. One time a discussion came up about the DaVinci Code movie and one of the uncles told me "his priest wouldn't allow him or others to view it." That was enough for me...LOL.

[RKP5637]

4. Often supposed friends are not what they might seem IMO, no matter how many years. n/t

[Fumesucker]

5. I'm sorry for your loss..

I know what you mean about no more to go, it seems that there are a great many people who simply cannot accept the slightest disagreement with their views on certain subjects.

But I think you have many friends here on DU, I know I value your posts and find you almost always interesting (and I love your handle).

:hug:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

Loss? Algebra, man, algebra. Subtracting a negative is the same as adding a positive! -nt

[ThomWV]

6. I had just about the same thing happen about 4 years ago

Well, just the opposite thing actually, it was me who broke first and hung up the phone. I've never talked to the guy since - and won't.

I do not know what happened to the guy, he just went nuts. In his case the subject(s) were/was different - it wasn't just one thing. What hurt so badly was that this was the guy I used to trust to be able to put things into perspective, to bring a coherent narrative to a subject, but it just wen't Poof, and was gone. It was odd, and I suspect years of alcohol probably played a big part in it, that his thinking just became incoherent. And he became offensive too, I mean personally offensive with attacks against points where were never made using facts which did not support his position or were in fact mere fictions. It was as if the boy just went plum crazy. By the way, this happened over the course of about a year - the going nuts part. Like I said, I think alcohol had a lot to do with it. Still, no one ever said anything while drunk that wasn't in their head when they were sober and his narrative knew no distinction.

[kywildcat]

7. It's hard-you have my sympathy.

One uncle and aunt swear the priest abuse allegations are a plot by the jews to discredit the church. Another uncle refused to allow his daughter to get a divorce after her husband beat her severely. When confronted with this craziness-it makes one queasy.

[truedelphi]

23. This topic reminds me of why I left this Church so

Many years ago.

The war in Vietnam was okay, but the rule of the day was: don't have sex with your boyfriend until you are married.

Bill Maher covered this once as well: "I realized that I was about to go out and do "heavy petting' with my girlfriend, and if I did I could end up condemned to hell, or I could go out and kill eight or ten people randomly, and for that I would go to hell."

A whole lot of the teachings just don't pass muster.

[rox63]

8. I had a similar loss of an old friend several years ago

Only this friend went the evangelical-fundie route after she married a fundie. She and her hubby were constantly trying to save me from the "fires of hell". Eventually I decided I'd had enough, and I broke things off.

[CrispyQ]

11. I, too, lost a friend who went fundie after marrying one.

Prior to marriage, she was a kind hearted, open minded, Christian woman. She married a zealot of the worst kind. He claims to worship God, but money is really all that matters to him - that & his hate & bigotry. They had a very difficult time getting pregnant & one day when I asked her if they would consider adoption she replied, "Oh never! We might get a homosexual child!" I never contacted her again.

To the OP, there is nothing you can say that will break through that kind of close mindedness. Your friend will have to experience something profound on a personal level to change her world perspective.

[Ikonoklast]

14. Like a child they conceived might not be gay.

I guess in their world a gay person has never been born to a heterosexual christian married couple.

[Berry Cool]

9. I'm really sorry about this.

Look at it this way: maybe you hastened her decision to take a non-teaching job? Maybe she finally realized she didn't belong in a classroom teaching kids about sex if she felt unable to do anything but tell them what her church taught?

In any case, a lot of kids have been spared hearing only a narrow view of sex education.

[izquierdista]

10. Mental illness

It's not just about schizophrenia, depression, and chemical dependency. It's also about getting swallowed whole by some fantasy-based worldview. It could be politics or religion or some other mindset, but if it discards facts in favor of some dogma, soon it can become a mental illness. Some people live with chronic mental illness like they do with a bum knee or a nagging cough -- complain a lot, but don't ever seek help to fix it.

[Dappleganger]

12. I am sorry...

but I would suggest that she was not a REAL friend from the beginning. I hope that you're able to find some new, real friends to replace her and soon.

[Leftist Agitator]

13. Call her up and mock her idiotic beliefs.

Ridicule and violence are the only things people like her understand.

[FourScore]

15. I have a close friend who is a born again Christian.

It is a two-edged sword because I really do believe that her faith has saved her life. She works in the music industry and was partying constantly on a very dangerous level. She has stopped all of that. For that I am grateful.

But she has turned into a dogmatic, judgmental, intolerant, ranting person. I can barely stand to be around her. Recently, she grabbed a GQ magazine off of a grocery check-out stand, went over to the manager and read him the riot act for displaying promiscuous material. It was nuts.

I am glad to hear your friend is no longer teaching. But I understand your pain so well. I have had that same phone conversation of sitting silently, staring at a spot on the floor while my friend goes off. I still love her, but sometimes it's hard.

:hug:

[Raineyb]

18. It sounds like your friend traded one drug for another. Only the new drug is called religion.

:shrug:

[FourScore]

19. Pretty much.

[Lorien]

20. Your friend sounds just like my mother, who was once quite the "party girl" and a hardcore

left wing atheist. Now she rants and raves like any new convert/ zealot. She's a missionary in China whose dream is to covert a billion Chinese and have them all move to America where they can have as many Christian children as they want. And to think that she was once a ZPG environmentalist! The born agains lose all grasp of reality, but there's really nothing that we can do about it.

[Skittles]

25. you know what they say about born-again Christians

they're an even bigger pain in the ass the second time around

[Kievan Rus]

16. I went through the same thing...I also told a right-wing friend off

Circumstances kind of different, however. She was a hardcore, greedy materialist, not so much a social conservative.

[treestar]

17. I've seen that - people who positively were happy about AIDS

because they thought it would scare everyone into their version of sexual morality. Being sure that God is on their side to begin with, they saw it as proof of that - God supplying physical means to enforce their morality.

[Donnachaidh]

21. These abstinence only people make me fucking SICK

They deserve to be reported and complained about.

My oldest friend contracted aids way back in the early days, from a blood transfusion, and lived for several years after being diagnosed. But the end came swift and painfully, not only for her, but for her family (and mine). We especially had to keep from going apeshit on at least one neighbor who knew how my friend contracted it, but decided she could spread a rumor about maybe perhaps she got it somewhere else -- like drugs, etc. This from a woman that started that evil fucking story in her CHURCH.

I cannot tell you how close I came to wrapping my hands around her throat and squeezing -- just for the added pain she dealt to a family watching their mother die in stages. The only thing that kept me from tearing that bitch apart was the kids. They needed us all, if only to shield them from these bigots.

It's a horrible way to die. And there's no *fix* for it. We have to protect our kids, and if it means getting aggressive to get these jerks out of those teaching jobs -- so be it.

Sex education is NOT a game -- it's NOT Home Ec -- it's IMPORTANT.

[Duppers]

22. I've almost wiped my c'mas card list clean...

and good riddance to the asswipes.

AGG, it will get easier as time passes.




p.s. We DUers love you!

[old mark]

24. I'm sorry you lost your friend, but it seems like she was lost a long time ago

and you just didn't know it.
You were right and brave to say what you said.

There will be other friends.

mark

[raccoon]

26. Good for you--you might have helped some kids there.

Sometimes you just come to a parting of the ways with someone. :hug: