Me Against My Mother.

I need to vent a little...

Last night I watched Rent: Filmed Live On Broadway. Big deal, right? That's like a weekly ritual. But no, the point is, I made my mom watch it with me and my youngest sister, Halie, who knows lots of the songs just because I am always singing them and I force her to duet with me! =)

So there we are watching RENT. I wanted my mom to watch it with me because I wanted her to see how beautiful the story is. I wanted her to feel the same things that I feel when I watch it. I wanted her to open her mind a little bit to some of the things that she is so blocked off to accepting. I wanted her to just, like it. This did not happen. I guess I was asking a littl too much of a 50 year old woman who grew up in the "Bible Belt". A woman who still has racist tendencies and a woman who still thinks that the term "make-out" means having sex. But I still don't understand her.

We were not too far into it when she made her first snide remark. "You Okay Honey" had started and Collins says the line "Angel indeed" and my mother kind of glance over at me and says "Sick." This is when I knew that she had basically already shut down to the point of the show. She had already become bored with it I guess because after the first big musical number, which is "Rent" she looked at me and asked, "Is it over?" ::siiiiighs from me:::

The show preogresses and I notice that she doesn't really laugh at many of the places that most people laugh. Especially if Collins and Angel are involved, or later Joanne and Maureen.
She says this at one point "He sings really good." (Speaking of Will Chase who plays Roger), and she asked once "Where's Maureen?" (Because "Tango Maureen" was over and she was confused as to the whereabouts of the elusive Maureen). She did chuckle here and there and comment on how skinny the girl who played Mimi was but she just wasn't reacting the way I had hoped she would. :::more siiiiighs from me:::

Time goes by and here comes intermission, I brace myself for her opinions and boy do I get them. She starts spatting off stuff about how I'm "one of those people who thinks this stuff is okay", and "This play stands for everything bad in the world". Stupid pointless comments like that piss me off, yes, but they don't make me want to jump out of my seat and slap some sense into my mom, however these types of comments do... She started trying to bring up the bible and say how wrong homosexuality is. I mentioned something about the line "Let he among us without sin be the first to condemn" and she tried to turn it around and make sense out of saying something about that being directed toward me. I was trying to tell her that she sins and she simply cannot cast stones at a person for being gay without being judged by God in the same way. "NOOOOOO" she says. "How so?" I ask. She doesn't have much of an intelligent response. But then this happens. "It's a story about love and survival, Mom. It's not just about being gay. And besides gy people are still human beings". "Oh no they aren't" is her response.

That shocked me and mase my blood boil. It also made me almost want to laugh because we had a similar discussion a few days earlier and she said the opposite. She continued on with her rant by saying "They aren't human, they're 'Gays' ". THEY'RE GAYS! What the hell does that mean?!?! Oh my goodness. I still do not even know how to respond to that. Ugh.
So then she starts talking about the story of Soddom and Gamorrah. Oh boy. Biblical references. She brings this story up, just like every other conservative in the world, whenever homsexuality is mentioned. "Well God destroyed that whole city cause they were gay" she says. I tell her no he didn't. She tries to tell me how dumb I am and that I know nothing about the bible. I say the same back to her. The story of Soddom and Gamorrah can be interpreted in two different ways by a conservative Christian. The first way is of course in the "sexual" way, which is the most popular. The thing tha bothers me about this being used as an argument against homosexuality is the simple fact that, if in fact sexual sins is why God decided to destroy the city, it was not just because of homosexual sex. People were having sex with strangers, with other peoples husbands and wives, premaritally, bestality is mentioned. So why oh why don't people use this stroy everyday as a way to condemn people for having affairs or for having sex before marriage? Why is it that this story is only used to condemn homosexuality? My mother even tried to say ( which was just the frantic ramblings of a bible belt child) that the Bible only condemns homosexuality and that it doesn't mention premarital sex, or even lying. :::many more siiiiighs from me:::

Surprisingly my mother did sit and watched the entire show. Afterward my sister, Kacie, asked her if her opened her mind at all to how she thought about gay people. She shook her head no and said a few more offensive things. I imagine that she is still in her room right now seething over the thought of Angel and Collins being in love and (oh my gosh) kissing!

It baffles me beyond belief how I could have been raised by this woman but havve such opposite views on things. I just feel like I need to get away from this state and away from all the people who still think that the words "They're Gays!" is acceptable, because they simply are not. I sin every single day of my life. I've had premarital sex. I've been drunk., Done drugs. Broke the 10 commandments. I'm a bad person by nature but people don't say to me that I am not a human because of it. I'm still considered a person and still allowed to call myself a believer.

This is all I am saying. I simply cannot sit here and say with all my heart and with all of my soul that a homosexual person will for 100% no matter what go to hell when he or she dies. That is between God and that person. I can't judge anyone for the sins they have committed in their lives when I am still dealing with the sins in my own life. This is what I wish Christians would understand.

I wanted to spend an evening sharing a very important part of my life with my mom and make her see what I want to do with my life. This ended up being a mistake. She only viewed RENT as another way to tell me how wrong my life is. We even ended up,yet again, discussing the fact that I do not want to have children. She says that the one and only reason God put us on this earth is so that MAN and WOMAN can hook up and have have kids. Yeah. Right. If that was the only thing God wanted me to do with my life then shit, I would have plenty of children by now. God put us on this earth for His own special reason and gives all of us our own special purpose. It is our job to figure out what that purpose is. No matter how big or how small.

So, in closing I would like to say "VIVA LA VIE BOHEME!!!"

I love my RENT and will never stop.