I'm wondering, Gaz, if you wouldn't mind commenting on my particular case.
Homosexuality isn't my personal choice; it's never been a temptation for me. It's never been a "sin" I've indulged in. I didn't "decide" to be straight, I just am. However, homosexuality doesn't seem to be that big of a sin to me. What is it really? You're sharing your body with a person of one sex instead of another. Doesn't seem like that big of a deal...
No...I think I am guilty of something far, FAR worse than homosexuality, and I think you'll agree.
I don't believe there's a God, Gaz. That's my sin. What's more, I left the Mormon church over it. So that makes me an atheist AND an apostate.
Shouldn't I suffer blood atonement? Instead of the paltry teeny tiny sin of being attracted to someone with the same sexual hardware,
I deny there is a God and I deny that Mormonism is true. In fact, I defy God to strike me dead right here at my keyboard, if he's actually there, and a Mormon.
...Nope. I'm still here. Hmm.
Atheism seems like a far more egregious sin than people of the same sex having physical contact. Would you like to see me dead, Gaz? Would you like to see pools of my blood soak into the ground of a freshly-dug grave? Would you like to use the knife on me yourself?
If blood atonement returns, people like you will be asked to do the killing, won't they?
Before you spill my blood, Gaz, I'd like to tell you a bit about myself.
I'm 37 years old. I'm female. I have long, curly blond hair. It didn't used to be curly, actually. It was straight forever, but just sort of started getting wavy in the last few years, and now it looks like Daryl Hannah's hair from that movie when she was a mermaid. It's actually all the way down to my butt. It's pretty long. And I have blue eyes. Not a really luminous blue; more of a clear-water kind of blue. Sometimes, depending on what I wear, they can look a little green, too. I guess you could say, I'm kind of cute. That kind of thing seems to be in the eye of the beholder, though. Maybe you'd think I was cute, maybe you wouldn't. Physical appearance seems secondary, at least to me, to what exists
inside of a person, so I should tell you about that. I think it's more important.
I love to read. I have SO many books. I love ideas, and I love learning about how the world and everything in it works. Sometimes, I think I can't get enough of learning. If there was a heaven, and I don't believe there is, I would wish it looked like the reading room in the British Museum. Have you ever seen that? I've been there, and it looks like heaven to me. :) It's perfectly round, and lined with bookshelves, several stories high. And it's peaceful and quiet -- but with the noise of pages being turned very softly.
Outside of the reading room, you hear the bustle of people visiting the museum. But inside, it's like heaven.
I love thunderstorms. I think I prefer them to a sunny day. The sky becomes such a beautiful range of blues and grays all boiling together. And I love horses. I've ridden them my whole life. I was raised on a ranch in Arizona. It's beautiful there, after it rains. The water gets soaked into the ground, and the wildflowers explode suddenly, and the world is full of color all at once, and the air is full of perfume. I haven't been back there in such a long time. I miss it. If you kill me, Gaz, I won't have a chance to go back and see the wildflowers again.
I have a little boy. He's growing up, and I can already see the kind of person he is going to be. I've tried so hard to be a good mother to him, and I am so proud of who he is. His teachers tell me, when they have two unruly students, they have my son sit in between them, as a good example. They say, if he plays with two kids who were fighting previously, everyone seems to get along. He brings that kind of peaceful energy with him wherever he goes. He makes people happy. He is going to be a good man. I hope I get to see him become the person he will be.
Because I don't believe in God, I have to believe in the very best of what humans are capable of right here, right now. I believe that love is sacred. I believe it is holy. I believe when two people love each other, they can make a world all for themselves. It shuts out all the things that diminish, and take away hope, and give us fear. I believe that love is a place where you can find redemption, and safety, and where you can go when this big frightening world gets to be too much.
There is so much more I could say. I don't know if I've said enough. OH! I taught my cat to sit up! Can you believe that? She’ll sit up on her hind legs for a treat, kind of like a mongoose or something. Do you have any idea how hard it is to train a cat to do that? lol If you kill me, Gaz, there will be no one around to reinforce what she’s learned, and she’s going to forget that trick. She’s not very smart.
Have I become a person to you, Gaz? Am I something more than just a
thing, a thing to be slaughtered over an abstract idea of what is good and what is bad? Should I die for my sin? Do you still want to kill me, and keep me from seeing my son become the amazing man he will be, and keep me from the Arizona wildflowers and the thundering sky, and the books that I love? Would you really do that to me?
I’m a person, not a thing, Gaz. You understand that, right? Holding that knife, forcing me down over an open grave, you’d be killing a person. Are you so confident, so sure in yourself and your beliefs, that you could do that? Are you so convinced that is what God wants, that you could cut my throat and watch me die?