Opinion of this quote

[BaconBacon96]

WTF is this

[they don't love you like i love you]

Now that I've actually read the exchange:

train: I think your views here are actually pretty mainstream and basically the rule in our age bracket. Like how many people from your high school still live in your home town? Yeah there's no doubt some, but it's certainly nowhere near as much as would be expected in past times.

Madeline: I think "tragic" is a bit too strong to describe someone identifying with some affiliation that isn't typical for their ethnic background. At best I'd say "unfortunate" and even then only in the same sort of context as that it's unfortunate that people need to leave dying Rust Belt towns for big cities with better economies: the state of the Rust Belt towns certainly is, but the moving isn't. Also the only Thatcher quote I'm familiar with is the stupid one about "the problem with socialism"

[traininthedistance]

Now that I've actually read the exchange:

train: I think your views here are actually pretty mainstream and basically the rule in our age bracket. Like how many people from your high school still live in your home town? Yeah there's no doubt some, but it's certainly nowhere near as much as would be expected in past times.

Madeline: I think "tragic" is a bit too strong to describe someone identifying with some affiliation that isn't typical for their ethnic background. At best I'd say "unfortunate" and even then only in the same sort of context as that it's unfortunate that people need to leave dying Rust Belt towns for big cities with better economies: the state of the Rust Belt towns certainly is, but the moving isn't. Also the only Thatcher quote I'm familiar with is the stupid one about "the problem with socialism"

I assume Maddy's talking about the one that oakvale cited not too long ago, about there being "no such thing as Society" or something like that.  It's a quote that I think goes entirely too far and has dangerous implications to say the least, but I do think that society should be structured to serve people rather than the other way around.  I'm sure there are some more traditionalist-minded folks who would blanch at that formulation.

I don't think that leaving one's hometown and home community (and, sometimes, home religion) should need to be thought of as "tragic", btw.  Is it a decision one should make lightly?  No. It comes with real costs; I think few people would deny that.  But it's very often necessary, often enough that it ought to be thought of as functionally normal, and not stigmatized in any way.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Maybe I just have a low bar for what constitutes 'tragedy', because there are a lot of things about life that I interpret through a tragic lens that most people just see as more standard-issue misfortune or difficulty. It was in any case not really the act of separating oneself that I was saying was 'tragic' so much as the impossibility of really restoring that rift once it's been made, especially for people who may not be the one who initially made that choice. (I recognize that this is perhaps an excessively fine distinction to make, and there isn't really any conceivable alternative to this that would be less tragic, but, again, tragic is how I see a lot of life anyway.)

[afleitch]

Maybe I just have a low bar for what constitutes 'tragedy', because there are a lot of things about life that I interpret through a tragic lens that most people just see as more standard-issue misfortune or difficulty. It was in any case not really the act of separating oneself that I was saying was 'tragic' so much as the impossibility of really restoring that rift once it's been made, especially for people who may not be the one who initially made that choice. (I recognize that this is perhaps an excessively fine distinction to make, and there isn't really any conceivable alternative to this that would be less tragic, but, again, tragic is how I see a lot of life anyway.)

Just to comment on this (even though it's a few days late; I've been entertaining my mother in law) I note you mention your desire to 'connect' or at least have some pinhole of light from an ancestral faith cast a little, even if queerness (which Catholicism doesn't and won't understand) ties you to I presume high church Episcopalianism rather than Catholicism.

What's interesting is that you say that you have an Italian-American background as a point of reference to you and presumably as a reference to Catholicism. But you aren't Italian. If that makes sense. Your family moved to America. You are part of an American story. As sloppy as BRTD's quote is (and indicative as to why American brand Christianity needs to be fed rat poison), as a result of that Catholicism is not your inheritance in the way that perhaps it would be if your family had never left. It's not against the grain to retain a family faith through generations despite moving to America, but to feel bound to reaffirm that out of a need to identify a part yourself is...interesting. It's in danger of being a facsimile.

You are not (and I know you know this) the end product of your family story. You should not feel dis-serviced by the decisions that people that came before you have made. You may have children of your own and there is no guarantee that they would have any care for what you have re-instated in your family. Nor should anyone expect their children to do as they do, yet ironically Catholicism even in it's weakest cultural state, is laced with that expectation. And of course there is no guarantee that in being queer, the Church would positively affirm whatever family you may have.

Which, harking back to trains post, confirms that in many ways it's a futile exercise.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

I'm aware of all that. In some ways it's a more personally insurmountable impediment to bothering to attempt that return than the queerness is. Grudging toleration from a particularly accepting local congregation (as opposed to wholehearted acceptance from the Church at large) would be...not enough, obviously, but a situation I'd probably be able to put up with if I had to; the sense of the futility of attempting to restore what's been lost in an American cultural context is a lot harder to get past. So high Anglicanism is an easier situation in both of those respects, but I don't see that as a good thing or the way I'd ideally like things to be.

[patrick1]

BRTD, maybe it {the pic} has to do with putrid consumerism and the classic American habit of turning everything into a commodity. You are being market researched and swallowing the whole ad campaign.  Usually it is just your money they are after but this lot wants your soul too.
Your attitude is just so foreign to me- everything seems to revolve around you and your experience. Maybe also because everything sacred has been stripped out and replaced with performance pieces.

[they don't love you like i love you]

If there's ever a "free market" for something, this sort of "marketing" will happen. And in the US NOT having a "free market" is impossible, not to mention it'd be blatantly unconstitutional to imagine such a scenario. Plus is this a situation anyone thinks is ideal? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lina_Joy

So since it's pretty clear that no one in the US is going to ever propose banning conversion like in Malaysia or like some BJP state governments in India, and that such a law would be one of the most blatantly unconstitutional things ever (not just in the US but in essentially all Western democracies), it seems kind of weird to take an anti-US attitude in this context. What exactly would be the ideal scenario then? If the answer is setting up a sort of societal attitude and expectation that no one convert from whatever they were born into, I think it goes without saying that would be a pretty horrifying and repressive type of attitude and society, even if not enforced by law.

And furthermore, what type of attitude do you expects the emergent crowd to take? Of course they're going to aim at conversion and bringing people in, that's the only way something that new can survive and grow. What do you propose the emergent churches do instead?