religion stuff and also discourse:

listen. I am a gay married Catholic. you can shit on my ships and my favorite characters all you want, I will just block you and not make a big deal of it, because I don't care about your small and disappointing life.

however,

(religion cont'd) if you bring ideas about God and forgiveness into it, even as a joke, I'm going to be so wildly unimpressed with you that I have to make a scene.

do you know why I care about villains and grey morality and angst and pain so much?

(religion cont'd) it's because I live out a religion whose central tenets include that suffering is meaningful, that love is the greatest human power, and that forgiveness borne out of love is a fundamentally radical and necessary act

(religion cont'd) and I also love villains because: no matter how much joy and meaning and connection that religion brings to my life, I will always, ALWAYS be a villain in the story of maybe 60-70% of my co-religionists in my home country

(religion cont'd) because no matter how many of the rules I do follow, I'm still a queer who got civilly same-sex married. and that's enough. gay shit is simply the worst thing you can do, for a lot of American Catholics, so I'm a villain in their internal narrative of the church

(religion cont'd) so I just think you should be aware that I don't care if you forgive me for sympathizing with villains in fiction. I also don't care if my fellow American Catholics forgive me for being queer. it genuinely doesn't matter!

(religion cont'd) my choices, and my capacity for love and forgiveness, are between me and God. literally no one can change that, no matter how disgusting they think me and my choices are.

(religion cont'd) this is not an opinion. this is a fact I have learned, as a queer Catholic, about how the world works: other people's opinions simply cannot alter my relationship with God

(religion cont'd) AND ANOTHER THING.

as a Catholic, I believe we have a fundamental moral obligation to treat everyone, even the most horrifying criminals, with basic kindness, out of respect for their inherent human dignity

(religion cont'd) this is why, for example, we believe both that murder is wrong and that the death penalty for murder is morally repugnant

(religion cont'd) as always, kindness isn't the same as niceness and it's not the same as enabling. but it does mean acknowledging basic, inherent human dignity and behaving accordingly. which is pretty much the most fundamental basis of morality you can have

(religion cont'd) so if "fiction affects reality," and antis can't even do that about fictional characters, what the fuck is happening to the foundation of their moral behavior in real life?

(religion cont'd) anyway, I'll stop now. I'm gonna go to livestreamed mass with my gay wife, because another part of basing your moral approach in the inherent dignity of human life is refusing to recklessly endangering lives during a pandemic

(religion cont'd) and I will persist, today and all days, both in my relationship with God and my love for fictional villains, and there is nothing that you, an internet stranger, can do about it