Yesterday morning, I checked my Facebook feed and found this right at the top:

“Great,” I thought. “I’m sure I’m the ‘certain people.’ What sort of anti-gay misinformation is she posting now?”

Let me back up a bit. Brittany is my cousin. She’s a year younger than I am. We have a very long, very tense history. I was never particularly fond of her, and admonished throughout my life to remember that “she’s family and will always love you no matter what.” Those words became more and more hollow as time went by and I could never seem to find common ground with her, or ways to feel more positive towards her. It didn’t help when she and her mother found religion, which increased the tension between them and my atheist mother and agnostic pagan self. I decided to educate myself about what their church at the time taught about different issues, and specifically went looking for what they preached in regards to homosexuality. What I found wasn’t exactly heartening, nor was finding out for certain that Brittany agreed with the church’s teachings. To make a long story short, it’s been a point of contention ever since.  (more…)