I had the misfortune to endure living in Kansas during my adolescence. The abortion fight was really strong in the anti-choice regard. The state appears to be gently moving toward less religious bullshittery, but my adult niece lost friends in high school when she came out as an atheist.
TLDR: don’t be a free-thinking teenager in Kansas.
The abortion fight was really strong in the anti-choice regard.
The thing is they put this to the vote almost two years ago and Kansans pretty heartily beat it down (59% voted to leave our abortion laws alone). Then they go and do this anyway because they want to.
I wouldn’t say she lost any “friends” in high school.
I think the TLDR is a little misleading as well. Encourage EVERYONE to think for their selves, no matter the location.
I wouldn’t say she lost any “friends” in high school.
People you spent your teenage years doing kid-stuff with who suddenly get really weird around you, as though you’re some kind of alien, because you’ve been outed as a heretic… its jarring. For you and for them (typically this shit comes from their parents first and involves a lot of screaming and crying).
I watched my younger sister’s friend group crack in half their junior year, because it just kinda clicked in someone’s head that “Oh shit, I’ve been hanging out with Muslims this whole time and that’s why they won’t come to church with me”. Half the group tried to “save” the other half, tensions got really heated, and they fell apart.
My best friend from high school stopped talking to me before the pandemic, at ~32 years old. We always were different sides of the aisle but always reconciled at “the system is busted and corrupt.”
Lo and behold, he starts a real estate company piggy backing off his dads construction company money and connections, the system suddenly isn’t busted or corrupt anymore - and now I’m a commie for utilizing the VA health care promised to me in the contract I signed with the government.
Why you wouldn’t read my TLDR as sarcasm is beyond me. But it’s written, not said, and these misinterpretations happen.
All I said is it is misleading. Your points don’t lead to the same conclusion the TLDR does.
but my adult niece lost friends in high school when she came out as an atheist.
The idea that atheism is so abnormal and despised that coming out as an atheist is a thing, is so foreign to me. The world is a weird place. And yeah I know that historically that was the norm, but still.
TLDR: don’t be a free-thinking teenager in Kansas.
Grew up in a Texas suburb where not being staunchly Christian was a huge problem. But as the neighborhood filled out with East Asian immigrants, it grew more liberal by degrees simply because everyone wasn’t going to the same three fucking churches.
The high school I went to that had big student-led church services in the cafeteria in the mid-90s just kinda… stopped doing that by the time I graduated because it was weird and none of the new kids were into it.
Then 9/11 happened and there was a huge backswing. But it was less “be religious” and more “be into country music and hating Muslims”. And then a bunch of pasty white ROTC kids went off to Afghanistan/Iraq to get their shit kicked in for years, while more East Asian Muslims moved into the neighborhood.
Now the city council is halfway to a Rainbow Coalition (of Republican-aligned real estate agents) and you’d never even know it was Tom DeLay’s home base 30 years ago.
