Things That Scare Fundie Parents

[Ahh!]

Post things that scare your fundie parents.

 

I always find it funny that my mother never went to church but she seemed to still get caught in every moral panic possible.

 

* Bujinkan: Japanese martial art; my mother thinks they practice witchcraft because their leader practices Mikkyo Buddhism. (She also is afraid that Morihei Ueshiba, the founder of Aikido, practiced witchcraft because he supposedly spoke to Shinto spirits.)

 

* Snoop Doggy Dogg: Teh Satan incarnate! I don't even listen to his music but my mother goes on these long rants about how he moves children away from Christianity and how there's subliminal messages on his records to smoke weed (???- strangely Bob Marley gets a pass in my house.)

 

* Straight Edge: A subculture in punk rock that advocates abstaining from drugs and being vegan. In middle school, some moron spraypainted straight edge on a bunch of the school buildings and the school declared them a gang. No one knew what Straight Edge really was (I didn't find out until 2 years later) and the rumor mill came up with ridiculous myths including that they were a white supremacist gang, and that they were militant atheists recruiting "the children". I remember my mother telling me to be ready to fight at all times, in case the Straight Edgers attacked me. I LMAO whenever I think about it.

[Ramen666]

I know one just happend last week:

 

We don't go to church really anymore (going on 3 years) and my mom she cusses all the time, she says (fuck this, fuck that, calls my dad son of a bitch whatever the whole smear.) Then my dad got extremly pissed and said " God damn it" and my mom went totally in panic mode and was " How could you?, I can't believe you said that using his name in vain." I just walked away and started laughing because it is just so funny how Christians react to petty things like that.

[Luke Wolf]

I always find it funny that my mother never went to church but she seemed to still get caught in every moral panic possible.

Sounds like my mom.

 

Things that get them going:

 

*Seeing my pentagram necklace. Especially the first time my mom saw it. A large family fued was narrowly avoided over that.

*Seeing several books in my duffle bag that are about various occult subjects, including witchcraft. A large family fued was NOT avoided over that one.

*Anything Heavy Metal, and especially Marilyn Manson.

*Certain names. She forbid from getting the Hellsing anime DVDs just because of the name and cover art.

*Arguing that Bush is a terrible president. And that gays should be able to get married.

*Watching anything with swearing (allthough my moms favorite words are shit and damn) and half naked women. Hell, even the girls on deal or no deal or too scantily clad for her. And late night girls gone wild commercials are too far out there. "Why would you want to watch two girls kiss and make out?" was a question she asked after one of the commercials aired.

*It becoming more and more obvious that I am not a Christian. Both of them keep telling me to believe in the Bible and live by it, but I would rather die than give up my freedoms to an evil God that has a religion based on lies, deciet, and tyranny.

[Toxic]

* Tarot Cards

* copies of the I Ching

* Role playing games like "Dungeons and dragons"

* Industrial music like Rammstein

* Anything vaguely 'New age' like Reiki, NLP, etc

* A copy of "The Occult" by Colin Wilson

[OnceConvinced]

Monty Python - Particularly the movie Life of Bryan (which upset a lot of Christians because they claimed it mocked Jesus, although the main character was Bryan (not Jesus) and the real Jesus actually made a cameo appearance in it (and was talked about by an ex-leper who he had healed)

 

Using God's name in vain, as already mentioned above. There was a TV show in the early 80s in New Zealand, where one of the character's catch phrases was "Geeeeze Wayne!" It was such a popular catch phrase that a lot of people used it back then. But I didn't dare use it, even though I so badly wanted to.

[Robbobrob]

This is where I am very thankful that I did not have a homelife full of this crap. My cousins did, being raised in conservative Catholic households, and at family cookouts I find an undercurrent of intolerance, particularly aimed at one of my cousin's daughters, who is into the whole punk scene.

 

The looks when another cousin's kid wore a pentagram necklace were classic "if looks could kill".

 

The only thing banned from my house growing up was Ozzy, but that only lasted until the Randy tribute album came out, and my mom relented to allow me to buy it (completely for the RR parts, not the animal eating lead singer).

 

And at my recent wedding, no one made a negative comment when God was not mentioned once in our service, and heavy metal music and lyrics were used in several locations throughout the service and reception....even with the most hardcore religious in our families present.

[Ouroboros]

I remember some odd years back when Harry Potter movie (I think it was the Chamber of Secrets) where the Whopping Willow first came into the scene came out. I talked to my mom on the phone and told her we were going to see the movie, and she of course strongly suggested that we shouldn't because of all the witch craft in it, but mostly because there was an evil tree in there that ate people... When I tried to explain to her that we all had read the book already and knew the story and that the tree didn't eat people, she refused to listen to me and maintained her position that the movie was evil. *sigh* It's sad to see your parents so entangled in religion.

[Rhia]

Luckily my mom didn't care about Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or any other books/movies of that genre; but she was very much afraid of my words.

 

I couldn't talk about anything without her thinking that I was going to cover her "peace of the lord" with my "atheist filth".

 

That and she also knew I'm an iconoclast...

[bluewizard]

Me listening to very anti-Christian and Satanic music from bands like Deicide and Dark Funeral.

Me never wanting to ever go to church again and telling them that(they still make me go once a week, very stupid)

Wearing a Morbid Angel hoody with an inverted star and inverted cross wrapped in one symbol(I think it's pretty cool myself)

The fact that I'm the only non-religous person in the whole family at a time when my fmaily seems to be getting more rleigious about Christianity.

[Llwellyn]

I am a Platonist, and my mother cries if I ever mention the name "Apollo" in my religious language. She would probably have a break down if I ever prayed around her in the name of Apollo -- I haven't ever risked it. But somehow she thinks that praying in the name of "Jesus" is completely different.

 

When they visit, I must take down my batik print of the Hindu goddess Kali. If she saw it, she would immediately leave my house. Yet she asks why I don't have Christian artwork in my home.

 

 

She made me get rid of my Nirvana CD's when I was in high school.

 

She says that non-Christians desire to do only wicked things and not good things, and she has lost composure and cried when I disagreed with her.

 

She has a phobia of anything sexual -- if there was kissing in a movie, she would want to fast forward or stop watching. Movies with scenes of exposed breasts would also cause a severe reaction.

[mwc]

My mom sold my KISS records at a garage sale in the '70's.

 

She told me she feels bad about it now.

 

mwc

[NearlyInsane]

Ouiji boards!

[texmex2003]

Get this....I know a fundie mother who refuses to allow her daughter to wear clothing with cherries on it. Her reasoning behind this is the fact that it signifies that you no longer have a "cherry". In her weird mind, if a girl has a cherry any where on her clothing she is no longer a virgin.

[ShackledNoMore]

In addition to many of the things already listed, my mother was violently averse to

 

Ankas

Peace Signs

Horoscopes

Yoga

 

Butt, fart, urine, and poop were more or less regarded as curse words at my house (at least mild ones, all worthy a rebuke, even after I was an adult), although she uses worse. "Jesus!" is using god's name in vain, but the corruption "Jeez!" is acceptable in her book, and she always made use of that form herself.

 

For some mysterious reason, she had a really strong reaction against Harry Potter, stronger than most other fundies, yet "Bewitched" and "I Dream of Jeannie" were perfectly OK. Go figure!

[Luke Wolf]

I forgot about porn. I caught one hellova bitching when my mom found a porn file on my computer. Honestly, it was abit of spyware I hadn't got to deleting yet, which I told her just that (she never did find my real porn files, as they were hidden folders, which lead to a folder maze, and the destination folders were encrypted.). But still, the pissed off, dead serious tone of voice saying stuff like "I do not want that smut in my house." came out, and I would be grounded and my computer taken away if she ever saw any more on it. I was 17 or 18 at the time.

Any games with a chick in them. She stole my friends copy of Resident Evil 2 just because of whoever it was on the cover of the disc. (Been awhile since I played it, so I don't remember for sure who it is.)

Any games that involve shooting humanoids. She stole my copy of Half Life on PS2 for that reason.

She stole my copy of Disturbed's "Down With THe Sickness" because she did not like the faces on the cd.

She stole alot of my wrestling tapes, from the mid 90's to early 2000's, because of a the "Satanism, and sexual themes." Some of those tapes are pretty damned rare today, and worth quite abit of money.

Before I was smart enough to forge her name on parental permission forms at high school, she refused to sign a permission slip so I could read Stephen King's Tommy Knockers. Said it might have stuff I can't read about.

She stole the school's library's copy of Peirs Anthonys Incarnations of Immortality book about Mars, because of the sexual content.

She stole my Tarot decks (which I managed to find), a very nice set of Rune Stones (which I haven't found), a pocket pussy (because "it was junk anyways."), a copy of Vampires: The Occult Truth (when she found it, my brother told me that she said "Hmmm....he's really getting into this, I'm gonna have to watch him."), and so much more stuff I could go on for pages listing it.

I have recovered just about all the stolen items. I also started keeping stuff in my car's trunk, no matter the time of year or temperature. And despite her demands that I make a spare key and give it to her, I never did because I knew she just wanted to snoop through things. I did keep some stuff at a friends house for awhile, but a few books came up stolen (which I got ahole of some of the neighbors who told me who took the books, which I broke into there apartment, took my books back and stole some of theres, and sold most of them.), and my friend ruined a few of my CDs, which are hard to find. So, into my trunk everything went.

[Babelfish]

My aunt finding a D&D book when I was on vacation evoked a shitstorm. At that point I had pretty much had my mother that D&D did not, in fact, equate to worshipping Satan. Anyway, my aunt saw one of the books while I was spending the night there on the way to my grandparent's place and called my mother and started ranting about the satanic books I had and confiscated all of the books I had with me. (Anything in the fantasy genre is the work of the devil, dontcha know.) They also told my grandmother not to let me get anything out of the library while I was at her place.

 

Magic: the Gathering cards were also an agent of Satan.

 

Thankfully at this point she pretty much just leaves me alone except for the occasional longsuffering sigh and complaint about how I don't go to church or associate with "fellow believers."

[Toxic]

Thankfully at this point she pretty much just leaves me alone except for the occasional longsuffering sigh and complaint about how I don't go to church or associate with "fellow believers."

 

Yeah, I get that too, like "those pentecostalists are such nice people, I wish you'd join them" or "You'd meet lots of new friends if you went to church."

[Guest Marty]

When I was in 5th grade, I taped Salt N' Peppa's "Push It" song off the radio a million times, because my mom would keep stealing the tapes from my room. All she did was force me to find out what was so bad about the phrase "push it", because, being in 5th grade, I was completely oblivious to sexual undertones in music. My mother made me aware of it by making a big deal of it.

 

I was allowed to read Stephen King, but only select books, which to this day make no sense to me. My mother had read King, so she knew what each book was about. I could read about a possesed car (Christine), or about a writer who is held prisioner and tourtured by a lunatic (Misery), even about a man who goes crazy and kills his family in a winter resort (The Shining) but she REFUSED to let me read Pet Cemetary. I bought it anyway, she found it, and I was grounded. Didn't stop me from getting yet another copy and hideing it better. Her reasoning? A child dies in it. "It" was another she wouldn't let me read, but I found it boring and never finished it. Still don't know why she outlawed that one.

 

I came of age in the mid to late 80's, during the Satanic heavy metal scare, and so every CD I wanted to buy had to be borrowed from a friend first, so she could read the lyrics and listen to the music for approval. Needless to say at that point in time I had more copied tapes from friends than any "approved" CDs in my collection. I bought a skull and crossbones neckless at the mall once and that was confiscated before I put my seatbelt on.

 

I wonder if she has any idea her reactions/attitudes twords my interests as a child had a direct bearing on my doubting and questioning later in life.

[Robbobrob]

Ouiji boards!

That reminds me of a kid I went to high school with. He was the only openly Born Again at the school. Once, a football game got postponed from Saturday to Sunday, and he refused to suit up for it.

 

Anyway, someone in his honors English class brought in a Ouiji board. The kid would not enter the classroom until the board was put away out of sight. Since I think it had something to do with whatever they were reading, he spent a good part of the class sitting outside in the hall.

[Lycorth]

This doesn't apply to my parents so much as it does my ex fiancee, who was much more of a fundy than my folks could ever be.

 

*Satanic Black Metal. She was fine, however, with Viking Black Metal, just not the Satanic variety - as if the Viking subgenre didn't contain anti-Xian songs on virtually every album. But that was ok somehow, since she was studying Anglo-Saxon history. It was ok for Asatruar to bash on Xianity, just not Satanists...?

 

*Porn. Nothing could be more anti-Xian than the "dirty" practice of watching people have sex. And I had to stop myself from laughing when she didn't realize that porn typically shows penetration.

 

*Sex in general. Sex was only for procreation, not recreation, as much as she liked multiple thrashing orgasms against my mouth. Guilt is always for later, never during.

 

*The idea that children can lie. Supposedly, children are one of God's perfect little miracles who will never naturally stray from the straight and narrow. They don't have the ability to fib therefore, so anything a child says is true, because Jebus is strong in them.

 

*The idea that animals are morally perfect. Same as the perfection of children theory, just applied to beasts. Nevermind that common sense shows us that animals don't have morality to begin with, as that is a human construct, but to a fundy twat like my ex, morality comes from the Lord Enslaver, not the human brain.

 

I imagine there are fundy parents who believe the above, and would be annoyed by any contradiction of it, but I can be thankful that my folks weren't raving dogmatists. So long as I professed belief in Catholicism and went to church, that was good enough. Sure dodged a bullet, there

[ShackledNoMore]

When I was in 5th grade, I taped Salt N' Peppa's "Push It" song off the radio a million times, because my mom would keep stealing the tapes from my room. All she did was force me to find out what was so bad about the phrase "push it", because, being in 5th grade, I was completely oblivious to sexual undertones in music. My mother made me aware of it by making a big deal of it.

Oh, man. That's frighteningly similar to an experience I had at my house at about the same age.

 

I was watching "Truth or Consequences" on TV. (I don't remember much about the show--it was never again seen in our house after that day.) There was some guy on there apparently making sexual innuendos. The clincher was when somebody asked him, "How do you keep in such good shape?" and he answered, "Oh, I just do a few push ups."

 

My mother, who had already been fuming, snapped off the TV and started screaming at me for watching. Of course I didn't have the foggiest notion what I was being yelled at about: the innuendos that betrayed my sinfulness had flown right over my head. And there they would have remained had it not been for that little incident, and I certainly wouldn't have remembered the episode or the zinger that got it banned today.

[Ahh!]

Some more I thought of:

 

* Anton LaVey. Whenever he appeared on TV, my mom would make me change the channel and say, "that's an evil man, son."

 

* Al Gore. Whenever he appeared on TV, my mom would make me change the channel and say, "that's a VERY evil man, son."

 

* Keith Olberman: "Used to be OK" according to my mom, "but then he had to get political." She switches the channel to Hanity and Colmes.

 

* The Simpsons: Not evil but "a waste of time better spent on less crude things."

 

* Diversity: God forbid the media having any political, racial, or religious diversity. It will just "confuse things."

 

* Understanding: My mom hates this word so much she reacts to it whenever she hears it-

 

Guest on O'Reilly Factor: We need to understand what Bush's intent with this law was...

 

My Mom (makng dinner and only half paying attention): I'm tired of hearing we need to have more understanding! Why don't they just learn to speak American?

 

Me: They weren't talking about immigration.

 

Mom: You just think you know everything don't you, brainiac?!

 

(Can you tell I was fighting for the remote tonight?)

[godlessgrrl]

I bought a cheap little ring once made of silver wire, with a star & crescent moon on it, at some local street fair. I thought it was pretty. My mom, who was in the headiest of her fundy days at the time, gave me a stern look and a "you don't want to wear that and you shouldn't have bought it" line, because it was "an occult symbol".

 

Tarot, fortunetelling, Ouija boards, D&D, books about other religions, and anything remotely "New Age" wasn't allowed in our house. Ouija boards especially. Ghost stories were frowned upon, as they were considered a "gateway" for bad spirits.

 

Sex was taboo, of course. I think it was extra taboo in our house, because the only 2 children were both daughters - and heaven forbid a girl should ever find out anything about her sexuality, or feel any kind of sexual pleasure! I think that had to do, in part, with my mother's fundie attitude, but also with a more general puritanical attitude about female sexuality that's present in American culture as a whole. Girls and women just aren't supposed to be into sex. (An unfortunate side effect of that attitude was that I was punished when I was sexually assaulted as a teen.)

 

There's something about fundie religion that makes it just really difficult to be... fully human.

[Ahh!]

Another one I thought of.

 

Hanukah Songs

 

One year in elementary school, we song Hanukah songs as well as Christmas songs and my mother flipped out.

[Luke Wolf]

God, I can only imagine the hells I would go through had I been born a girl. I can imagine sex being an extremely taboo subject, and considering my mom forbid me to date until I was 16, had I been a girl, I can imagine that age would have been raised a few years. Not too mention wearing anything to make myself look attractive.

My 14 year old niece dresses like most other girls her age, a somewhat tight shirt, not-quite short-shorts, and doesn't show much clevage, and to my mom, she dresses like a slut.

 

When I orderred two talon looking labrets (the kind David Draman wears) off the internet and they came in, my mom threw a fit. I can only imagine the bitching I'll catch if she ever sees the two wholes through my facial hair. I work very hard to make sure the "soul patch" area of my goatee perfectly conceals those wholes.

I also told her today I'm going to get a tattoo over my scar that was left from knee surgery. She asked why, and I told her the skin is deformed, so why not cover it up? She sighed about it and gave me some bullshit that "just because I think it would be cool today, doesn't mean I wont like years down the road." She hasn't caught onto the fact that I live too much for the here and now to worry about 40 years down the road.