Bible thumpers

A special election was held in my county yesterday – our county is dry, meaning no alcohol is sold in restaurants or in stores. People who live in my county who want to go to a nice restaurant must drive to a wet county, or drive across the river to Ohio, or drive 18 miles up the river to West Virginia. Nice restaurants make most of their sales from alcohol and generally won’t locate where they can’t sell it.  So it goes, and if you can’t have nice restaurants, shopping malls won’t do well either. If you have no shopping malls, most other businesses won’t locate in the area either.

The result of the election is that our county will remain dry. People of the Nazarene, Pentecostal, some Baptist, and Fundamentalist Christian churches in the county (and in the next county over which is also dry) stood on the streets holding signs telling people to vote NO. No new businesses, no economic progress, no new jobs created…because just as soon as we allow alcohol to be sold in our little county, people are sure to start drinking, gambling, becoming gay, doing drugs, and whoring around instead of going to church and reading their bibles. Bible Thumpers – this is what some people in our area call those who try to force their religious beliefs and values onto others. Sometimes you see these people standing on street corners holding a Bible in the air and yelling scripture at cars driving by. Some people say we are in the Bible belt here…not sure I agree with that, but we do have a glut of churches in these parts so maybe it’s true.

Personally, I could care less about how people want to practice religion as long as they leave me alone and don’t hurt other people. I voted YES to alcohol sales, and appreciated the Bible Thumpers holding their signs up before the election because they reminded me to go vote. I’m disappointed that alcohol was voted down, but I only have to drive seven miles to buy liquor and find a decent restaurant so it’s not a big deal to me.

One summer during my college years, I had a dorm roommate who was a fundamentalist Christian – pretty much every day she verbally reminded me that she was a “right Christian woman” who was called (by God?) to save my soul from sin. God knows I'm eaten up with sin; was then and still am. I wore makeup, cut and styled my hair, used perfume, wore jeans, lied, cussed, bet on horses, drank, went to parties, read Cosmopolitan magazine, watched trash on TV, etc. I thought she might have a stroke the day she came in and found beer in our refrigerator.



The first few weeks we shared a room, I remained cordial. It was difficult. I ignored her constant nagging. Every day after I left the room, she spread religious propaganda (brochures and pamphlets) all over my bed. My ritual was to come in, scrape it all together, stack it, hand it back to her, and ask her not to put stuff on my bed. When she wasn’t in the room, I raked it all off into the trash can. Finally, my patience ended. I’d come in and say something mean like “Quit putting your religious shit on my bed” and just sweep her brochures onto the floor. After a few times like that, she quit. She told me my blue jeans were going to take me straight to hell, so I retorted that at least they were clean which was more than we could say about her frumpy jumper. That’s the last time she commented on my clothes. One time, she walked in while I was trimming my hair with scissors. She remarked that good Christian women don’t cut what God has given them. I told her good Christian men cut their hair and I’d rather have hair like a man than to have a ratty, greasy bird’s nest pinned to the back of my head like some good Christian women.

Usually I can get along with anyone, and fortunately I wasn’t around her much because of classes and my job. It could have been way worse because she had no life outside of going home, to classes, church, or the cafeteria. She spent most of her time in our room. Even so, sharing a room with her was hell.  We parted company at the end of summer session.  I can't remember her name or where she was from.