I Just Hate Being in the Atheist/Agnostic Closet

This is going to be a bit of rant, so bear with me for a moment. You see, I'm still in the closet when it comes to my change in beliefs from fundamentalist to agnostic in the last two years. I've only told 3 people from my past fundamentalist life, they responded better than I thought, and so far have kept my confidence, but for family reasons, I need to remain quiet about this for the next year or so. (Perhaps that's why I never shut up online, I need to vent a little, lol). Call me a coward for staying in the closet, maybe I am, buy it's necessary for right now. That's the reason why I blog under the name of a Big Bang Theory character, besides the fact that I'm a big fan of the show, and people have compared me to him before because I have OCD.

I'm at a library, enjoying what little time I can spare to be online anymore, and I see an older man pull up to the PC next to me. It's a member of my former congregation. Crap..... At this time, I'm about to update this blog, I'm in a conversation with two people on facebook from a group for former Christians that I belong to, and I have to drop all that, rudely cutting off the people I was talking to (I hated doing that, I think it's rude when people do that to me, drop off chat without notice), while he carries on about his home printer being out, and he had to print shipping labels to Ebay.

So I spend the whole time listening to him talk, while casually browsing Google News as cover, because one glance over at the screen could send everything crashing down around me. He didn't leave, and I got kicked off the PC I was on due to time limits. I hate living this way, I really do, living a double life, looking over my shoulder, knowing that it's possible to be outed accidentally at any time. I know that what I'm going through is nothing compared to some people, like Egyptian blogger Alber Saber, who is facing prison time for his facebook postings, but I still think that it's wrong that in the in 21st century in the US, that I should have to do this. Why can't people respect other people's beliefs? why can't families accept that their adult sons/daughters have changed their beliefs without trying to force their old faith down their throats all over again, or taking the change in beleifs as a rejection of them as a parent? Why are atheists still seen as immoral people, when on average, if you define morality as not harming others, atheists are actually more moral than most people who follow a religion? Have you seen lately what religious people have been doing around the world? Have you seen what clergy have been doing to young people in the Catholic church and even Protestant denominations like the IFB Movement ?

Alright, that's the end of my rant, now back to regularly scheduled blogging.... ;)