Need to relate a story that happened to me last weekend when I went to play racquetball at a local YMCA. I'm putting this in Flame since the incident has inflamed my anger once again towards fundamentalist Christian assholes and reinforced my impression that the majority of these punks are simply unredeemable scum.

To preface this, I need to give you some recent news. I've just changed jobs. I left the bus transportation company I've been with for 17 years and taken on a new data analysis position with a major health care corporation that processes Medicare and Medicaid claims. There'll be future posts about the insight I'm gaining from my exposure to this industry. Why this job change is important to this story though is that my new job is at a completely different physical location in the Phoenix valley from my old one and requires me to vacate the downtown Phoenix YMCA (which was right next door to my old office building) and find a new location for my weekly exercise.

Luckily, my YMCA membership is good valley-wide and there's a facility a few miles from my new place of employment. At my old job I could simply use my lunch hours for some high-octane racquetball games with a good friend that also worked downtown. Although my new job seems to have very flexible hours, I'm hesitant to take the necessary 2 hours during the middle of the day to drive to this YMCA and try to find a game. I also know nobody at this place so I could easily find myself there without any competition if I just show up.

Talking to the staff at the front desk I found that a good size group of people reserve the courts at certain times of the week and have created a "league" where they make up doubles teams out of whoever shows up and basically challenge one another. I'm not a big doubles fan but you go with what the local culture offers.

Anyway, I show up on a Saturday morning and there's this group of guys (mostly my age or older) sitting on couches outside the 3 glass walled racquetball courts and I go over and introduce myself and let them know I'm there to play. The older players in the bunch (the average age is probably 55 - 60) are very cordial and welcoming. There's this one guy however that appears in his 40's who seems a bit colder and detached. He's about 5' 6", a bit stocky and has the classic redneck butch haircut that you often see in guys that are ex-military lifers. He has this weird pattern tattoo encircling one of his biceps. He avoids looking people in the eye when he talks.

While we're waiting for a court to open up, I overhear Mr. Macho talking about the wonderful education his children are receiving in the private Catholic school he's sending them to and how much better a system it is than the public school system. The first bite of my tongue happens at that time since my wife is a teacher in an economically stressed elementary school in a state that ranks near the bottom in the amount of money spent on public education. I'm encouraged when one of the older men in the conversation pipes up to say that, in his younger years, the situation was reversed. The public schools were much better than the private ones. His pronouncement certainly fits my experience growing up in Arizona. Culture in my youth gave great support to our public schools and hardly anyone could imagine privatizing something as important as that.

The jerk continued his rant despite the majority of the older players showing they weren't happy with the current trend. Suddenly, out of the blue, this idiot starts into this tirade about the separation of church and state and how it was never the intent of the framers of the Constitution to put in such a barrier. He brings up the fact that God is mentioned in the Constitution and on our money and then he states that "those damned liberal atheists are trying to destroy our country". As you can imagine, the next bite of my lip draws blood. I'm here trying to find new racquetball partners in a group I barely know and this asshole is disparaging my basic beliefs and tenets. (no Tom, I'm not admitting to being a liberal, just that on the issue of church and state, I'm firmly with the liberal side of this issue). Most at issue though is that I'm absolutely an atheist and highly resent someone just blurting out a condemnation of this philosophy while obviously assuming his audience is of a like mind. Now we're in a YMCA but, as a former long-time employee of that organization, I can tell you firmly that the membership is by no means purely Christian no matter what the "C" in the name stands for.

Anyway, to wrap this up, I end up on the opposite side of Captain Buzz Cut in a game of doubles and guess what? The guy not only is despicable outside the court but he cheats as well. I've played racquetball since the age of 16 and have played with and refereed professional players often in my earlier years and can spot a cheat and dirty player within a few volleys. This guy was a classic. I often thought about drilling this prick a new asshole when taking a shot off the back wall and his fat ass in front of me but I consider the fact that I didn't the final biting of the lip.

This latest experience just added fuel to my assumption that fundamentalist Christian conservatives have the worst ethics and morals in our society today and that my circle of friends will never include the extremes of religious belief. I'd be curious to hear from other atheists and agnostics on the board of similar experiences.

Art