The Beginning of the End?

Daniel begins to tire of the game and posts this on The Tempest:

Truce or Dare?

Posted by The Tempest on August 11th, 2006

This is dedicated to Alan (a/k/a Spanky), the bully who came looking for a fight. Normally I love to write about all the funny things going on in our lives and around the world. There’s so much delicious grist out there and I do so love to laugh.

Every once in a while, however, something happens that slaps you back into reality and reminds you that there is still some ugliness in the blogging world. Unfortunately, for the past several days, this ugliness has kept me beaten down and, as a result, I’ve allowed myself to be baited and distracted. I am very ashamed of myself for this. I know it’s pointless to let someone pick an online fight and stupidly take them up on it. Especially when that particular bully (as it turns out) is known by both of his readers for just that.

While I won’t go into the subject(s) of this persons rants and vicious religious attacks, I will admit I took the bait. Like an idiot, I allowed myself to be called out onto the blogger schoolyard and when the guy tried to take my lunch money, I swung.

Stupid. Stupid. STUPID!!!

I wanted to honestly apologize to the antagonist for whatever it was that pissed him off. As it turns out, that wouln’t have been enough for him, as anyone who isn’t ‘religious’ is his target. He is one of those who just keeps coming back.

My plan this morning was to just let it go and chalk it up to yet another lonely weirdo stuck in front of his computer who hates the immoral world. I wanted to write about something totally unrelated to this person and just move on. Live and learn, right?

Unfortunately, no. He’s taken it to the next level. Using his ‘moral superiority’ to bash me and also turned on Steve. So, instead of continuing to give this person my attention, I’ll let the following response from Steve be the end of it:

“No, Alan, I am not saying everyone else is deluded. But after reading your post, I can pretty much deduce that you are. Nice job of twisting around valid points with that trademark flair of the evangelical.

You quote one site “Beyond Marriage” as the basis for what the “true reformation of marriage is about.” That’s pretty weak, but then again, typical of the evangelical right. Like I said in my post, I don’t believe your fringe element speaks for all of Christianity any more than that site speaks for what all gay people want out of marriage.

And do I believe I can do everything I want? Of course not, and that kind of argument leads me to believe that you are the childish one here. Scary to trust we might be using our own consciences instead of your Bible thumping rhetoric isn’t it? If you have to latch on to either one of us being “anti” something, we are “ant-right wing evangelical”, because I will reiterate again, IMHO it has very very little to do with the teaching of Jesus Christ. You can disagree, that’s fine. This, to me, was not going to be an ongoing dialogue. The basis for the discussion isn’t likely to ever be agreed on.

I give you major props, though, on tutoring those would read your post on Daniel being passive aggressive while delivering passive aggressive in master strokes.

Again, I applaud you. That is an art form in itself.”

I apologize to all of my readers for the past several days of bickering. I will lay down my firey Italian sword (on this subject) and return to writing about what I love.

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