Oh, no worries! I love your writing, and I appreciate your thoughtful and well-reasoned responses. The world needs all the reason it can get these days!

My background just makes this a little more heartbreaking for me. If I’d taken a few different turns, I could have ended up at Liberty or someplace like it, I suppose (and I’m thankful that I didn’t). Sadly, many people I knew growing up now buy into this nonsense. I hear them screaming for blood (probably not unlike Romans watching Christians get torn apart by lions, and isn’t that ironic) and wonder what the hell went wrong. Intellectually, I know what went wrong, and when, and why (Nixon, the Moral Majority, Karl Rove, 9/11, the election and re-election of a president they’ve convinced themselves is an African-born Muslim, etc.), but it doesn’t lessen the sting.

Many who listen to Falwell and nod their heads in agreement are still fundamentally good people, but you can’t maintain that dichotomy for very long. Eventually, something has to give — and it’s usually the angels of our better nature.