More about religion:

Live a good life.
If there are gods, and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by.
If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them.
If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.

- Marcus Aurelius

The Talk

He thought: If only I where a girl, it would have been easier; The world is somehow more open to girls wanting girls, than to boys wanting boys - even the words are better: Lesbians! Never, at least rarely used with hate. Gays! A word introduced to the generation as a curse word on the internet.

Still, as his mind was made up, he knew he had to tell his mother at this point. His very religious mother; The mother who once had been protesting against "fags" in the army, and often talked about old mrs. Gamboa down the street who had a homosexual grandchild, the poor soul.

She could break hell loose; She could break down; She could even physically attack him for all he knew.

Still, this needed to be done; He lived by himself with few friends, obviously did not have a girlfriend, and he had wanted to "come out" to colleges at work, and once even went to a so-called gaybar, but had realized he needed to open up to his last remaining family first; This was the only way to do this without any psychical wounds.

He wondered: Had he had this fear of telling her if not for her religious beliefs? Was the word of God - the words of middle-eastern philosophers and astronomers - so imprinted in her mind that it was stronger than herself? She was one of the nicest people he knew in oh so many other ways; He had idolized her after she donated money to homeless, volunteered the time the local elderly-home was understaffed, and once even traveled to Indonesia when there was a earthquake (not the overly media-covered tsunami, but one of the many other tragedies in these countries). None of these things because of, or connected to her religion though, contrary to what religious friends and neighbors bragged about, he had heard them use sentences like "the lovely christian lady down the street who helped out" and "God has put the spirit in her". It weren't fair. It was her spirit that should be complimented, not God's intervention on it.

He wanted to scream to them: Do you know how you're suppressing sexuality on me, on priest, and bishops; Do you know how you're suppressing truth, knowledge; How you are promoting blissful ignorance, an outer shell of polished stupidity - while the men speaking of your agenda, this inconsistent tale of miracles and divine laws, are raping little boys. It has even become a cliché!

He gathered his thoughts: Religion aside, he was here to break some big news to his mother, the "woman of his life" if you will, seeing as there would not be any others with that title. His mouth was dry, did he get some water first? Delays, procrastinations, dullness. He cleared his troath, thought: Fuck it, here goes:
"Uh, mom?"

His mother turned, smiled, shut off the tv they'd been watching, and looked at him. Said nothing.

He made a stuttering: A start without a continuum; A wish without a hope; And he lifted his gaze upwards as to not let the tears come to easy. Didn't he hope; Didn't he think: Hold me, it hurts when he noticed her coming closer?

She hugged him; The mother hugged her son.

And she said: "I know son. I know, and it's allright. I love you all the same"

This time, a mothers love for a son, was stronger than the love for a god.

This is religion.

This is religion.

& This is religion.

"The way that i love you isn't healty for neither of us, I think you should move out."

When she heard him say it, the words slipped by her as some unimportant nonsense he just thought out loud, and she turned around to him with a smile. He didn't smile back, and the words, still hanging in the air, sinked in. What he really meant, she never knew, she never bothered, and allthough he had been a perfect lover for half a year, and the former desire-based relationship had slowly begun evolving, that night she just left.

And he was glad she did.

He had about four of these relationships going, and had to end one of them. Maybe even one more. The second she was out the door, he got up and threw all that reminded of her, including the sheets, pillow, and a few dvd's they had pretended to watch sometimes. A kind of anger got over him, intense and suprisingly, and as he picked up his phone to call her back home to him, he ended up trowing it in the wall. Emotions had become a distant part of his life these last years, and the last spoken sentence was just a planed desicion, based on strategic thinking. But this feeling, the wave of anger, became sadness.