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I try to avoid holidays with my husband's family because of all the right-wingers there. Last Thanksgiving my sister-in-law, who is in her 50s and believed ending Terri Schiavo's life support was murder, got into a screaming argument with my husbands 80-something aunt who believes people have a right to determine what sort of end of life care they receive. This is the same sister in law who screamed at the same aunt about 20 years ago for buying one of her kids a hand held electronic adventure game that had D&D in the title then turned around two years later and it was fine if her kids played those sorts of games and whose teenage son wore a graphic tee shirt featuring an aborted fetus to a family 4th of July picnic and the same woman who screeched at my husband that I am not a Catholic, that she knows Catholics, and I am not a Catholic, despite my never having received a certified letter from the Vatican stating my Confirmation had been revoked. Scumbuckets. At the family gatherings I attend I do not participate in discussions about controversial issues but I am still the families Uncle Wayne, the member who is shunned. Literally. Shunning is an in thing among many fundies and for several years this sister-in-law and her husband shunned me in their own home and elsewhere. One year I did interject when their 22 year old son, who was then a senior at Purdue University, lept all over the same elderly aunt defending the sale of flesh shredding bullets to the general public and I was being a smart-ass toward him, very sarcastic, and the sister-in-law attacked me to the point where she was physically threatening, screaming about how she is raising her son, who, apparently, dragged the umbilical cord off to Purdue with him. Her mother defended her by saying she was menopausal but she's apparently been menopausal for 25 years now. I swear when the older relatives all pass away I will never attend holdidays at their home ever again and if I or my spouse ever start showing the sorts of Mad Elephant disease demonstrated by the parents in this story I hope my children do the merciful thing and Kevorkian me.
