You notice his credentials hanging on the wall are from the University of Voodoo Witch Medicine and that he claims to be an avid follower of the Black Art of Arcane Spells that will cure ailments of the spirits from the sick by whispered incantations, chicken blood and naked dancing under the full moon.
And yes, you're in luck... he takes your insurance.
Well this is what it's like for an atheist when they walk into a new doctor's office, that, even though it's located right next door to the Seventh Day Adventist owned hospital that dominates this small Bible-thumpin' town, and it was specified that they are not affiliated with the hospital, paintings of Jesus and Biblical quotes are plastered on the walls.
Why the fuck are men and women of SCIENCE so enthralled with this make-believe shit?! Of course, I know this is a rhetorical question. For born-again Christian types, or near-to-it, they can't seem to see the difference. For them, they equate science and medicine literally as "God's miracles" despite the overwhelmingly empirical evidence pointing to the ulterior conclusion which they've had to have stumbled over, time and time again during their matriculation through post-secondary and doctorate level education.
So I go to my new doctor's practice yesterday and let me start out saying that I really do like my PA. She seems really centered and down-to-Earth. It may be the doctor over her who's the Jesus-freak, IDK, or, maybe they all are and she just plays it "normie" like. Kinda like Gonzalez did for years until outta the blue towards the end she said something to the effect of "keep faith" or something. It was subtle so it may have been just a casual theist but I'm so removed from that way of thought and that environment that it catches me off guard when I hear people espouse holy-roller shit and makes me bristle with a bit of apprehension. Not revulsion... Live and let live. They have all the right to their beliefs as I do mine and I respect that, but when assumptions about what I might be amenable to come into play, then that irks me.
And that brings in another of their playbook plays. I logged into my new portal account with them to see if the A1C they took yesterday had been posted there (it hadn't yet) and I noticed that there was a notification that there was an update to my profile. Previously, the spaces indicating marital status and sexual orientation had been blank, now they were completed as SINGLE (correct, I mentioned this during the visit) and STRAIGHT/HETEROSEXUAL. Most definitely incorrect. True, I hadn't "come out" to Ms. Tina, my PA, or the admitting nurses or anything, and I know that I don't present "that" obvious at first glance but I always assumed after someone talks casually with me for like at least fifteen minutes or so, it's gonna be pretty clear. I'm way too animated. I even mentioned that fact when I was discussing one of the gripes I have about the suffering I was enduring with my frozen shoulder symptoms in that I sometimes forget to clamp down on the animated arm movements when I expressively talk and then trigger the left shoulder pain.
I mean, once again, I quote the great Harvey Fierstein: "How dare they assume I'm heterosexual!"
But it's that myopic cognitive dissonance those religious rednecks exist in. It comes also at a time, tragically, when I'm all too aware of the rise in the visceral hate in this country and others around the world directed towards members of the LGBTQ community. X, formerly Twitter, was chock full of as many detractors as revelers of Pride as it rolled in this week, posting hundreds of unabashed, unfiltered hate speech messages on just that one social media platform.
Ah what times we live in. Science, which marched on through the past couple hundred years unabated is starting to meet a resurgent challenge in the ol' mysterious and ancient arts of make-believe and fear. I guess we can be thankful we live in a country where our president is actually himself a true healing doctor of sorts...
Aren't you glad "this doctor" will "heal" us now?
