My parents raised my sisters and me in a small town in rural Wisconsin. Never mind exactly which one -- I have to maintain my anonymity here in order to keep my jobs for grad school. Suffice it to say it's a good distance away from Madison, and in terms of worldview, it might as well be on a different planet. You might recall the story of the Indian River School District in Delaware, which ran a Jewish family out of town with death threats and other harassment after the family complained about the district's official promotion of Christianity. Well, the Indian River School District has nothing on my hometown. Growing up, my mom, dad, three sisters, and I were the only Jews in town, and a lot of people were all too happy to remind us of that on a regular basis. Everyone else was Christian -- more specifically, a fundamentalist Protestant variety of the sort we all recognize from Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and their ilk. Everyone was white, too, except for us -- "Jews can't be white, they're just lighter colored niggers," my sisters and I were often told by our classmates. After hearing that for all of my formative years, pardon me if I don't want to be "white." My sisters and I are all pretty close in age -- my oldest sister is two years older than me, my second sister is a year younger than me, and my youngest sister is two years younger than me. And my sisters are easily my favorite people in the world, largely, I would bet, because of what we endured together growing up.

My sisters, for the most part, were very lucky -- they suffered only from some of the most disgusting verbal harassment I've ever heard of, usually consisting of grotesque, sexually explicit comments mixed with vile accusations of the blood libel and "you murdered Jesus" variety. "Only?" you might be thinking. Yes, "only" -- they suffered verbal harassment, but were never physically attacked except for one time. My big sister was a senior in high school then, I was a sophomore, and our middle sister was a freshman. Whenever our schedules coincided, which was pretty frequently, big sister (I won't name my sisters either -- there's that anonymity thing again) would drive us all home. On the day in question, she had a yearbook meeting, I had football practice, and our sister the cheerleader had cheerleading practice. Little sister and I finished at about the same time, and we were supposed to meet big sister at her locker. When we got there, we saw three of the anti-Semites around her -- they had been among the many assholes who had physically assaulted me over the previous decade -- and one of them had her arm twisted behind her back. I sent little sister to get help and tried to stop them myself. The two assholes who didn't have their hands on my sister came after me, one with a switchblade. The guy with the blade slashed me across my lower left ribcage as I punched the other guy. Fortunately, it was just a flesh wound and I broke his arm when I took the blade away. Then I broke the jaw and arm of the guy hurting my sister. That's when little sister came around with the principal, who promptly threatened to suspend big sister and me from school -- her for "provoking" the incident and me for fighting -- until we threatened to sue him personally for allowing the assholes to harass my sisters and assault me on a regular basis. On the way home, we stopped by the nearest emergency clinic and I got 15 stitches.

That's when my parents started thinking about moving us away. In total, though, I was physically assaulted 27 times, stabbed two more times, and shot at twice before we finally moved away the summer before my senior year in high school. Now, I've been very fortunate for the most part in that I am a stereotypical linebacker -- very big and very strong -- so my attackers usually walked away from their attacks with much worse injuries than I suffered. But they knew they wouldn't win a fight and attacked me anyway because it was so important to them to draw Jewish blood. Thank God their chauvinism worked in my sisters' favor, or they would have been attacked, too. The local authorities never did a damn thing to protect me or to stop the people who were attacking me, even though it was widely known who they were, there were often witnesses, and attempted murder is generally frowned upon. Indeed, they all but tacitly approved what happened to me. I think the only kid who had it worse than me was the one openly gay kid in school -- and he leaned on my sisters and me and our very small, close-knit circle of friends for support. Ultimately, though, he couldn't take it -- he ran away when he was 15, and I have no idea what became of him. I can only hope that he is alive, safe, and happy somewhere.

These are the fruits of theocracy. Theocracy made it ok to terrorize my sisters -- and no three people you could ever hope to meet are less deserving of such treatment than they. Theocracy made it ok to force the one openly gay kid in my high school to run away from home, to flee for his life. Theocracy made it ok to keep the friend I went back to rescue under the total control of her abusive parents even when she was nearly 28 years old.

Theocracy made it ok for people I knew to try to kill me just because I didn't adhere to a certain warped version of Christianity.

In the diary I wrote in August, I concluded with this call to remove BushCo sycophants and rubber stamps from office:

My hometown experience is what happens when these bastards are allowed to act with impunity. This is what we're fighting for -- because the kind of story I tell you here is all too common, even if it isn't commonly heard. We need to make sure that this kind of story can never happen in our country. The great rabbi Hillel, who lived at the end of the first century BCE and the beginning of the first century CE, famously taught:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

If I am only for myself, what am I?

And if not now, when?

I must stand up to the Nazis in this particular way, or no one else will. Perhaps no one else can.

I cannot worry about myself alone when my friend's future is at stake.

This has to be done now.

This is how I'm fighting the Nazis and their enablers. How will you fight?

The fight continues today. Recently, someone posted a diary on dKos shilling for Sen. Sam Brownback for the Republican nomination for president. When I remarked that Brownback's casual attitude toward freedom of religion barred him from being worthy of high office, the diarist claimed I was "caricaturing the 'religious right.'" My response was here. If Brownback is what passes for moderate on religious freedom among Republicans, this is a fight we cannot afford to lose any ground on.

We have to win. For some of us, it's a matter of life and death.

Cross posted at dKos, Street Prophets, NION, and ProgressiveHistorians.