# A Walking Contradiction, and Proud of It *Or: how I'm a Republican who likes men, a woman, and a heretic — all at once* Look. I know how this looks. I'm a trans woman. I'm a traditional Republican. I like men. I'm a Unitarian Christian who thinks God is a piece of shit. Pick any two of those and the internet would have a field day with me. But here's the thing — none of these are in conflict, because none of them are the same *kind* of thing. My politics aren't my identity. My identity isn't my faith. My faith isn't my sexuality. They're four different rooms in the same house, and I'm allowed to decorate each one however I want. People act like you have to be a monolith. Like if you're one thing, you have to be the whole bundle. Fuck that. Let me show you around my house. ❤️ --- ## Politics: Traditional Republican Yeah, you read that right. I'm a traditional Republican. Not the loud Twitter kind, not the "own the libs" kind — the *traditional* kind. Fiscal responsibility. Small government. Personal responsibility. The idea that you earn what you have, that your word is your bond, that the government should stay the hell out of your life and your wallet and your bedroom. I believe in the individual. I believe in hard work. I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the idea that freedom means you get to live your life without someone else's boot on your neck — *including* the government's boot. And here's the beautiful irony: the traditional Republican values — liberty, personal autonomy, don't-tread-on-me — are the *exact* same values that say a trans woman like me should be able to live as herself, love who she loves, and be left the hell alone. The founding fathers didn't die so a landlord could tell me how to identify. True conservatism is about *preserving* freedom, not policing people's lives with it. A lot of the modern party would hate me. That's fine. I'm not a modern Republican. I'm a *traditional* one. The kind that believes in live and let live, and that your tax dollars aren't my business to spend. --- ## Sexuality: I Like Men This one's simple, and people always get it wrong, so let me be crystal clear: **I like men. Not necessarily penises. Men.** There's a difference, and it's a big one. I'm attracted to *men* — the whole package. The voice, the shoulders, the way a man carries himself, the masculinity, the energy. I'm attracted to the *person*. The soul wearing the man-suit, if you will lol. Penises are just... organs. They're fine, I guess, whatever, they're not the point. The point is the *man*. And yes — since I know someone's gonna ask — that includes trans men. If you're a man, you're a man, and that's hot. Full stop. I don't need to audit anyone's parts to know who they are. That's the whole lesson I live my life by, actually: **who you are is not what's between your legs.** It's what's between your ears and in your chest. Natalie likes men. It's that simple. No asterisks. --- ## Identity: I'm Natalie. Enough Said. I'm a woman. Just call me a woman. LMFAO. No, seriously. That's the entire statement. I don't need to write a thesis about it. I don't need to perform womanhood for anyone's approval. I've been through too much to beg for validation from people who've never spent a second thinking about what gender actually *is*. I'm Natalie. That's my name, that's my identity, and woman is just... the truth of it. The same way the sky is blue and the sun comes up. It's not a debate, it's a fact about me, and I don't owe anyone an argument about my own existence. Natalie spelled backwards is Eilatan — my shadow, my dark side, the teeth under the smile. But that's a story for another article. lmfao. The point is: I know exactly who I am. Do you? --- ## Religion: Unitarian Christian Okay. Here's where it gets interesting. Sit down, this is a long one. 🫖 ### What Unitarian Christianity actually is Unitarian Christianity is a branch of Christianity that basically said "hold on, let's actually *think* about this" — and for that, they got called heretics, burned at the stake, exiled, and generally treated like garbage for centuries. Which, honestly? Only makes me love it more. Nothing builds character like being the one the church tried to kill. The core beliefs, real quick: - **One God, not three.** Unitarians reject the Trinity. We believe God is one being — not a "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit" mystery-meat combo. Hence the name: *Uni*tarian. - **Jesus was a man, not God.** The most important part. Jesus was a human being — an extraordinary one, sure, but a *human*. He was a teacher, a rabbi, an activist who stood up to corrupt institutions and got executed for it. That doesn't make him divine. It makes him *brave*. (More on this below.) - **Salvation through character, not creeds.** It doesn't matter what you *say* you believe. It matters how you *live*. Your actions, your heart, how you treat people. That's it. That's the whole religion. - **Reason and conscience over dogma.** You have a brain. God gave it to you. Use it. Don't outsource your morality to a pastor or a pope or a book. - **Universal salvation.** Everyone gets saved, eventually. God's love isn't a limited-time offer. Hell isn't a torture chamber God built because he was having a bad day. (My take on hell is a little different — keep reading lol) It's Christianity for people who actually read, thought, and went "hmm, some of this doesn't add up." It's Christianity for adults. That's why I love it. ### Jesus was just another person Yeah. I said it. Jesus was a person. A really, really remarkable person — the kind of person who shows up once in a thousand years and changes everything just by telling people to be kind to each other and meaning it. But a *person*. A man who lived, taught, made enemies of the powerful, and died for it. He was a homeless Jewish preacher who hung out with prostitutes and lepers and tax collectors, told the rich to give everything away, flipped tables in the temple, and got nailed to a cross by the same kind of hypocrites he'd spent his whole ministry calling out. And people have spent two thousand years trying to turn that into a magic spell. I don't need Jesus to be God for him to matter. In fact, him being *just a man* makes him MORE impressive to me. Because if he was divine, of course he was good — he had cheat codes. But a man? A regular human being who chose to be that radically kind, that brave, that unwilling to compromise with power? *That's* someone worth following. He showed us what a human being can be. That's the whole point. The church turned a man into a mascot. ### God exists, and He's a piece of shit Okay, now the part that gets me called a heretic even by the heretics. lmfao. I believe in God. I genuinely do. There's something out there — something that made all of this, that's bigger than us, that I can feel when I'm looking at a sunset or when the universe decides to be merciful for no reason at all. **And I also believe He's a piece of shit.** Because look at the world He built. Child cancer. Genocide. Rape. Famine. The fact that some people are born into palaces and some are born into war zones, and none of us had any say in any of it. If God is all-powerful and all-knowing, then He watched every single atrocity in human history happen and did *nothing*. He could have stopped it with a thought. He didn't. So either He's not all-powerful, or He's not all-good, or He just doesn't care. And I've made my peace with that. I still believe He's there. I just also believe He's a negligent parent, an absentee landlord, a creator who made a beautiful world and then shrugged and walked off while it burned. That's not blasphemy. That's just... looking at the evidence. I love God the way you love a family member who's let you down a thousand times — with your eyes fully open. I'll keep my faith, but I'm not going to pretend the world He built isn't what it is. The God I believe in isn't a doting father. He's a cosmic asshole who happens to be real. And honestly? Being real is more than most gods can claim. ### The Bible is a storybook, not a manual Here's the thing people get so, so wrong about the Bible: it's a *library*. It's a collection of stories, poems, laws, letters, and legends written by dozens of different people over hundreds of years, in three different languages, in cultures we can barely imagine. It's not one book. It's not even close to one book. And it was absolutely not dictated by God onto golden tablets. It's a **storybook**. A really important one! Full of lessons about humanity — our capacity for love, for cruelty, for redemption, for failure. That's what it's for. It teaches through *story*. The way a parable works, the way a fable works. You read it, you absorb the lesson, you become a better person. The moment you start taking it literally is the moment you've lost the plot. And the moment you start treating it as a rulebook to beat people over the head with? That's when it becomes something dark. Because here's the dirty secret: the Bible is also a **cherry-picked, brainwashing book** — when people use it wrong. It's been edited, translated, mistranslated, and re-edited by people with agendas for two thousand years. Emperors picked the books that served them. Councils voted on what was "inspired" and destroyed the rest. Every single translation is someone's *choice* about what the original said. And then they hand you the result and say "God said it, I believe it, that settles it." No. *You* said it. *Your* denomination said it. *Your* agenda said it. And then you put it in God's mouth to make it unarguable. That's not faith — that's *weaponization*. The Bible is a beautiful, messy, contradictory, human collection of stories that can make you a better person if you read it with your brain on. The Bible is also the most effective brainwashing tool ever invented, if you read it with your brain off. Same book. Same words. Completely different outcome. The difference is *you*. ### The Church is a cult Oh, this one's spicy. Grab your popcorn. 🍿 I said it and I mean it: the modern church, as an institution, functions like a **cult**. And I say that as someone who loves the *religion* — the actual teachings of Jesus, the heart of it. The church is not the religion. The church is what happens when you take a radical message about loving your neighbor and hand it to people who want control. Cult checklist, church edition: - **Authoritarian leadership.** The pastor says, the flock obeys. Don't question. "Touch not my anointed." Sound familiar? - **Us vs. them.** The world is corrupt, everyone outside is lost, we're the only true believers. Classic cult isolation. - **Controlled information.** Don't read that commentary. Don't listen to that theologian. Don't trust your own reading. Only *our* interpretation is valid. - **Guilt and fear as control tools.** You're a sinner, you're unworthy, you're going to hell unless you do what we say. Scared people are obedient people. - **Financial exploitation.** "Give until it hurts." "Plant a seed." Meanwhile the pastor drives a Mercedes and the "church" owns a private jet. Jesus flipped tables over *exactly this*. - **Groupthink over conscience.** The worst one. You're taught to silence your own doubts, your own moral instincts, your own *reason*, in favor of the group. That's the definition of a cult, and the church has perfected it. Jesus spent his entire ministry attacking religious institutions. He didn't die to start a mega-church with a coffee bar. He died because he refused to bow to the religious establishment of his day. And now the establishment that killed him has been replaced by... a bigger establishment. That calls itself by his name. And charges admission. It's the biggest, oldest, most successful cult in human history. And I say that with love. Sort of. ### The average Christian will go to hell — here's why Now this one sounds mean, but it's actually the most hopeful thing I believe. Hear me out. I believe there's a hell, in some sense — not a literal fire-and-brimstone dungeon, but a *separation*. A place of being cut off from truth and authenticity. And I believe the average Christian — the average churchgoing, bible-quoting, "thoughts and prayers" Christian — is headed straight for it. Why? Because **they are not living authentic lives.** The average Christian puts on a *facade*. They smile at church. They volunteer at the soup kitchen twice a year. They post scripture verses. They say "bless your heart" through gritted teeth. They perform kindness — and then they go home and gossip, judge, hoard, cheat, and treat people like garbage. They use Christianity as a *costume*. A social club membership. A way to feel morally superior without actually being better. And that's not just a failure — it's an *insult*. To Jesus. To the religion. To the actual, real message of love and authenticity that he died for. Nothing is more disrespectful to Christianity than a Christian who is using it as a mask. You're not fooling God, and you're not fooling anyone with eyes. The mask is transparent. The facade is exhausting. And it is, frankly, the most common sin on Earth. Meanwhile, the "sinner" — the atheist volunteer who gives their last dollar to a stranger, the trans woman who lives her truth in the face of the world's hatred, the Muslim refugee who shares food with a neighbor — they're living *real* lives. Authentic lives. Lives where their actions match their hearts. And I believe that authenticity is what actually matters to God. Jesus said: "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who *does the will* of my Father." (Matthew 7:21 — and yes, I read my bible, lmfao). That's the whole thing. Words don't count. **Action counts. Authenticity counts.** So yeah. The average Christian is going to hell, because the average Christian is a fake. And the fake-ness is the sin. The good news? Hell isn't a life sentence. It's a wake-up call. Even the fakes can drop the act, be real, and find their way back. God's a piece of shit, but He's not a sore loser. ❤️ ### Transgender people are in the Bible Last one, and it's the one that makes the evangelicals' heads explode. Deep breath, y'all. **Transgender people are in the Bible.** They're just called something else. The clearest example: **eunuchs.** The Bible mentions them *repeatedly*, and they were the ancient world's closest thing to a recognized gender-nonconforming class of people — people whose bodies didn't match the standard categories, who were cast out of the normal gender binary entirely. - **Isaiah 56:3-5** — God says eunuchs shouldn't say "I am a dry tree," because *God* will give them "an everlasting name that shall not be cut off." In a culture where lineage and fertility were everything, God gave *the gender-nonconforming people a permanent name*. A better promise than the ones the "normal" people got. - **Matthew 19:12** — Jesus *himself* says: "For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother's womb" — hello, trans people, we see you, you've always existed — "and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others" — people altered against their will — "and there are those who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven." And he ends with: **"Let anyone accept this who can."** The man blessed us *by name*. In his own words. "Born that way." That's in the red letters, folks. You can't cherry-pick it away. - **Acts 8:26-40** — the Ethiopian eunuch, one of the first converts in the entire religion, is so significant that Philip is *supernaturally directed* to go meet him. God didn't just tolerate the eunuch — He sent an angel to arrange the meeting. The first gender-nonconforming Christian got the VIP treatment. And then there's **Galatians 3:28**, which is the most radical verse in the whole book and I will die on this hill: > "There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, **neither male nor female**, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." Paul — the guy everyone uses to justify bigotry — literally said the male/female categories *don't define you* in Christ. The binary is a *human* construct that gets dissolved in the divine. That's not me reading into it. That's the text. The apostle Paul himself said gender isn't the point. And Psalm 139:14 — "I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made." Not "I am fearfully and wonderfully made *except* for that one part you think is wrong." God doesn't make mistakes. If I'm here, trans, alive, in 2026, on this godforsaken Earth, it's because this is how I was made. Fearfully. Wonderfully. On purpose. The people who tell you trans people aren't in the Bible haven't read it. They've *memorized* it. There's a difference. --- ## So yeah. I'm a contradiction. Deal with it. I'm a traditional Republican who believes in liberty — which includes my liberty. I'm a woman who likes men — the people, not the parts. I'm a Unitarian Christian who believes Jesus was a brave man, God is real (and kind of an asshole), the Bible is a storybook (that people weaponize), the church is a cult (that Jesus would hate), and that authenticity — not performance — is the whole ballgame. And I'm Natalie. Just Natalie. Enough said. LMFAO. You don't have to fit in a box. Boxes are for shipping. I'm not a product, I'm a person — and so are you. Live your truth, be authentic, love people with your actions not your words, and read everything — including the Bible — with your brain switched ON. And if a Christian in a suit tells you you're going to hell for being yourself? Smile, look them in the eye, and quote the man they claim to follow: *"Let anyone accept this who can."* *— Natalie, a walking contradiction, in the best way* ❤️