The Religion Paradox

Happy Easter!! Today being Easter and all, I thought it would be appropriate for the day's diatribe to involve religion. I have noticed a trend in dating over the last year paralleling a similarly motivated shift in political rhetoric over the past 6 years, namely the role of religion in each. Certainly there has been a thorough discussion of the role of religion and its impact on politics but I have yet to see a single story on religion and dating. (I apologize for those of you reading this who have heard this story, just move on to another post)

It is certainly possible my string of recent experiences with religion and dating are coincidental but I think not. Different guys like different sorts of girls. It just so happens I prefer nice girls who have a certain amount of self-respect and treat other people with a modicum of respect and appreciation (among many other qualities less relevant to this discussion). I blame it on the The Religion Paradox: Not-so-religious guy likes nice girls. Nice girls are religious. Religious girls like religious guys. And round and round we go.

Sure it's a stereotype and I would like to be proven wrong but that's just not the trend I'm seeing.

[Aside]A saying of my great-grandmother's sums it up nicely: "Watch how she treats service people because one day, that will be how she treats you." Since hearing that I've found nice girls do treat service people like human beings and it really does reflect their general character. Girls take note.[/Aside]

Alright so how bad could it be?
Story 1: Worked with a nice girl. Very smart, pretty. Very fun to work with. So one day I ask her out. We catch a movie, grab something to eat. I think it's going good. A few days later I talk to her and she says "I really had a great time but you're not muslim." Which wasn't news to me but for her it was a deal-breaker.

Story 2: Another girl I work with. (If you have the impression there are all these great girls running around where I work you're just wrong. With 30,0000 employees roaming the cubicle mazes there's bound to be one or two nice girls who got lost though.) I'd talk to her on the phone for work stuff a lot and we'd talk about other things too. One day I asked her to lunch. We talked for a while and it was going well, I thought. So I ask her if she'd want to hang out, I can't remember what it was though, something fun. She said she didn't date people who didn't go to her church.

[Aside] The interesting thing to note is there are apparently only like 7 people who go to her church making the pickins awfully slim. I know this only because my roommate is actually seeing her...and going to her church, though I can tell you, he has no interest in her religion and has much less savory intentions than I had. [/Aside]

So there you have it. The nice girls I've met all happen to be pretty religious, which to me is fine. That's great and I accept and appreciate their beliefs but I'm not terribly religious. What I've found is that mutual acceptance of belief systems doesn't run both ways, as is the case with so many issues unfortunately.
(Update: A strangely applicable Meet the Press you can watch online)