I can take my proper place in the order of wacko

For years I have mocked the assumption that if you home educate it must be because you are profoundly religious. And because it's just too easy to jump that step from knowing someone has a deep-seated belief to the conclusion that because they also chose home ed, they must be a religious fanatic, isolating their kids from any corrupting influence to better indoctrinate them with a single world view.

Usually, my take is to say yes, there are parents who home educate for religious motives and their kids probably attend the tennis club with everyone else. Yes, there are parents who put their child in a single focus faith school and their kids probably come out into a world to meet the non-believers. Yes, there are parents whose religion at home puts their child in direct contradiction with the culture of school - watch a child of Jehovah's Witness face the school build up to Christmas, and you'll know what I mean. Yes, there are oddballs; the ones of singular eccentricity regarding the divine - but education can't be a reliable barometer for their peculiar degree of wacko. On that, I have an extended family as evidence.

Mostly, I have felt on the outside of all those opinions. Until today. When I discover what looks to me like a makeshift shrine to a unicorn and the offering of a sacrificed cat called Bubbles.