Thank you for the explanation. I regret that you found my off-hand comment annoying/offensive. I guess I will refrain from commenting on your posts, as I see no way to avoid this reaction in the future.
EDIT: weird, a note of disengagement provokes a quiet negative reaction. I must be missing something.
This also seems like an odd, blanket generalization. We've had one set of interactions on one post... ever. How do you know what will happen in all my posts?
I was simply surprised that you'd think you obviously should have realized I had kids given that I was religious. And so I said something.
Edited 3/4/2012: I shortened up the summary a bit and add the following update:
Thanks for the lively comments. As a preliminary summary of things I've found quite useful/helpful:
It's almost one year later, and I've finally made tangible progress on some of the input suggested in my post about being non-religious in a primarily religious environment. That is, I have a near-final draft of a "coming out" statement I plan to share with a majority of those who know me.
I was involved in two religious communities for about six years of my life (SPO and CCR). Two years post-deconversion from Catholicism, many of them still do not know I no longer believe in god. This can make for awkward interactions for myself, as well as for my wife, who's still a believer. She thought it would be helpful if everyone was on the same page, as did I.