The Front Row

Over the last few years, I've made a number of substantial changes in my life. I used to play in a local band. This band was made up of my younger brother and a few of my closest friends. Noted, we were nothing special, but the patrons at the bar we got our start from loved us. During my time of playing in that band I met a woman. She was smart, well mannered, had a great job, and was very easy to get along with. She was a lady in public and a total whore in the bedroom. She was the perfect woman for me. Total package.
Naturally, as time passed, things began to change. She and I went from casually dating to being exclusive; from being exclusive to living together; from living together to getting married. After getting married, my band mates wanted to get more gigs. Incidentally, she and I both work 9-5 jobs so staying out until the bewitching hours is hardly an option. Not to mention it seemed that any time we did go out, drama would inevitably follow. Certain people would act inappropriate and it caused tension with me and my wife and sometimes lead to arguments (Since I was honest with her, she knew a lot about my past and being around bad history and mixing the situation with alcohol does not a pleasant situation make).
I learned that I couldn't continue living that lifestyle. Well, shortly after she and I got hitched, the band blew up. Bars were lining up gigs left and right. So I made one of the toughest decisions of my life. I told my fellow band members that I had to quit. Staying out late and closing a bar is hard to do when you have to get up at 6 in the morning for work. I certainly couldn't do it as much as they wanted me to, not to mention the bar scene was causing stress to my marriage. I chose my wife over that scene. Not two weeks later, my wife and I found out she's pregnant with our first child. To me, that's affirmation that I made the right decision.
Since then, I've been spending most of my spare time with my wife. Just about everyone we know is happy for us. We have a very healthy relationship and on several occasions have heard other people say they were envious of how well we get along. I also started going to church with her (she grew up in a religious household. I grew up with parents that took me to church occasionally, but it was nothing like what she experienced growing up). I still made attempts to hang out with my old friends, but at less destructive environs (I invited them to Buckeye games, the Funny Bone, bowling, dinner, etc.). However, I was typically blown off or stood up.
So I kind of gave up on them (since it felt like they gave up on me). The fallout I've received from them has been despicable. They're pretty high drama. A few of them have tried ridiculing me on Facebook because I "haven't been a good friend like I used to be." One of them posted a picture of Barack Obama doing the O-H-I-O pose with a suburban type family on my page and wrote "Sorry... This reminded me of you," which was referencing and placing a negative connotation on me being a family oriented suburbanite (which, when in the hell did that become something worthy of ridicule?). Some of them have started rumors about me. I remember one big blowup that occurred when I saw a story on the news of a drunken man beating his family to within an inch of their lives, so I wrote a status on Facebook that was very vague but undeniably true. It said "A real man puts his family above his ego and his vices. There seems to be no shortage of little boys in this world." While most people clicked "like" on it, my "friends" got on the status and started beating their chests, calling me a bad friend and a judgmental Christian, and mocked my religious beliefs. Now mind you, they themselves have drug problems and one of them has been cheating on his wife, so they were assuming I was talking about them. I told them I wasn't talking about them specifically but if they had a guilty conscience or if they were putting their egos and vices above their families, they should man up and do the right thing. They continued to mock me and insult me.
What bugs me is that these people that I once considered to be my "friends" can blindly defend every despicable hedonist in this world over a combination of bad politics, bad habits, and misplaced suspicion. I'm just wondering if anyone else has had people he called friends act so outwardly hostile towards him for making what was the right decision. Seriously. How in the hell can someone call me a bastard for putting my family above dumb decisions? So I chose my wife and kid over drugs, alcohol, the bar scene, and easy women. For that, I am scrutinized. It annoys me to no end that people who regularly make bad decisions mock and attack people for making the right decisions. It especially doesn't sit well with me that they're attacking my religion as well.
Mind you, I'm not the epitome of what an ideal Christian is. I'm hot tempered, confrontational, and I'm not afraid to call a spade a spade. I haven't gotten to that place where I'll let some idiotic blowhard spout off at me and my beliefs and then I simply follow it up with a "bless you." Maybe some day, I'll have that type of patience. I just hate how people mock the kind of person that will give you the shirt off their back if you ask. I know there are some judgmental and hatemongering people who call themselves "Christians" out there, but they are definitely in the minority. It's funny. Now that I think about it, when my wife had her baby shower, we received no gifts from any of my friends (much less a congratulations when they found out she was pregnant). However, my wife's mother, who lives in Kentucky, had friends from church who gave us gifts, wrote us a poem for our daughter, and hand knitted quilts for us. We've never even met them. And they're being judged by drug addled, self serving, disgusting whelps of men. It just annoys me to death.
I guess I had no other motives with this post other than to just blow off some steam. What about you guys? Do you have any people that have stabbed you in the back for doing the right thing? What do you think I should do? Should I walk away from these people entirely or just stand by and hope that some day they'll grow up?