If there are any LGBT dopers who are or have been religious, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this.
I was brought up in a religion that placed a great deal of importance on chastity until marriage and fidelity within marriage.
And that’s all fine and dandy if you think boinking should be a licensed activity.
Or, to be less glib and cynical, I can appreciate that many folks feel sex should be something shared only between a committed couple who have made some kind of formal pledge. I once believed that myself.
But with the acceptance of same-sex marriage now spreading around the world, I got to thinking . . .
How do religiously-inclined gay folks feel about the concept/principle of chastity?
Particularly before the legalization of same-sex marriage, or for those in regions where it is still not recognized, what does the principle of chastity mean to, and for, a gay person who is either brought up in or voluntarily embraces a religion that espouses chastity as a virtue? Is it a trial of faith? A millstone about the neck?
For horny hetro teens brought up in religious families and communities, the commandment to keep it in your pants until marriage is a restraint that must be endured until the “I Do’s” give license for sexy times. But what would it mean to a gay kid growing up under religious influence? I imagine it would be a very oppressive principle. I would be very interested to hear how any LGBT dopers who grew up under such circumstances felt about and dealt with this teaching.
Even aside from the potential bigotry and oppression that traditional hetro-centered teachings on chastity could represent to LGBT people, is the very idea of saving yourself for marriage or a committed relationship much of a thing among LGBT people?
I don’t think chastity as a concept plays out much differently (although I suppose if MARRIAGE per se, and not “committed relationship” is the necessary precondition for moving beyond chastity, that would have been a no-win situation for religious LGBT folk).
Virginity is the concept that really gets re-examined. Horny hetero teenagers (often) regard themselves as virgins despite having brought someone (or been brought) to orgasm with fingertips, tongue, etc, under the rubric “it don’t count until penis is inside a vagina”.
But when you consider LGBTQ people, the existence of lesbians makes you realize how heterocentric our idea of virginity is. What activity involving two lesbians causes one, the other, or both of them to cease being virgins? Aha… so many of those hetero couples ceased being virgins long before they realized it…
For a hetero kid brought up in that kind of religious system, it may be very hard to follow the rules until marriage but there is at least a path to get there. But the same systems that forbid a hetero person from having sex until marriage, forbid a gay kid from any kind of sex, relationship, or marriage, forever (unless, of course, he manages to get cured and then seek a relationship with the opposite sex). But if you assume, as most experts to, that there is no cure, a gay kid who wants to follow the rules of chastity is sentenced to a lifetime of celibacy, both erotic and romantic. And he or she generally has to contemplate this at a very young age, in total lonely secrecy, while the parents are still introducing the kid to suitable people of the opposite sex. It’s kind of a nightmare, actually.
So for these kids or young adults, there is no acceptable path which leads to a committed gay marriage with chastity all along the way. It doesn’t exist. So you either plan to stay chaste for life, or you give up and sin.
Once you’ve done that, you’re on the outside of the system altogether and might as well do what you like. Might as well be hanged for a wolf as for a sheep, I thought, so I fucked my way all through young adulthood. I don’t exactly regret it, and in the end I got what I always wanted, which was love and commitment, but it would have been nice to have some socially approved way of getting there without feeling like a complete reprobate, having sinned so badly the first time I had sex that it really didn’t matter how I behaved ever after.
I should add that I wanted to be chaste for a long time, but I wanted to experience love even more, so I followed the rules of the gay social scene at the time, which amounted to: sex first, maybe relationship after.
So while I was fucking a couple of guys every month, I really hoped every one of them would be the last. ONE DAY I’d meet THE ONE, have sex first of course, then fall in love forever and be faithfully monogamous ever after. I actually believed this was a reasonable possibility, and sincerely hoped for it with every guy I bedded, for years. :smack:
Why would they follow the moral dictates of an organization that vilifies them? Why would anyone?
Not many people I came up with gave a fig about the Christian idea of chastity. They did however feel they should remain chaste until they were in a comfortable relationship. So about the same is what I would say.
As LGBTQ are traditionally outside the pale of conventional morality, and “virginity” is almost wholly a moral issue, it’s not surprising the answer comes up 404.
The answer, of course, is to revisit “conventional morality” and toss out every part that applies selectively (with no reason to be selective; I can think of a few things that might differentiate on gender or age) or “because God said so.”
I can’t really think where the concept of “virginity” would fit in a moral code that was neither deityspeak or protectively patriarchal (“Them goods is damaged!”)
Also, not all devout Christians turn from their church when they realize they’re gay. They may want to live within the dictates of the church as much as possible, and chastity could allow them to stay within the lines. For example, the oft-quoted line from Leviticus 18:22 (“Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind”) that the religious claims means “people shouldn’t be gay” seems, to me, to actually be saying “don’t have gay sex.” Someone who wanted to remain with the church could say “so long as I’m celibate, I haven’t broken this rule.”
Just because there is no legal marriage doesn’t mean they couldn’t have some sort of commitment ceremony.
Though, in my experience, gay Christians are usually of the more liberal variety that don’t make nearly such a big deal out of chastity. Or they are far less devoted–sexual proscriptions are usually the first to be ignored amongst more casual Christians.
Actually, there’s a fair body of data that indicates that sexual proscriptions are just as frequently ignored by the more devout Christians, too. At least the proscriptions against pre-marital sex and adultery.
The infidelity rate isn’t that much lower amongst the devout than it is amongst the general population. And when you factor in the extra pressure in the devout community to keep such behavior secret, the rate may be just as high in that subset too.
Thanks to all responders so far.
Especially, thank you **masonite **for sharing your experiences.
You
This is exactly what I was imagining and trying to convey. What a horrible weight of baggage for a young person to carry.
I’m glad you found love in the end.
Thanks again. That must have been a very frustrating and, I can imagine, a depressing situation.
This relates to the other point I was trying to address, about the difficulty that faces a gay person who does place value of chastity, but for whom it is an impossible ideal. In your case, it seems that the gay culture of the time also made it difficult or impossible to follow your ideals. Thinking about what you said, I wonder if the denial of marriage rights and denigration of gay sexuality is what has led to a culture of promiscuity in the gay social scene, or at least the stereotype thereof?
I’m glad to see that current pop culture is moving away from the promiscuous gay stereotype and is now showing many loving, romantic, and committed gay relationships. Do you think that with the recognition of marriage rights and increased celebration of romance and commitment in LGBT relationships, the notion of chastity may become more significant in the gay social scene?
Do you think that if gay marriage had been legal and accepted both within and outside of the gay community when you were growing up, you would have saved yourself for marriage?
You seem to be using “gay” and “LGBT” interchangeably, which is a common enough mistake but confusing in the context of your question.
If you’re asking about gay men and lesbians who openly identify as such, I’ve never even heard of one who wanted to “wait until marriage”, probably in part because in the US at least only some of the very youngest adults grew up believing that same-sex marriage was a realistic possibility. (Same-sex marriages have been performed in Massachusetts since 2004, so kids who were in elementary school then are now in their late teens or early 20s.)
If by “committed relationship” you mean one that’s been blessed in some sort of ceremony even if this had no legal status then I’ve never heard of waiting for that either. The religions that have a big problem with premarital sex tend to be the same ones that have a big problem with homosexuality, and I don’t think many of them have been performing commitment ceremonies for same-sex couples.
I’m sure there are many gay people who (like many straight people) waited to have sex until they were in love or had been dating their boy/girlfriend long enough to feel that it was serious, but that’s pretty far from the traditional religious concept of chastity.
I’ve been under the personal impression for a while that as LGBT relationships have become more accepted by society, gay male promiscuity has decreased (i.e. old-school cruising for public sex in parks, bookstores, rest stops etc.) Back in the day these sorts of places were sometimes the only way for gay men to find sex. That may still be true for many, but for many others the opportunity to meet someone socially has expanded, and I think I begin to detect some disapproval of sex with strangers from some within the gay community, now that it’s easier to date, love, and (now) even marry people of the same gender. However, see below. Many people will always want sex outside of marriage, including with total strangers, and we’re not entering a new gay-friendly era of sexual chasteness where everybody waits.
[QUOTE=Lamia]
The religions that have a big problem with premarital sex tend to be the same ones that have a big problem with homosexuality
[/quote]
This. My own adolescence and young adulthood would have been much the same under today’s conditions, because my parents still think it’s a grave sin as well as a personal choice that could have been avoided. I think we’ll always see that dynamic within religious families. In the larger society, maybe we will occasionally see young gay people “saving themselves for marriage,” though I doubt we’ll see it much, given that relatively few straight people do, outside of the stricter religious circles.
Masonite, once again, thank you for your insight.
It’s a shame your parents haven’t accepted your sexuality, and it’s sad to think that so many children will still have to grow up being told that their sexuality is wrong. But at least now it seems there is an increasingly positive social environment for non-hetro kids.
And Lamia, point about my sloppy interchanging of LGBT and *gay *duly noted. My bad.