I am struck with the curious reflection that if someone ended up in custody of a child who was of a race different from their own - by adoption or stepparenthood or so forth - and then proceeded to spout racist propaganda at them, Child and Family Services would be in there, I think we all hope, within a day of hearing about it. But we seem to accept it as perfectly normal that parents who are homophobic are somehow entitled to ruin the lives and psyche of whatever gay children they may have.
I actually waited a whole day before responding to the misattribution. I wondered for a while if it were somehow homophobic to worry all that much about the implications, if any about my adult sexuality. Then I considered the actual facts of my eleven year old explorations about sexuality. I can tell you that made me nervous. Did I say some of that in my outdoor voice? Sheesh.
So, I didn’t answer.
Then I decided that I should say something, because out there somewhere is a poster who did share his pubescent life experiences, and he isn’t getting the credit for his openness and honesty. (Even if it isn’t actually true, if it had been I don’ think I would have been any more forthcoming about blowjobs than I have been about . . . well, I haven’t been open and forthcoming about it, whatever it was.)
So, I posted the above response. I think it was someone else.
Tris
You’re right, His4Ever, it is a lousy answer. I have been that kid hurting from physical and verbal attacks. Your response would just have further convinced me of my own wretchedness, and done more to convince me that no one would defend me, that I deserved to die.
I know these are harsh words, but it is a harsh situation. I have been a suicidal teenager, and I have spent time on the telephone with people who are severely depressed and close to it. I know that path because I have walked it far too many times.
His4Ever, I am not asking you to change your beliefs. I am just asking you to look at the consequences of those beliefs as told to you first hand by people who have endured those consequences. If you convince someone of their hopelessly sinful and unworthy state while overlooking your own, you run the risk of killing them. This is not theoretical. This is coming to you from a straight, Christian girl who believed she was so worthless, useless, and hopeless that she did attempt suicide. If I was unfit to be among decent human beings, then why should I continue to live? At the risk of committing blasphemy, sometimes God’s love isn’t enough, especially to a teenager who’s only getting insults not comfort, and to whom kind words are as rare as gold and even more precious. Twenty years ago, I would have said “God can’t give me a hug, or dry my tears.” Now, I’d argue differently, but there are times when a human being needs a real, flesh and blood hug. Would you give a hug to a hurt, desparate homosexual teenager?
CJ
Look, CJ, I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with a better answer. Polycarp asked me a question and I answered as best as I could think to do from my view. Yes, I believe I would give a hug to a hurt, desperate homosexual teenager What I couldn’t do, if he or she was asking me to do, is to tell them there’s nothing wrong with doing what they’re doing. (If, in fact, they are committing the act. We’ve gone over before the difference between just having the orientation and actually acting upon it).
And I’m sorry about your hurtful past, whatever it is that happened (I can’t remember if, if you said).
You say if I convince someone of their sinful, unworthy state while overlooking my own I run the risk of killing them. I don’t overlook my own, we’re all sinful and unworthy. I’m sorry I can’t say what you want me to. I can’t affirm someone in their sin and attempt to make them comfortable in it, to me this isn’t love in the eyes of the Lord. We’re supposed to lovingly reveal the truth to them. And yes, I know we don’t probably agree as to what that is. Anyway, sorry CJ, that you’ve had a bad time.
matt, I’m sorry but I don’t consider it to be just my point of view. God said it, not me. I’m simply repeating what He said about it. You’ll have to hash it out with Him.
I don’t give a shit what God says about it. If God wants to say something about it, he can speak for himself.
People in positions of power over the psyches of teenagers on this planet, on the other hand, have a greater responsibility to protect the lives of those children from despair and suicide than to recite obscure biblical passages to them who feel hunted, trapped, and worthless because they have already been forcibly made all too aware of the same damn passages.
Whatever your God thinks about homosexuality, he didn’t put Queer people on this planet to give you someone to abuse and gloat over. And telling a desperate child that they are depraved and irredeemably sinful is child abuse. I’m disgusted to hear that you would continue it; that they would come to you for stitches and you would open the wound wider. I pray to the Goddess that my community and I can heal our young, scared brothers and sisters faster than you can hurt them.
His, thanks for answering honestly.
I think maybe the key points here is (1) when people talk about “being gay,” or when other people accuse them of being gay, it’s usually the orientation and not the physical acts that are the subject of the dispute. If actually having sex is the measure, there are a bunch of people here, and several we know from the past, who identify as gay, Lesbian, or bisexual, who are actually not, because they’re virgins.
But that doesn’t stop them from feeling guilty because they’re indicted as sinful by the world in a way that you and I aren’t, that they’re “abominable in the eyes of all right-thinking people,” that they’re powerless to change something that people hate in them and that they come to hate in themselves as a result of the condemnation thrown at them. It doesn’t stop them from getting ostracized. (And do you remember how much you wanted to be part of a group, close to others, when you were in high school? I do, clearly, and it’s nearly 40 years past for me, and it still hurts how I was always on the outside.) It doesn’t stop them from getting beat up by other kids for the most innocuous causes. From what I remember, if you’re gay or are thought to be gay, you don’t dare even look up from your body, your locker, and the bench you’re sitting on while you’re changing your clothes in gym class – or somebody will think you’re ogling them and get pissed off.
And, dear, when this kid comes for help, what he gets is a little sympathy for having been insulted and assaulted combined with a lecture on what he’s been doing wrong. What he’s been “doing wrong” is being honest about how he feels inside. Forgive me for lecturing you in particular on this, but more than anything else what pisses me off about the so-called “Christian response to homosexuals” is that while we talk a good line about loving our brother, we cannot seem to stop being Pharisees and deciding what sins they’re guilty of – and in this case, the kid’s only sin was honesty.
No. Two people, the author of Leviticus (usually assumed to be Moses, but there are arguments on this) and Paul, said it. There are disputes, which you’ve seen, about what precisely they were condemning – I think it’s safe to say that “gratifying lust through homosexual acts” is a pretty good consensus opinion – and the degree to which God Himself was speaking through them. We don’t need to get into that here.
But two final points does need to be made about using the Bible to condemn gays. First, the idea that Moses (or whoever) and Paul were talking about what goes on today is an interpretation placed on their words. It’s a pretty reasonable interpretation, but do keep in mind that it is one. Neither man specifically addressed what is the spiritual condition of a person who finds himself or herself attracted to the same sex; they condemned sexual acts and, in Romans 1, Paul suggested that heterosexual people who reject God are condemned by him to burn with homosexual desire – apparently as a shock treatment on His part.
Secondly, there were in Jesus’s time three main schools of thought among believing Jews. One, the Sadducees saw the attaining of righteousness as achievable principally by the following of the ceremonial law in the Temple. (Compare present-day Catholic doctrine, or, more precisely, a misinterpretation of its focus on sacramentalism as its total teaching.) Against them Jesus taught that what is in one’s heart, not what one does in formal church settings, is what’s important. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshippers will worship Him in spirit and in truth.” A second school were the Essenes, who believed themselves called to pull away to remote communities to await the Day of the Lord. Jesus does not directly speak to their teachings, though many of his followers seem to have derived their interests in eschatology (End Times stuff) from them.
The third school believed that following God’s Law was the way to righteousness, and that a strong teaching and to the extent possible legal pressure on how to follow His Law was incumbent on them to the rest of the Jewish people, their moral duty to them. And it is against this group, the Pharisees, that Jesus was most condemnatory. What matters, He said, is that you love God with all that’s in you, and that you love your neighbor as yourself. Over and over and over again He dealt with specific cases where the Law said this, and He showed how to deal with the same thing, not with the Law, but with love.
You may think your answer is loving, in conveying to that kid what you read the Bible as saying, for his own good. But I think CJ and matt have made pretty clear – and if they haven’t, other people who have been outcasts, gay or not, will be glad to make the point for you – that it will be seen as harsh and condemnatory, not compassionate and showing Christ’s love. I’m sorry to be so sharp when I asked you for your answer, but in fact that’s human nature as it is, and therefore what you said you’d do is wanting in the primary commandment of showing God’s love.
If you feel that you would be remiss if you didn’t teach that kid what the Bible says (which he’s probably already had thrown at him a dozen times already), the solution I’d offer that fits with what Christ said to do is this: when he walks into your storefront ministry, be compassionate and try to show love to him. Become his friend, to the extent your life permits. Then talk to him about God’s law and how you think it applies to him. People will hear from a caring friend what they’ll reject from an apparently-judgmental stranger, especially one who seems to judge while they’re emotionally or physically hurting.
His4ever, let’s try this again.
I am bisexual.
What does this, in and of itself, tell you about my sexual activity? Not “what does the Bible tell you to think about my sexual activity”. Not “Do you think it’s a sin, whatever I’m doing?” Tell me what you believe my sexuality says I am doing, in terms of physical acts or thoughts.
And I hope those of you who know the intent of this post will respect what Poly said earlier … I’m interested in her responses because I think I may have found a way in, so to speak.
First of all God’s already said something about it, you just don’t like what He said.
Second of all, they aren’t obscure passages. It’s comdemned in both Old and New Testaments.
Also, God didn’t put “Queer” people on this planet. That’s a contradiction, in my opinion. He condemns it, therefore He makes no one a queer.
I don’t consider it to be child abuse to tell the truth in love. Sometimes the truth hurts. It hurts me to think of some of the sins I’ve committed in the past. And I never said that a desperate child was irredeemably sinful. We are **all[/] sinful. And we are all redeemable if we accept God’s provision.
To me, it’s child abuse to tell a child that something is okay when God says it’s not okay. If I were tell a young person that being gay and having gay sex was okay and acceptable in the eyes of God, then I would certainly have to answer to Him for telling such lies. To give them the go ahead to just do as they sexually please and send them off to a life of willful deliberate sin in God’s eyes is child abuse in my opinion. And if these young people claim to be Christians then I have ever right and responsiblity before God to show them what God says about it. It would be unloving and cruel not to tell them. This life isn’t all there is, eternity is ahead.
Excuse me, if I sound a little harsh but that’s how you sound to me. I tried to answer Poly’s question as best I could. It’s your privilege not to like my answer as I’m sure no one will like this one either.
If I understand your question correctly, here is what it tends to mean to me. That you are either engaging in physical sex with same sex and/or opposite sex partners or that you have the orientation to have sex with both gender partners but in action are remaining celibate. It also says to me that even if you aren’t engaging in these desires, you may also be thinking about it or lusting for someone in your heart, just as a woman can lust after a man or a man after a woman.
Since you didn’t ask my opinion as to the wrongness or rightness of any of this, I’ll leave it at that.
Well, then, who did? From everything I’ve read, there does not exist a gay man who woke up one morning and said, “Well, guess I’ll start finding men desirable now!” and the same is true for Lesbians. Nor did bisexual people decide it was time to “broaden their horizons.” The claim, made I am sure in good faith, is, it’s not something they decided to be, but something they discovered about themselves. Where’d it come from?
[Dana Carvey as SNL’s Church Lady]
Could it beeeee…
SATAN?!?
[/Dana Carvy as SNL’s Church Lady]
[Dana Carvey as SNL’s Church Lady]
Could it beeeee…
SATAN?!?
[/Dana Carvey as SNL’s Church Lady] **
[/QUOTE]
(Warning: Unabashed in-joke for longtime Dopers follows.)
Naah. Making Drain Bead, I think we can assume; making gay people, nope. (And we won’t discuss his opinions on anal sex, thankewverymuch!)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Polycarp *
**His, thanks for answering honestly.
No. Two people, the author ofwhat precisely they were condemning – I think it’s safe to say that “gratifying lust through homosexual acts” is a pretty good consensus opinion.
I’ve heard you say this before. I’m truly sorry, but I don’t see this in the passage. It simply says it’s an abominaton, it doesn’t say it’s only an abomination if it’s lust. It is what it is, no conditions put on it.
** they condemned sexual acts and, in Romans 1, Paul suggested that heterosexual people who reject God are condemned by him to burn with homosexual desire – apparently as a shock treatment on His part.**
I simply do not see what you see in this passage either. He is simply describing what He allowed to happen to people who professed themselves to be wise and became fools, exchanging the truth of God into a lie. God gave them up to their vile affections. I don’t see anything here to indicate it’s any kind of shock treatment to make heterosexuals sympathize with homosexuals. I perceive it as reading something into the passage that isnt’ there. These aren’t Christians being talked about in this passage. Read the whole chapter. Sorry, again I can’t see what you see here.
**try to show love to him. Become his friend, to the extent your life permits. Then talk to him about God’s law and how you think it applies to him. People will hear from a caring friend what they’ll reject from an apparently-judgmental stranger, especially one who seems to judge while they’re emotionally or physically hurting. **
This statement I believe I can probably agree with. It would be best in God’s eyes to become friends and show conern and caring first.
Poly, I’m sorry that I can’t agree with you on this subject. And I want to gently to say to you what my perceptions are, just as you sometimes tell me what you think of me. It appears to me, though it’s probably not your intent, that you spend much time “dancing around” the Scriptures trying to explain away their condemnation of gay acts. I just can’t seem to follow a big part of what you say. You appear to add things into the passages that I just don’t see, like you’re doing your best to find somewhere a reason to say that this is not a sin. If I’m wrong, well please forgive me. Perhaps you truly believe you’re right. I don’t know what the answer is to the whole thing, but I simply cannot agree with something that in my heart of hearts I know is wrong. And I simply don’t see the same things you see in those passages.
I can agree with a few of the points you may make, but for the most part we’re not on the same side of the fence on this issue and I don’t imagine we ever will be. That’s just the way it is. I know people don’t like what I say about this subject and that’s their right and privilege of course.
Love in Christ,
His4ever
Well, that coded out bizarrely! I used the “quote” button to get it, didn’t mess with the coding in the quote. Obviously, the Dana Carvey line was SC_Wolf’s and I said (as quoted by him) what is actually attributed to him.
I don’t truly no for sure, but as SC_Wolf so wonderfully made fun of, perhaps Satan does have something to do with some of it. Just another way to mess up God’s creation. There could be other factors, I don’t know. But I **do[/] know it isn’t God’s doing for the reason I’ve already stated.
Well, to your great happiness I’m sure, I’ve gotta go now. Got things to do, go to the store,etc.
And yet another thread gets hijacked into a 'Let’s try and educate H4E" festival. It’s sad, really, how much time and energy we’ve wasted on her. We were here, a long time ago, to try and find a way to help gay teenagers. Can we get back to a discussion of how to do that?
His4Ever is a lost cause. She can’t change. She doesn’t want to change. She is immune to all efforts to get her to think about her beliefs. She doesn’t want to think about them; it’s their very rigidity that she’s addicted to.
Let her serve as an example of how warped value systems can become, and how warped they can make people. And for God’s sake, let’s move on.
If I’m not mistaken, when we last saw the topic, there had been some good suggestions made as to what to teach in seventh grade sex ed classes about homosexuality. I’d love to see that topic expanded upon, in two directions: what should be taught to older, and younger kids to supplement this, and how do we get it implemented? This is vital information, and we need to be able to get it to the people who are most at risk. The problems in doing so seem insurmountable. What tactics should we try?
The thing is, Mr. Visible, it’s the people like His4Ever who did some of the worst damage to me, because they stood by and, by their inaction, implied I deserved what was coming to me. Someone once said “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good to do nothing.” To me, one key element of finding a way to help teenagers is to get good people to get off their butts and say, “Abusing people is wrong and it will not be tolerated here.” We seem to have done a pretty good job of that with smoking; how about we take on abusing non-heterosexuals next?
His4Ever, all we know of you is what we see of you here, and, for some of us, in a few e-mails. What we see of you here is you pointing out the sins of others and not acknowledging your own. Indeed, you didn’t say anything about that in your reply to Polycarp’s question. You just said you’d tell the teen his homosexuality was sinful, something I can assure you he would be all too acutely aware of.
By singling out homosexual behaviour as being particularly sinful, society creates a class of people who can be abused with far fewer consequences than other people. Part of being a teenager is trying to find one’s place in the pecking order. If it is ok to discriminate against someone because of their sexuality or their behaviour is singled out as being particularly immoral, they get bumped further down the pecking order, and life gets crueler. Homosexuality isn’t the only cause of it, but it’s one of the things which have the most dramatic effect and something over which one has the least control.
A lot of Christians who believe homosexuality is immoral also frown on extramarital sex, yet in high school a heterosexual couple who hold hands in public are considered cute. A homosexual couple who were brave enough to do so would be regarded as flaunting their homosexuality and their sinfulness by such people. Assuming there’s no evidence that either couple is indulging in any sexual activity other than holding hands, there’s a vast difference in the way they’re perceived and the way they will be treated. That’s what we need to change.
Mr. Visible asked some good questions. One tactic I’ve had some success with in dealing with bullying in general is bringing home to teenagers what it’s like to be like on the receiving end of abuse, and to make it clear that it may not just be them making rude remarks to other kids. We also need to give them a safe basis from which they can stand up to cruelty. If a teenager sees a kid being picked on, stands up to those picking on him , and is not supported, she’s got no reason to do so again, especially since those who were picking on the kid are likely to turn on him. If someone, whether it’s another kid or an adult backs him in public or even in private, it makes both kids feel they’re not alone.
My old high school swept it’s problems with bullying under the rug until they faced a lawsuit from the parents of two girls who were routinely threatened with physical harm. We need to work with parents, teachers, and school boards to make it clear that, while we may never eliminate bullying completely, it is not acceptable behaviour, and no one deserves it.
His4Ever, you spoke of lust and attraction. What my school did to me was render me asexual, believing I was repulsive. If I so much as showed interest in a fellow by smiling at him, that was considered an insult. Remember, too, that this was done by kids who considered themselves Christians. In high school, kids are trying to figure what is and is not acceptable, as well as who. Can you imagine what it’s like to have smiling at a man seen as offensive behaviour? Yet, that is exactly what happens to Matt and others here. I have a similar question to Polycarp’s for you. If you saw a kid you didn’t know getting beat up by kids who were calling him “fag” and generally implying he was a homosexual, what would you do?
CJ
“Also, God didn’t put “Queer” people on this planet. That’s a contradiction, in my opinion. He condemns it, therefore He makes no one a queer.”
HIs4ever - That’s not so much of a contradiction as it is what I expect from the your God.
This God fellow is a strange one, he claims to be omnipotent and all powerful, the creator of everything, and yet condemns a group of people that he must have created unless he isn’t as omnipotent as people claim him/her to be…
I am convinced that God must do drugs from time to time.
I can see God sitting up there rolling up a big fattie or munching out on a few hundred grams of mushrooms and then thinking, “What if I make a tenth of my people attracted to members of the same sex?” Being omnipotent his thoughts were suddenly made into reality and after he came down from the drug induced high and raided the fridge for munchies he took a look around.
He must have been shocked and wondered how a bunch of men had suddenly become attracted to men and how women were lusting after women. (He probably wondered about the platypus too). He then must have divinely inspired some people to speak out against homosexuality to cover up his own misuse of mind altering substances although strangely enough, I have never read anything condemning the platypus.
Thus ends the hijack…
I understand Matt’s concern because I think my brother has lived through very many of the same things he has. When he was growing up there was no group he could turn to for support and was even condemned by certain members of my family for being open about his sexual preferences. Other than the fact he likes boys and I like girls we’re pretty alike.
Of course, I never had to hide my attraction to girls and women fearing that it would get me ridiculed, ostracized, or physically assaulted.
So who can a gay teenager turn to?
Finding people in their peer group is going to be difficult because few (if any) will be out in the open for fear of ridicule or retaliation and the number of adults who would understand their issues are going to be few and far between.
Anything that would make finding those people easier is a good thing.
We talk to our kids and they probably know more than most kids their age regarding sex and sexuality. If our sons or daughters discovered they were attracted to a member of the same sex I don’t think they would have a problem talking to us about it and we wouldn’t have a problem with it either.
Their health and happiness is our primary concern… they can love whomever they want to.
They are my sincere beliefs on the right way to read Scripture, and the thing I’ve lived my life around, that the key message God tried to get across, first in the Torah and then explicitly from Christ, is love of Him and of your fellow man – and that legalism that condemns him or ostracizes him is not what God wants, regardless of what he’s done.
But I appreciate the gentleness and thoughtfulness you put into responding to me.
By the way, His4Ever, I do want to give you credit for saying you’d comfort the kid, and for saying those who beat him up for wrong. The thing is, when I was a teenager, I was already pretty much convinced of my own worthlessness and sinfulness. I didn’t need someone else reminding me of it.
I find it unpleasantly ironic that one or two kids in a school whose sexuality violates injunctions against homosexuality in a few places get beaten down on a daily basis by other kids whose actions directly violate Christ’s own instruction to love your neighbor as yourself, yet there’s far more outcry from society about the former than the latter. Can it really be that Paul trumps Christ, or is this just another case of majority rule (rude?)?
CJ