Wait, wait, wait - the gay community has historically faced persecution, harassment, discrimination, abuse, ostracision, humiliation, pain, suffering, fear, and death, and we’re the ones who need to be more accepting?
Acknowledging the inevitable cry of, “But Christians have faced that toooooooo!”, let me just say that lady, you are a piece of work.
Esprix
Ava, in view of our contretemps in another thread, would you please accept my praise for an excellent and scholarly review of those controverted Bible passages?
Ava, in view of our contretemps in another thread, would you please accept my praise for an excellent and scholarly review of those controverted Bible passages?
A thought: It is one thing to say (at least in matters that affect no one but the person doing the thing), “Bleh, I don’t like what you do - it’s not for me.” It is another thing to say, “Bleh, I don’t like what you do - it is wrong.” This applies to everything from liking country music to having pre-marital sex. (Caveat: Please keep in mind that “sin” means “wrong.”)
Just a thought.
Esprix
And a damn good one, Esprix.
I am unable, constitutionally incapable, of believing in God. I could pretend, I could say, I could hope and I could wish. But I just cannot believe in something I cannot believe in, my beliefs are outside my control. I cannot force myself. Anyone have a problem with that? Disagree? Can you imagine a manner in which I might actually MAKE myself believe in God when I do not?
Now, let’s say I’m a believer in God, and truly believe, in my heart, that homosexuality is a sin. (How I came by the belief is not the point, it is simply my belief.) However, because I have tried very hard, and prayed, and done whatever, I have learned not to condemn people who are gay. I have come to understand that being gay is not a choice. And I have decided to love gay people anyway, because they are my fellow human beings and being gay and dealing with it is just the burden they have in this life. But I still believe it is wrong, and I am disturbed by the practice of it.
How can you not accept that this is the best I can do? I cannot MAKE myself really * believe * that it is NOT a sin. And you would condemn me for this? I love you, I accept you, I do not condemn you, I just know that your “condition” makes you sin, and I cannot make myself know anything different. Loving you in spite of it is the best I can come up with.
And you are going to call me a bigot? Dismiss me as a hater? Why do I have to believe something I can’t believe before you will accept my love?
I cannot get over how unreasonable it is for you guys to insist that anyone who cares about you on any level has to be either neutral or postive about your sexuality, because that’s what YOU think is right, and you are completely unwilling to allow for the fact that people just aren’t perfect, and they are doing the best they can. Really, it’s astonishing to me.
Here’s a real life example for you…I’m morbidly obese. I know that I’m a terrific person in spite of this, and that being obese does not make me bad. I also know that many, many people think otherwise. They think I’m weak, self-indulgent, gross, stupid, sloppy, what the fuck ever. Fuck them. And some people are completely without any opinion of my obesity, and a few even like it. And then there is another category… people who love me very much, but hate my obesity. They find it physically repellent. One of them is my closest friend in all the world, with whom I have been extremely close for 30 years. I happen to know that she finds my obesity repellent. It disgusts her. She can’t help it, it is a visceral response she has. (She does not tell me this or show me this, she does not rub it in or bug me or hassle me or even bring it up, but over the course of 30 years it has been discussed once or twice.) But she pushes that aside and loves me above all other persons in the world apart from her husband. It’s something she really dislikes about me. And that’s fine. I’m a little sad she has such a reaction, but I don’t dwell on it, and I don’t insist that she go into therapy to get over it. It doesnt’ matter because she loves me anyway.
As it happens, there’s one or two things about her I’m not exactly thrilled about, but I don’t dwell on it, i dwell on how much I love her and what a wonderful friend she is.
Another example: my fiance. He does not prefer me fat. He doesn’t really like it all. But he looked past it to see who I am in my heart and he loves me. He even loves me sexually in spite of the fat. Am I going to insist that he learn to love my fat in order to be my life partner? (He doesn’t insist that I change it, he doesn’t bug me about it.) Again, there’s a thing or two about him I could definitely do without. But I get past it and see the rest of him that I do love.
This is pretty much true of everyone, don’t you think? Why does your sexuality have this special status that it MUST be embraced in order for you to be embraced?
And don’t talk about my weight being “changable” vs. your unchangable sexuality. Whether it is or isn’t changable, I have been fat pretty much my entire life and I may remain so. It is what I am right now and have always been up to this point. To interact with me means you will interact with a fat person. And guess what else? My being fat has had a HUGE effect on my personality, just like your sexuality does with you. But the people who dislike my fat don’t dislike everything about that has been affected by my fat, just the fat.
I have also been abused, rejected, discriminated against, hated, judged and dismissed out of hand for being fat. All of which is unacceptable and I will fight to see it end. But I don’t for a minute think it is reasonable of me to insist that everyone has to LIKE fat. Because I don’t believe that people can MAKE themselves like something that they don’t.
Can you stop feeling put upon for a second and consider the similiarities here? And maybe consider that really, not everyone has to love your sexuality to love you, and not loving your sexuality doesn’t make them hateful, merely human?
Stoid, your weight analogy has come the closest I’ve seen yet to describing the gay debate, but it’s not 100%, and I’m going to think about it for a bit. But I did have a couple off-the-cuff things:
Well, when (the hypothetical) you gets over your own sin, then I’ll be happy to sit down and discuss this with you.
Well I’m sorry that (the hypothetical) you have to grit your teeth and somehow bear the burden of my sins (that, by the way, don’t affect you one bit) and love me “in spite of” my being so “wrong.” (Since when is love wrong?)
Argh. You’re missing it by a mile, at least as far as I’m concerned. 
To not be honestly positive about who I love is disingenious to both of us. It is, in effect, rejecting who I am. You (well, the hypothetical you, in the above scenario) can shower me with love and affection, but deep down, you see me as wrong. I cannot tolerate that at night you’re praying that I may someday “snap out of it” before I end up in Hell - I mean, that is what all this is about, right? God says it’s wrong, and if I don’t stop, my eternal soul will end up in Hell - that’s what the belief we’re talking about is, isn’t it? The “love” they show by “gently pointing out my sin” is sickening to me - my entire life is not SIN, thank you very much.
Well, I will say that not everyone feels the same way on the issue. Some people are fine with their friends or family simply not discussing personal issues, and some are fiercely in the “love all of me or not at all” camp. Obviously you are in the former camp regarding your weight (you can have people in your life that are actually repulsed by such a, forgive the term, large part of you), but I’m afraid I’ve been out for so long that I have little patience for people who look upon my love (or the physical expression thereof) as sin, even if they were to give me their kidney. Will I be nice back to them? Of course I will. But these are not people I’m going to consciously pursue as my new best friends. I’ve worked too long and too hard fighting the prejudices I was taught to accept myself to have someone else come along and, no matter how noble their intentions, take backhanded blows to my self-worth.
I can accept both, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it, nor do I have to be their best buddy in spite of it.
Suppose I were to say (using your own words), “Let’s say I’m a believer in God, and truly believe, in my heart, that obesity is a sin. It is wrong, and I am disturbed by the practice of it.” I see a huge difference between “believing it to be a sin” and “simply accepting the differences in us all.” One is tolerant, the other is telling someone they are wrong. If obesity were an actual enumerated sin in the Bible, and were enforced with such tenacity as homosexuality is, I think you might feel differently.
I do see what you’re getting at, but I think we’re just in disagreement over how important sexual orientation is to the core of your being.
Esprix
Actually, not really. What I think is the problem is that because you understand how central it is to your identity, you project that someone who is hating that aspect of you is hating so much else about you, when THEY don’t see it the same way. It may inform a million aspects of your character, but none of that is at issue for the person with the problem.
They have a problem with pretty much ONE thing: you have sex with men. That’s it. That’s the only thing they don’t like. They like or love everything else about you, even if those things wouldn’t be what they are if you were straight. So even if being gay affects 100 different things about you, the only one that is the sin part is the sex part. You are the one feeling like it’s a much bigger hate than it is, not them.
It’s the same with my obesity. It is just one very obvious aspect of many other things about me, all of them intertwined and ultimately many of them positive. People who look at my flesh and go “Yuck” but love who I am in every other way are hating ONE thing: the fat. Not the psychology behind it, not the ways it has affected me, not the imprint it has made on my life. Just the flesh itself. It is ugly to their eye, wrong, disturbing. But if they are not going to let that affect the way they feel about me, treat me, or respond to me in any other way, I’m just not going to worry about it. I’m not going to make it more of a problem than it has to be, for either of us.
And I don’t think you should either.
And by the way, if the Bible spoke against my fat, it wouldnt’ faze me. It has no place in my world. But the television, the magazines, and the movies all speak against me every day, all day. I am very sensitive to the world’s ready judgment of me as a person based on my appearance, I’m sure I’m as sensitive to that as you are to sexuality discrimination. But I’m long over being so militant about it that I expect people to love my rolls of flesh if they are gonna love me at all. I just don’t think it’s a positive way of dealing with it. I figure the more people who can practice love in spite of their prejudices, the closer they get to getting over those prejudices entirely. Being judged and rejected for their failings won’t help anything.
Then they are imbeciles. The fact is that if they hate something so central about me, so defining about every other sapect of my character, as my sexuality, then they hate me. I am my sexuality. The two cannot be separated. Hate it, and you hate me, no matter what you think. Most people who hate homosexuality are so stupid that it should be illegal, so its not surprising that they don’t understand the situation. Doesn’t mean its not the case, though.
Immaterial. I am my sexuality. You hate it, you hate me. If you want to change it, you want to destroy me.
Yes, because that’s any of their damn business. Homosexuality is NOT about sex.
Who I am is indivisibly tied to my sexuality. You can no more love me in spite of that than you can love me in spite of my humanity.
**
Asthe one being persecuted against, mine is the only opinion on the matter which counts.
And again, anyone so absurdly stupid as to think that homosexuality only effects who one sleeps with is such an over-the-top imbecile that they aren’t worth being friends with in the first place.
The best thing for everyone in the world, particularly Christians, would be to gather every single copy of the Bible together and burn it. No single work of fiction has ever inflected more damage on the world than that asinine book.
** Sdrawkab: **
[Eddie Izzard] Heard it! [/Eddie Izzard]
’Sprix, I’m fortunate in that my beliefs do not compel me to regard who you love or how you show that love as necessarily sinful (I do have a thing about lust in the theological sense – the objectification of someone else as an object for sexual desire – but that’s not applicable to committed relationships or even the majority of romantic liaisons.
However, I’m curious as to what your reaction was to the Snark Hunter gay-sex-is-like-a-dangerous-ski-jump thread from about two years ago – you said you were going to comment later, and then it train-wrecked and was locked before you did. The discussion there has some relevance to what’s been going on here. Do you recall it?
I find empathy to be rather effective. Regardless of what I think of what the Bible might say about it (and in that I reserve judgment), I believe that it would in many ways be difficult to live life as an known homosexual given many current opinions about homosexuals and the lack of protections for certain rights for homosexuals, at least in the United States. One thing I found really useful was reading a thread on gaybashing. I warn all in advance that many of the events presented there are truly awful.
While I understand that sexual orientation is at the core of your personal being, (and this is directed to all who do not identify as heterosexual) is it equally at the core of the being of all who identify as non-heterosexual? Is it possible that there could be a gay person who doesn’t consider the fact that they are gay to be a major defining factor in who they are?
Originally posted by Sdrawcab
Congratulations, “Mom” (mommy dearest would be more accurate) – you’ve just taken a highly at-risk child and shown them disdain and hate, increasing the chance that he will do what so many gay teens do – try to kill himself. They ever find his self-mutilated corpse in a bathtub with his wrists slit one morning the future, you would do well to remember your little “God’s gonna send you to Hell” lecture.
quote:
I didn’t judge him in no way he came to his own conclusion.
I’m sorry, but is this supposed to be English?
Sdrawcab
I’m sorry to say that you opinion of this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The child (which is 18 years old) in which my mother (jjrt) was referring to is not a “highly at-risk child”. In fact he is a very intellectual, strong minded person and could care less what the world around him has to think about his homosexuality. He holds my mothers opinion in very high regards and often times he has came to her when approached with problems that he will not even talk about with his biological parents (who have thrown him out of his home because of his homosexuality). Being homosexual is a choice that some people choose to make and if that is what makes them happy, then so be it, after-all that is their decision to make. It is not mine or yours or anyone else to make for that matter. The child that my mom has referred to has never once had thoughts of committing suicide, he is a very happy young man, and has come far in life, I guess that it comes from that good down home southern hospitality that allows him to be a happy person and not an “at risk child”. This “at risk child” is one of my best friends, and will always be that way his sexuality in no way offends me or anyone that is around for that matter. He is a very popular and accepted person…the only way that I can think of that he would or could be an “at risk child” is if my mother had turned him away when he needed someone to talk to when things aren’t going so right in life, or when he needs a shoulder to lean on. She could have easily turned him away just as easily as she took him in as one of her own , this person to me is a brother. As far as her “God’s gonna send you to Hell” lecture, well I was there for that, and the only thing that came from my brothers mouth was “Well I can’t change who I am and I can’t change what is in the Bible…I didn’t even know that it was in there”. The only thing that I can see that my mother did was show this so called “at-risk child” a little love, caring and tenderness that a mother is suppose to express to her children even when the parents of the child doesn’t provide that for them. I guess to me and my friends (that my mother has been there for), does make her a “mommy dearest” and that is meant in the best of intentions, she is the one person that we as young people can talk to with out being harassed for what we may or may not believe. I understand that this world is full of opinions and I respect that, but other people have to do the same as well…life is a two way street, it’s not one way or the other, it goes in both directions.
Sugar Belle, kudos to you for registering and posting an initial post to stick up for your mother – who sounds like a fine lady, both from what I’ve read of her thinking here and what you have to say about her.
But, attempting to keep the personality of someone near and dear to you out of it, the fact remains that while your friend is stable and self-accepting and can deal with people expressing judgments based on religion (and while it’s not my stance, I cannot fault your mother’s if one does subscribe to Bible-based Christianity and therefore have to juxtapose Christ’s message of love with the commandments for moral behavior).
However, and this is a big however, there are a lot of kids who are not blessed with a “Love you but gotta tell you what I think” sort of person like your mother but are hit incessantly with condemnation based on ignorance of who they really are and how they really feel. You can find real-life experiences of other members here who have been through that; you can find accounts of people who did indeed suicide in despair at having been convinced of their own worthlessness and hatefulness.
Backwards[sup]2[/sup] is probably a bit at fault for tarring your mother with the same brush as those who condemned and drove to despair and/or suicide those kids – and who continue to do so. But I think it’s important for your mother and you, and others on the Bible-based side of this debate, to recognize what exactly people taking the more extreme and evident-compassion-less stance are doing to destroy the souls of those they’re trying to “save.”
I hope you won’t see this as an attack on you – it’s an attempt to draw a distinction between what he saw your mother as saying and doing and what she actually was – and to justify, in part, why he might have leaped to that conclusion – to the end that we can all understand each other better. Peace?
Nice that you came to your mother’s defense, Sugar, but you might want to reread your own post for inconsistancies.
You say: “Being homosexual is a choice that some people choose to make…”
You quote your friend as saying: “Well I can’t change who I am …”
Your friend seems to agree with me and every other homosexual on this board, and with pretty much all of the scientific research that homosexuality is NOT a choice.
And as much as you deny it, your friend does have several risks factors that put him in an “at-risk” category. He’s gay. The suicide rate among young gay men is astronomically higher than among their straight counterparts. And they are more successful as a group.
Another risk factor is the fact that his parents kicked him out of their home for being gay. That’s a big blow to the psyche of a young person.
Are you absolutely certain he’s never considered suicide? Perhaps he has just never told you.
I’m not very good with words or expressing things. Not as good as my daughter. But let me assure you all of one thing I have never condemned this young man for what or who he is. What I was trying to show to you all that even though he read what was in the Bible, I did not judge him, nor did any of his peers. Even though we may not agree on his preference does this mean I cannot love this young man? Does this mean I have to be a mean cruel person to him? No it doesn’t!!! Does this mean I need to have all the kids that come here disrespect him? No it doesn’t. Actually some kids have been asked to leave here if they can’t conduct their mouthes properly towards him. Has his true friends been there to stick up for him? Yes they have with most of the time me as the ring leader. Just because he is different doesn’t mean he needs to abused. His parents has already done that, not me. Homebrew I am absolutely certain he has never considered suicide. Had he not found this group of loving kids and a loving place to come to it’'s hard telling what he would have done. If nothing else he has learned to walk with self-respect knowing if his own parents don’t want him their are other people who love him. Which goes back to the original topic of judging versus condoning…Why can’t I just love the young man and not judge or condone him, but enjoy him for who he is?
Need I say more?
Wow, I never thought of that analogy. So’s my husband. Was I born with the ‘total acceptance’ gene or something, that I don’t have to assume other people are gross, repulsive, disgusting or whatever? I must have been.
I have no idea where the repulsiveness comes from but I think that people who feel that way are probably in the wrong. The instinctive “yuck” response isn’t acceptable when seeing people with birth defects or disabilities - those people are ‘different’ and ‘abnormal’ too. Why should we be sympathizing if it makes someone feel all icky to be next to a handicapped person, or hanging out with an obese person, or just knowing what a guy on the message board does in bed. IMO that goes along with the basic tolerance message.
It takes zero effort on my part to acknowledge that being gay isn’t a choice people make, and that it must have some kind of biological origin. 2,000 years ago that may not have been understood very well, especially considering that men had to be cautioned in a couple of different books in the Bible against screwing anything that moved. So, yeah, in the absence of a passage specifically saying ‘men desiring other men is intrinsically evil’ or something I think we ought to, as a society, use common sense and assume this is a naturally occurring thing that we can’t do much about. And they can’t do much about it. I’d love to know how that is an impossibility due to someone’s beliefs; that there’s just no way to reconcile the two facts - that Leviticus says for men not to have sex with other men, and that homosexuality occurs naturally. Out of that we’ve gotten, “well then homosexuality is a choice!” That argument just doesn’t work, so…there’s probably a better answer. Somewhere.
Especially that part where she shows little gay kids how God hates them and will send them to Hell for being who he made them to be.
“Bible-based Christainity” is not Christianity, it is an unsustainable hate cult that worships an incoherent, basically worthless book.
Anybody who slams gay kids with the heinous quotes from the Bible – which don’t even deal with homosexuality as its expressed today – is a gay basher. To expose children under the age of 18 to the filth contained in much of the Bible should be a crime. Decent people love gay people, they don’t slam them upside the head with quotes from a worthless, evil book.
That’s funny to hear from somone who takes advice from an outmoded, outdated, needlessly evil assortment of writings of an ignorant bronze age culture.
All gay teens are at risk and must be protected from the religious fanatics who line up to tell them they are going to Hell.
Yeah, a lot of us put up that front.
Poor deluded fool. He’ll outgrow the childishness of listening to a “Bible Christian” eventually. Hopefully before you or mommy dearest do real damage to his psyche.
Bullsh!t. No one chooses to be gay. that is a lie perpetrated by fanatical religious bigots like you and your mommy dearest. Being gay is a gift from God, it is not a curse, it is not a sin, it is not a choice.
Horsepuckey. I’m from the South. The South is most evil, backward, illiterate and uneducated region of our country. It’s litter with tumorous Baptist churches and evil people who wish the Ku Klux Klan had never fallen out of style. I wouldn’t wish being raised in the South on the worst gay person in the world – no one deserves that terror.
Except from his “southern hospitality” parents, apparently.
There is no love or caring in thrusting your hate literature in the face of an innocent gay child, who should be protected above all else from religious nutcases who take dead words in an old book literally.
You have no idea what that reference means, do you?
SugarBelle wrote:
No, people choose to be obstinate, incorrigable, and obtuse — people who, like you, are unable to choose to be gay but have decided that gay people have done exactly that.