How does it make sense? The pastor’s actions - hiding his sex with other men- were perfectly rational given the consequences he knew he’d suffer if the news leaked out. And the pastor didn’t actually hide his “sexuality” in a blanket way, only one part of it, the part he knew would not be accepted. I fail to see how his rational actions reflect on his orientation. I can’t see a connection there at all.
Of course, he acted irrationally first by becoming a preacher, as Bricker pointed out. But people aren’t perfectly rational. If they were, we probably wouldn’t be having this discussion. Anyone who follows the news long enough gets a pretty good sense of just how common cognitive dissonance is.
Yes and no. I think it’s more accurate to say he was a closeted bisexual. And that he certainly was by choice. He could’ve chosen to live his life openly, but he didn’t want to bear the consequences of doing that.
Agreed. And the distinction is also lost on those who claim men like Barnes were born gay and are homosexuals, their children being strong evidence to the contrary.
Whenever I see a mention of Shere Hite, I immediately recall being in a bookstore 25 years ago, opening her book on male sexuality to the back, and seeing table after table of astoundingly consistent survey results. As in, if 85% of the survey respondents answered ‘Yes’ to a question, then between 84% and 86% of the respondents in the various subgroups answered ‘Yes’. There were whole pages of this phenomenon, repeated for different questions.
I would be far more likely to believe you than to believe Shere Hite.
What thoughts of his, specifically? I’m not sure any specifics of those thoughts have been brought into this thread, other than that he had some thoughts at age 5 that involved boys.
There’s certainly different kinds of thoughts and actions, and I’d bet they have very different implications. It’s true that prepubescents are amenable to engaging in sexual play with other children of both sexes. It was true for me, and it was true for many of us, I’m sure.
But I never had romantic thoughts about another boy at any age. OTOH, like others here, I can remember having what were clearly ‘crushes’ on girls all the way back to age 5. I didn’t choose to be attracted to girls in this manner; it was what I was.
That’s silly. Just the way I can remember being romantically attracted to girls, and only girls, ever since I was five years old, and seeing in retrospect that I was clearly heterosexual by then, I’m sure Barnes can also trace back the thread of his same-sex attraction to when he was that age. It isn’t just how he was at age five, but the apparent continuity of what he regards as a temptation from that point forward.
Your experiences are similar to my own, as well as that of many of the men Hite interviewed for her books. I did not intend to cite them as scientific “proof” of anything, only as anecdotal evidence. But becausue she relates experiences similar to mine, yours, and many, many men I know, I’m inclined to believe she was on to something.
The best way to remove temptation is to yield to it, something that Barnes, unlike you, was not openly free to do. If you and I had similar experiences as boys in how we related to both other boys and to girls, but I am less sure than you about being heterosexual, I’d just conclude the same thing: childhood experiences/thoughts/desires don’t prove anything. Nor are they destiny.
When I was 5 that was exactly what I doing, with John Witter. Naked. And looked a my father’s playboys.Given that that was the only year we lived next door to him I trust my memory pretty far.
Epimetheus, I have three or four memories from when I was two. One of them is confirmed with a black and white photograph, but I remember it in color and I remember what I was thinking at the time and what happened just before.
In another, at 25 months, I remember the conversation and what I was thinking. I think that an object left over from that day helped to keep the memory alive. The same is true with a couple of other memories that came a few months later.
Yet I am extremely forgetful now.
At the age of five I was aware that “girls were in love with boys” and I pretended to kiss boys in my fantasy world. That came from going to movies.
The pastor probably understands those feelings that he had at age five in light of all the other feelings he’s had, and things he’s done, since. A friend of mine had a crush on Lynda Carter, similar to Shagnasty’s and he is “as gay as a man can get.” He descibed his crush to me as being proof that he was gay. Barnes is probably looking at those experinces in light of everything else he knows about his sexuality.
a fundalmentalist once tried to explain to me that Homosexuality was a choice. I looked him square in the eye and asked “So… when did you decide to be straight?”
Barnes seems more “movie of the week” sympathetic that the John Paulk and Ted Haggard brand of hypocrites; I can’t even fault him for being against Same Sex Marriage since some gays are against SSM. I’m not without compassion for him; it’s as easy to paint him and Haggard and Paulk and Bakker and other gay/bisexual ministers with the same broad dark comic stereotype one-dimensional colors as it is for Fund. ministers to paint gay men as frivolous and promiscuous lisping party boys and lesbians as {whatever Fund.s paint lesbians as- they’re not so much spoken about, really}, and I’ve stereotyped them myself.
The most disturbing thing to me, however, is that these same people who rail about the sanctity of marriage are the very ones most undermining it by suggesting that gay men should marry women and trust in God to heal them, when not just study after study but anecdotal evidence of all kinds could not be stronger that “IT DOES NOT STOP ‘DA GAY’”. A marriage between a gay* man and a straight woman is so unfair to both parties, particularly when the woman is uninformed or when the members of the union are rarely in a society or position that encourages secular counselling or even discussing the issue in depth. For every Cole and Linda Porter “eyes wide open marriage of companionship and convenience” there’s an Oscar & Constance Wilde/Charles Laughton & Elsa Lanchester/Liza Minelli & Peter Allen/Michael & Ariana Huffington/etc etc style humiliating tragedy that follows years of secret lives and self loathing for both parties and… it’s just not good. (Should a gay man and a straight [or gay] woman be allowed to marry each other? Of course, just as a 74 year old and a 25 year old should be allowed to, but both parties should be fully informed, and knowing “my husband is sexually attracted to other men but the minister says it will go away” is not fully informed.)
Anyway, my heartfelt condolences and best wishes to Barnes since he does not seem to be on or past the fulcrum on the hypocrisy scale, and of course to his family. I hope they all reach an arrangement where they can continue to love each other and live in happiness or something like it. But I also hope that they will help others to see that this is not a simple issue or one that is resolved even through the most devout of prayer and sincere of intentions.
Meanwhile- a slight hijack- I was watching John Hagee railing against gay marriage the other day. Hagee was an adulterer while married to his first wife, divorced her, married his second wife while the first wife was still living. Jesus Christ, who never spoke a word against or in support of homosexual sex (while it’s hardly likely that given his culture he’d have praised it or even sanctioned it, the fact remains that he never specifically condemned it or spoke to the issue at all), is quoted in three of the Gospels (that’s more than mention the Virgin Birth or the Beatitudes) condemning remarriage while the former spouse still lives. Does anybody know how Hagee justifies this and why do his followers blindly accept this as they applaud his condemnation of gay rights?
*Gay here meaning one whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively towards members of the same sex. For those not familiar, it is quite possible to fall into this category and have [or even enjoy] sex with members of the opposite gender.
Decades? To be fair, prejudice and oppression against homosexuals has been cultivated for centuries, and by many different religions and societies. I do agree that anyone who thinks that people who were taught x all their life will suddenly become enlightened and believe y is naive.
Am I the only one seeing the obvious fact that the Jews are to blame for homosexuality? Oh, sorry, wrong century.
Anywho, somone who knows they’re gay but then proceeds to construct a mental prison for themself by spending each and every day denouncing in the most hysterical terms what they know deep down they really want to do, and watching the joy blossom on the faces of people who are connecting and agreeing with such hate-promoting crap is already in hell. IMHO.
As you may know, I am a gay man who has been happily married to my partner for 30 years (and legally married here in Canada for almost 1 year) and I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that unless a person is the victim of rape, the decision to have homosexual sex IS absolutely, certainly a matter of choice.
The catch here is that a person’s sexual orientation is NOT a matter of choice. Only the decision to have sex as a result of that orientation is. In point of fact, I was aware that I was homosexual from puberty at least, but I REMAINED A VIRGIN UNTIL 25. Find that hard to believe? Believe it folks. I could not and would not accept my own orientation until I was 25. At that point, I obviously made a CHOICE to be sexually active rather than to continue to live in sexual frustration. But there is no denying it WAS a choice involved. That is undeniable. I think I made a great choice, and my 30 years of happiness with my spouse proves it.
Believe it or not, even the Catholic Church recognizes that gay people do not choose to be gay. But their position, like that of any conservative religion, is simply that one must resist the temptation to have such sex.
In other words, they are telling me that their God is a practical joker who would give me a certain sexual orientation and then tell me that if I ever use it, he will send me to Hell. Luckily, I do not believe in their God at all, so this is really not much of a theological problem for me.
Now of course, the trick used by the religious right is to confuse the issues of sexual orientation and sexual activity. Because of course, most fair-minded people, even in the “red” states, would probably agree that if a person can’t help but be gay, why hold it against him? But by using the word “choice” over and over again indiscriminately, they can give people the impression that gay people “choose” to be “unnatural” when they could just as easily choose to have a wife and 2.5 kids in the suburbs. If you can get voters to believe that, you can get them to vote down gay rights.
I saw a show where they interviewed a “saved” gay man (Is the proper term “reconverso,” perhaps?). He was married up to a similarly reconstructed lesbian woman. They had a “sponsor” couple, also a gay man married to a lesbian woman. The four of them apparently spent quite a lot of time together. A LOT of time. Whenever one of them started feeling those urges, I have no doubt that he or she went to the other couple and spent a long time in private with the corresponding spouse. They all seemed quite happy.
For some reason, I’m reminded of my company’s IT manager commenting how all the workarounds are preventing him from being able to really improving the network.
Ever since the 20’s, gay cowboys have been flouncing all over movie screens. Didn’t you know that “sleeping out with the lonhorns” was gay code? And those sequinned shorts, and guitars around the campfires… to die for.
Who was that guy who drove “Nelliebelle the Jeep”? Naming such a manly vehicle “Nellie” was a dead giveaway.
Valteron - Please tell me there was a happy ending to this story and that you spent every night for the following few years in sex clubs having amazing orgies of porn-film proportions making up for lost time.
