Sorry dude! I think it was far back enough I didn’t feel like scrolling. 
I’m envious. I don’t have a partner, you lucky dog! Keep hold of her.
That is a good question, one I thought of asking myself. I had a Filipina room-mate about a million years ago, and her parents were very old-world and very, VERY Catholic.
Sorry, but I have to call bullshit on Dad. That is 100% false. It is MUCH easier for him to blame the nameless, faceless egg-and-sperm donors.
Imagine if it was all their fault? I can just see heads exploding all over the living room…
Morons.
In line with what others said - well, I’ll use my own parents for an example. My father is one of the most vehemently anti-gay people I know (mom’s a close second), and they base it on Christian teaching. I can’t remember the last time dad set foot in a church, and I’ve never seen him open or read a Bible, but by God it’s against the laws of God and Nature, and <on and on and on>. I have no idea where dad gets it. Mom at least I can understand. One of my cousins is gay. It’s a secret that will no doubt be kept from the family until he dies, and I certainly will not be the one to tell. I know my family. They would destroy him. (As for how I found out? It was a freak accident. But it sure explained a lot about the guy’s previous relationships.) (Fortunately, the chance any of my family read the Dope, or would know which cousin I refer to if they did, is amazingly miniscule.)
I honestly don’t understand the hostility. I’ve lived with it all my life, and I don’t understand it.
I will never understand how some people can become so twisted by religion.
I once stood in a room full of very religious men (rastas) and observed one man declare (in front of his wife) that he would murder his own son if he ever “turned gay.” Not talking about a hypothetical son here, either – he was talking about a kid around five who was scampering around the place.
Nods of righteous agreement all around, generally. (The wife remained silent and unreadable.)
Fucking disgusting.
Well, it is. That’s exactly what I was referring to earlier. Take a small child, raised in a small community, where everyone feels and thinks the same way … this small child will see what happens to others who buck the mindset. I don’t know the right term for this, perhaps MandaJO can help. Indoctrination? That kind of person is so afraid of going against the grain that, yes, they would shun their own children.
The only thing that reasonable people can do is to fight for educating and enlightening until that’s no longer an issue. It can be very difficult if a person has been long ingrained.
Fionn has taken her first steps towards that. And she lives her life she can/will be an example of how “gay” people don’t grow horns or sacrifice babies or any other such horrendous thing. She’s just a beautiful person in love with another beautiful person.
That ought to be enough for anybody.
Wow ! These threads are really one-sided ! Pro-Gay to the MAX ! I hope readers realize this. Well, I didn’t read the original post about the girl being kicked out of the family.
but it sounds very sad. Most religious families would’nt do that, but they would be
very sad about the gayness. Being gay is an ABOMINATION to most religions, thus gays are seldom religious.
So the problem was that his parents were assholes, not the adoption.
Uh, yeah. We also favour banning rape and murder. Hope this doesn’t shock you.
don’t be stupid. This guy had issues with the fact that he had been adopted. His dad was indeed a dick, but many dads are, natural or adopted.
There is another side (probably many sides) to adoption–and a kid feeling abandoned is one of them, as was pointed out by Rigamarole. I don’t agree with his stance, but many do–alot of people want their “own” flesh and blood. And some kids have trouble with the fact that at some point, Mom gave them away. How many stories have we heard over the years about kids looking for their birth mother etc? It seems to be a need for some people–what is wrong with that? Nothing, IMO.
I’m not saying that they need therapy to deal with being adopted-many, if not most are probably fine with it, but it is something that they need to learn about and accept.
What the hell does rape or murder have to do with anything? I am not against adoption, as I stated above. Why does it have to be all rainbows and puppies? Sometimes it’s not.
Sounds to me like avoiding the more difficult truths is seen as more palatable to you–and that sucks for anyone, adopted or no.
Sorry for hijack.
Makes me appreciate my family. I recently divorced, moved back to NY, where I hired a very close friend (someone I had also hired while we were both living overseas), and started to learn how to play hockey. At the time, the only place for beginners to play hockey was on a group of teams run by a gay hockey league. Now, I’m about as straight as they come, but quite frankly it never occured to me that people might get the wrong idea.
So a few months later, my sister googles my name, and of course the very first link is me, now captain of a gay hockey team. She starts putting 2 and 2 and 2 together: divorces, moves to the lower east side in NY, best guy friend follows him to NY, they both play hockey, he’s captain of a gay team… and writes an email to my mom saying that I’m gay.
I get an email the next day from her - ‘So, I hear you’re playing hockey. That sounds fun. If there’s anything you want to tell us, you can, honey, because we’ll love you and the person you love with all our hearts’.
Makes for a great family story. All anyone has to say is ‘so, I hear you’re playing hockey’ and the entire room basically collapses from lack of oxygen.
Any family that would disown another family member for any reason doesn’t deserve to have a family to begin with. Dickwads.
That was a reply to Ollie, not you.
I’m not.
We all have issues. It seems more likely to me that if this guy hadn’t been adopted, he’d have had issues with something else. And if it was the adoption, it’s just because people go on and on about it. People expect being adopted to be this huge big thing, when it’s really not. If people just treated it like a nonissue, it would be a nonissue.
That was to Ollie.
Ollie,
Not all members of these boards are equally pro-GAY. I, for one, am not pro-same sex marriage, probably will never view Brokeback Mountain (though I might one day read the story it is based on) and was generally happier with certain assorted celebrities (like Rosie O’Donnell) being sexless or at least discreet rather than being openly gay.
Still, I would like to consider myself a compassionate human being. As such, I can easily see that Fionn has lost something valuable that DragonAsh will never lose. Parents should unconditionally love and support their children, even as they observe their children making mistakes and generally failling to do the same things that their parents would do. By treating Fionn the way they have, her parents have cost her her ability to call them up to chat, to reminisce about the first day of school, or ask “stupid questions that one only asks parents”.* That’s apart from the fact that Fionn’s parents actions have made life in the short run infinitely more difficult, and show clear signs of not being ready to be there for her if she needs real emotional support.
DragonAsh, on the other hand, while describing a misunderstanding worthy of a sitcom, showed that his mother will be there for him no matter what. To me, that’s what the response the parent should be. Not you horrible evil child, straighten up and fly right or you are out on your ear, but I love you and care about you, and if there is someone special in your life, I’d like to meet that person. I’d like to welcome that person into our family gatherings, because YOU matter.
- Me (to my mother, recently) Um, how do you know when you should replace your windshield wiper blades? And how do you pick a good brand? And, should I change them both at once? I don’t see any problems with the passenger side one.
Mom: When they quit wiping properly. Why do you ask?
Dad: Oh, you just kind of pick a brand that looks good–I don’t know if there are any dfferences between them. I’d probably change them both at once.
Mom: If you are thinking they need changing you should do so soon, before you leave town again.
Me: OK
For the record, my car now has new windshield wiper blades. And yes, people without parents, or with aging parents, or with parents who don’t drive can still find people who can answer these kind of questions for them. Still, talk to many an adult between the age of 25 and 40, and I’ll be they can remember a time when they asked their parents a question, or called to gripe, even when the parent wouldn’t logically be able to help. But one of the roles we expect from our parents is answerer of stupid questions.
The Dope is (as far as I can tell, not being gay) quite gay-friendly, seeing how as gay people are just people.
I question two of your premises: do most religions consider homosexuality an ABOMINATION, and are most gay people not religious?
How many Western religions are accepting of homosexuality? The two biggest ones, RCC & Islamic are not. The Protestant faiths vary and how about Orthodox Judaism? Ollie might not be too far off.
Jim
I dunno about “most”. “Many” would certainly be accurate. The problem with using “most” is that it’s sweeping numerous large religious groups under the rug. For example, the United Church of Canada (iirc a denomination formed by a merger of Methodists and Presbyterians somewhere early in the last century) which happens to be the largest Protestant denomination in Canada has been marrying gays and lesbians for several years, and showed up in the recent legal battles over the issue to say to the courts, more or less, ‘hey the RCC isn’t the only religious group in the world, and some churches support this’. There are other mainstream denominations that are, at the very least, not on the anti-gay side of things - Episcopalians, for example, and there are others. Then you’ve got your Unitarian Universalists, and some Reform Jews, and the list just goes on.
It is true that almost all of the political opposition to same-sex marriage and the like arises out of religious groups. It is not true that almost all religious groups are opposed to same-sex marriage.
Gorsnak,
Atheist Mennonite
Because the issue is rather one sided. Being anti-gay is just baseless bigotry, and the great majority of people hold the parent-child bond to be of immense importance. After all, what kind of argument can you make for “Gays are evil, and Fionn’s parents were right to cast her out ! Unclean ! Unclean !”
Don’t forget the Congregationalists. My 83-year-old mother recently told me, with an air of “My, my, imagine that!” but no whiff of disapproval, that the current pastor of the church our family attended is a woman who recently married her lesbian partner. “Isn’t love grand” sentimentality definitely overruled any trace of “What’s this world coming to” for her, and Mom was never exactly in the forefront of any liberation movements.
I wasn’t attempting any exhaustive list. There are lots of gay-friendly religious groups that I passed over, mostly because I don’t know about nearly all of them. 