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Married Gays vs Non-Married Gays

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magsdee
Disabled
Joined in 2006
February 14, 2008, 10:14

When I was little, my parents told me their was a God who made everything and loved little children and I was brought up as a Catholic but not a strict Catholic. We didnt go to mass every Sunday and when I did it was through my school. I always wanted to do something for God and even as little as 6 I would preach to a pretend audience from some book held upside down but knew I could never be a Priest so just dreamed. Then at the age of 9-10 I learnt about Jesus and wanted to be like him, I fell in love with who he was and would go around the playground telling the kids I loved them cause Jesus did ( to their disgust lol ) even then I tried to model my life around who I saw him to be and that is kind and helpful to the poor or people treated unwell and I tried to adhere to the 10 commandments. All through my life I could always sense him around me and always talked to him in some way or other. My Mum always said that I could go to him about anything and he wont get mad, no matter what the Nuns said lol as long as I am respectful and humble and if I swore just to say sorry.

Then older, I dabbled in the occult and other religions here and there but I always believed in a one true God and Jesus, I just didnt know Jesus like I know him now. I think its good to present God to children in a wayy thats not “metal rodded” and not full on full on, I mean gees we can barely grasp it all how can they roll I was given free reign to question and wander and because of that I did end up always coming back to God, its almost like a prodigal story isnt it. Deep down I always fully believed, I just didnt know scripture very much if at all, all I had was a childrens Bible which when I was 9 always said that I would always read at least once a year right through and I always did until I was in my late teens. But thats my journey. wink



Dove Snuggler
 
Joined in 2007
February 14, 2008, 19:11

(Just stepping back in the discussion a little if I may?)


Raskdog said:


“…my homosexuality is so pervasive that I just don’t know how to relate to a woman beyond the friendship level.”


Raskdog, I quite understand this dilemma. As a former married man I feel I’m sometimes treated with suspicion by gay men. Having only come out to my family 4 years ago I’m like a gay juvenile in a middle-aged body … meaning I still have much to learn about my new life.


But along the lines of what Anthony was saying, I was pretty much forced by my church to marry in my 20’s. If I was caught in a gay relationship again I was threatened that I would be excommunicated and go to hell.


As for my response to my wife, I truly loved her. It was something to do with the heart, mind and soul being able to make a commitment to that person I believed God had sent to be my partner. Physically I also received a lot of the sexual satisfaction my body needed … for a year or 3. (Hey, a certain part of the male anatomy has no conscience…)


But I was also a reasonably good actor in that my wife never suspected that I was gay or that I continuously felt unfulfilled in my physical relationship, longing every day for the male intimacy I had turned my back on.


At least I thought I was a good actor. In fact my wife thought I was a lousy lover and she felt very unfulfilled. Despite the string of traumas and tragedies that marred our marriage, my unconvincing attempts to be husband to a woman were very much a part of the reason my wife eventually called an end to the marriage.


Raskdog, I could have thought I was just a freak of nature. Someone who sadly tried to change his stars (Heath Ledger in ‘A Knight’s Tale’). However between Anthony’s book and many other ex-married gays I’ve met, I assure you I’m not so strange after all.


At the same time it’s one of those individual things that everybody can’t possibly empathise with it. We just hope the collective ‘you’ can accept that we have a right to recover from the pain of our present or past journeys. And learn how to live the truth.


It’s been a great post. Cheers!


Kit



Dove Snuggler
 
Joined in 2007
February 14, 2008, 19:58

As already highlighted by Orfeo, Raskdog also said:


“A child should not be indoctrinated into one way of seeing the world. Rather they should be encouraged to ask questions and investigate for themselves. Then when they are older they can make an informed decision.”


I like Magsdee’s answer Raskdog. I also agree with you in a way. Children are vulnerable, particularly small children, who need the nurture of their parents and churches. I think most churches are blinkered to the fact that they feed children biblical crap (small ‘b’). Stories of bloodshed, slaughter and fantasy that may be nothing more than the glory of Jewish folklore according to some writers. (My question is not the truth of these stories but their relevance to children).


It’s not surprising that churches and Christian parents also teach children what they believe, just as any education system does. Considering the diversity of religious belief in our world, children are inevitably told some bizarre concoctions.


Older children do question things. Seeing a Christian minister attempting to strangle his mother, my son (then just 11) began to hate Christianity and refused to go to church. 14 years later he still sees religion as one of the most negative periods of his life, despite my feeble attempts to love and support him through his grief. How could I have imagined I was adequte for such a task?


In reality the criminal and negligent actions of a Christian leader are the actions of a distorted human being that are SO not ‘Christian’. But that’s where today’s children … and we as children … have been trapped.


Many children are resilient. Some are not. Some tragically fail to survive. I think our job is to work to preserve the integrity and dignity of children who come within our sphere of influence.


Kit



magsdee
Disabled
Joined in 2006
February 14, 2008, 20:30

Kit said


Many children are resilient. Some are not. Some tragically fail to survive. I think our job is to work to preserve the integrity and dignity of children who come within our sphere of influence.


I so totally agree, little ones are so precious, we should be very mindful of what we feed them. Its sad, very sad when a religious rod is what kids get, no wonder they rebel or feel completely unworthy or worse still, dont want to live anymore if they feel they “blew it”.


With my nephews and nieces I always made sure if I didnt know something, I would say so and not feed them rubbish. I told my 2 nieces and nephew about Jesus and they believed in Him a few days later, they were then 11 and 13. I didnt say they had to go to church or even pray every day, I said the praying was up to them but just talking to Him about anything was also wonderful at any time. They are now 25 (twins) and 27. They still believe but in there own way, when they have questions we talk it through and the rest is up to them.


If it wasnt for my Mum I would be a big mess regarding God, the Nuns made me so fearful of God that I was afraid to sleep in case I thought or dreamt something that would make him mad ( I was 10), she explained it wasnt so. It reared its ugly head again when I was Born Again and because of some of the teaching I got but eventually that was also smoothed out.


February 14, 2008, 21:14

But along the lines of what Anthony was saying, I was pretty much forced by my church to marry in my 20’s. If I was caught in a gay relationship again I was threatened that I would be excommunicated and go to hell.



Did they hold a gun to your head? As I said before I grew up in an extremely homophobic environment. To me although in lots of ways I desired to get married to have kids and feel accepted socially it just wasn’t physically or emotionally possible for me.


Physically I also received a lot of the sexual satisfaction my body needed … for a year or 3. (Hey, a certain part of the male anatomy has no conscience…)


See to me that is bisexuality. A woman would not satisfy me for a day let alone 3 years. A few weeks ago I slept next to a woman on the floor of a friend’s house after a party. During the night in her sleep she put her arm around me. I was thinking, “Get me out of here”. I didn’t like the feeling at all.


Raskdog, I could have thought I was just a freak of nature. Someone who sadly tried to change his stars (Heath Ledger in ‘A Knight’s Tale’). However between Anthony’s book and many other ex-married gays I’ve met, I assure you I’m not so strange after all.

At the same time it’s one of those individual things that everybody can’t possibly empathise with it. We just hope the collective ‘you’ can accept that we have a right to recover from the pain of our present or past journeys. And learn how to live the truth.



I appreciate your post Kit and hope your new life works out well for you. However, I hope the collective “you” realises that for us gay guys who have battled loneliness and isolation all our lives you often come across as superficial and arrogant.



Sandy
 
Joined in 2007
February 14, 2008, 21:50

The reason Christianity attracts such strong critisim from its opponents is not because there is insufficient evidence to confirm Jesus’ soverignty. People who disbelieve Christinity believe scientific theories that have not be proven yet, the power of alternative medicines that are untested and the presence of gosts and spirits amoung us. They believe all these things on faith, the same phenomenon that allows the Christian to trust in Jesus.


The reason Christianity recieves such blantant and emotive critisism is because it denotes and demands that there are absolute truths, applicable to all people, in all countries and across all time. Christianity sets itself up as a benchmark from which the Christian believer can evaluate the world and from which a single set of morals and values can be adhered to. It is a bold and unprecedented statement to make.


Pantheism has recieved much attention over the last few years because people refuse to trust in one truth, they want options! There is no wrong or right rather several paths up the same mountain. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Hisduism, New Age spirituality and even increasingly atheism (though that departs from the pantheist doctrine) are all different ways of comming to be a ‘good person’ which is the most anyone can expect to be. God is not a personal diety but an emotionless, vauge entity.


No wonder so many people have a problem with Christianity, a belief system which not only embraces God but personalises Him, humanises Him. However, the very definition of belief is to trust that something is true. I’m not a parent so perhaps I am unqualifued to say but I would assume that as a parent you would wish to impart upon your children all the things which you believed to be true, everything fro not touching a hot stove to Christianity. It is an idealistic, theoretical idea to imagine that growing up in a household with Christian parents they would not teach Christian ideals. Here’s why…


On a functional level a family may all attend church together because babysitting is unavalible and the kids would be required to attend sunday school because they are not allowed in the adult service, plus thats what all the other kids there are doing and they want to be like them, they don’t want to miss out on what goes on behind those mysterious sunday school doors. The same family might also host a bible study at their house and the children would hear the bible read and spoken about through it is not being taught dirrectly to them. The same goes with the parental conversations as prayer, worship and talk of Jesus becomes a part of everyday discussion prompting questions from the kids like ‘who is Jesus?’ to which the parents must answer with what they believe to be true.


On a more philospohical level not to teach your kids directly about Christinity is to assume that there are other valid options avalible to them, since Christianity for most is the only single path to God no other option exixts. So thats like saying to your kids “I’m not going to teach you the facts you ought to believe for salvation and eternal inherritance because these ither false ideas which will lead you nowhere deserve the same amount of attention.” If you truely believe in something so powerful, lifechanging and importnat as Christianity is then you will teach it to your kids and if you don’t through your daily life as a Christian person your kids will pick it up anyway.


I understand why some call it brainwashing. But then we are ‘brainwashed’ by our parents in all sorts of ways. My mother brainwashed me into iorning everything from business shirts to tea towels, my father brainwashed me into believing all people are intrinsicaly good. Brainwashing is merely to instill or change attitudes or beliefs through sytematic repition or indoctrination. Why the word is brandied about with a negative connotation I have no idea. In the end all parents instill ethics, values and belief systems onto their children

through ‘brainwashing’ its only when other people disagree with what has been taught that it ever gets that lable though.


February 14, 2008, 22:22

It is a bold and unprecedented statement to make


.


You left out arrogant.


If this is true, why doesn’t Islam(apart from Terrorists) or Judaism, or Scientology for that matter cop the same criticism. All hold the same emphasis on absolute truth.


No wonder so many people have a problem with Christianity, a belief system which not only embraces God but personalises Him, humanises Him. However, the very definition of belief is to trust that something is true. I’m not a parent so perhaps I am unqualifued to say but I would assume that as a parent you would wish to impart upon your children all the things which you believed to be true, everything fro not touching a hot stove to Christianity. It is an idealistic, theoretical idea to imagine that growing up in a household with Christian parents they would not teach Christian ideals. Here’s why…


No, you would want your child to be the best they can be. You would want them to find their own unique personality and identity in the world. You would want them to respect others and have others respect them. You would want them to do well at school and find a career that will provide for their needs and give them satisfaction. None of this involves religious indoctrination.


I was taught from a young age that masturbation is wrong. I lived in morbid dread every time I did the deed that I was sinning in God’s eyes and would be somehow punished, when in reality it is a perfectly natural and acceptable way of sexual gratification. I grew up believing that I would go to hell for being gay and repressed any desires that I now see as naturally part of who I am. I grew up very sexually inhibited and unable to see sex as a good thing, given by God to be enjoyed(with integrity of course).


On a functional level a family may all attend church together because babysitting is unavalible and the kids would be required to attend sunday school because they are not allowed in the adult service, plus thats what all the other kids there are doing and they want to be like them, they don’t want to miss out on what goes on behind those mysterious sunday school doors. The same family might also host a bible study at their house and the children would hear the bible read and spoken about through it is not being taught dirrectly to them. The same goes with the parental conversations as prayer, worship and talk of Jesus becomes a part of everyday discussion prompting questions from the kids like ‘who is Jesus?’ to which the parents must answer with what they believe to be true


.


I’m not saying you shouldn’t tell your kids what you believe. Of course you should. But to ram it down their throats and install in them the fear of hell if you don’t believe is abuse.


If you truely believe in something so powerful, lifechanging and importnat as Christianity is then you will teach it to your kids and if you don’t through your daily life as a Christian person your kids will pick it up anyway


.


I found coming out as a gay man incredibly powerful and life changing. It doesn’t mean that I would insist that my child, if I had one, turn gay.


I understand why some call it brainwashing. But then we are ‘brainwashed’ by our parents in all sorts of ways. My mother brainwashed me into iorning everything from business shirts to tea towels, my father brainwashed me into believing all people are intrinsicaly good. Brainwashing is merely to instill or change attitudes or beliefs through sytematic repition or indoctrination. Why the word is brandied about with a negative connotation I have no idea. In the end all parents instill ethics, values and belief systems onto their children

through ‘brainwashing’ its only when other people disagree with what has been taught that it ever gets that lable though.


Ironing tea towels is not a moral or ethical issue. When you were older did you think, “Gee if I don’t iron this tea towel will I go to hell?”



Sandy
 
Joined in 2007
February 14, 2008, 22:59

Your right Christianity is arrogant in the sense that the term means to make claims of superior importance to other claims. I thought I summed that up in the prelude but if not then feel free to add it. So many of these terms have negative connatations that don’t necessarily apply.


*shrugs* I can’t tell you why the other religions don’t cop the same critisism. Maybe its because Christianity is the biggest and most prevalant so there is more scope for critisism. I’m not suggesting that absolute truth claims are the ONLY reason Christianity is critisied merely that it is the most common reason and the underlying emphasis most people have in their arguments.


Of course you want all the things you mentioned for your kids. But if you believe something to be true and believe that your way of thinking is the only way up the mountain and the key to eternal inherritance then its going to factor pretty high on your to-do list as a parent. I can see from a secular standpoint where you are comming from but Christian parents are by definition non-secular and if they do not teach Christianity then I wonder if they truely believe it themselves.


I was never taught anything about maturbation, in fact I never got the talk about the birds and the bees at all. Everything I learn’t as a kid I got off my friends and toilet doors. My parents never talked about sex with us, I was often amazed they even had sex often enough to have children. It was hidden, secret and not even talked about at the most basic level. My parents aren’t Christians, in fact my dad is as much of a fan of Christianity as you are.


I think you are taking the worst of what some Christian parents have taught their children and comparing it to the best of secular parenting and thats unfair. I feel unqualified to comment further because I am not a parent and don’t have a whole lot of contact with kids but I would assume that most parents don’t go around telling their five year olds they will go to hell if they do something wrong its probably more along the lines of “jesus doesn’t want you to do that”. It’s not until the children are older and able to deal that the bigger stuff comes out. I’m only guessing as I said I’m not a parent.


Coming out as a gay man and forcing a child to ‘be gay’ are totally different concepts. As a gay man there is no denial there. Forcing a child to be gay there is, if a child is heterosexual then no amount of force or wishing to be gay will change that, the same goes for homosexuality… we know this. Your right you can’t force anyone to be gay in the same way you can’t force anyone to be straight. I am not a fan of denial. I don’t pretend to be attracted to a gender I am not. However, believing that any expression of that attraction is sin does not force heterosexuality. The bible does not say you have to be heterosexual and get married and have kids… if it does I’m never getting into heaven. It says any expression homoerotic behaviour is wrong, period. Not a mention of needing to be heterosexual at all.


I do get where you are coming from, parents want their kids to be ‘happy’ and since a single life of celibacy is not the life of the party most parents will try and foster a more heterosexual mindset in their kids, even my father did ironically I think I still have the psychologial scars 😆 my mum would leave wedding magazines all over the place to ‘prompt’ me. Doing this isn’t right, a parent can not make their child heterosexual.


I wasn’t trying to impy that ironing tea towels was on par with theology, i picked that example because it was so menial. I was just trying to state that all parents, in a variety of different situations ‘brainwash’ their kids into doing and believing things they consider right and true and that brainwashing per se isn’t always the end of the world.



magsdee
Disabled
Joined in 2006
February 15, 2008, 09:07

Most Catholic parents I knew of and then later other pente type parents, did teach their kids quite young, that God will punish them if they do x,y and z. My friends Mum told her that if she wore black it was the devils colour.

Some kids in my catholic school believed they would have God punish them in bad way if they stole a lolly or if they were sick it was because they probably did something wrong and God gave it to them. This is what the parents were taught and they then passed it onto the kids and the cycle was probably long in place. My parents gave me a kids bible when I was 5, I was stoked and reading from that they in their own way had me learn about God and the patriarchs etc…. and allowed me question time, it was never rammed down my throat nor was I threatened with hellfire, instead they stirred an interest in me to know more and seeing some “good” Priests about made me wonder how good Jesus must have been. I wish most people couldve had this experience.



Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
February 15, 2008, 10:45

lets face it…..who ever grows up with the right concept of God. I’ve never met anyone. All of us have had to unlearning in order to find the truth…….sounds like a good title for a book…….. 😆 😉 😆


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