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Question time - Sexuality/faith resolution

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Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
November 8, 2008, 16:27

Last night we had an open question forum at the Sydney monthly F2b chapter meeting. http://www.freedom2b.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3690


Here are the questions that were asked so that those who didn’t get time to respond can and also those who weren’t there can add their thoughts.


1. To what capacity does the route of self hatred and unacceptance effect and relate to a person who has not found peace in accepting their sexual orientation (being gay or bi) and still live as a Christian.


2. Why am I gay?


3. What attitude should I have to my ‘ex-gay’ friend? I really want to ban his head in (figuratively) and tell him what a warped attitude he has. Or tell him off. Instead I am polite. What should I do?



Sandy
 
Joined in 2007
November 8, 2008, 16:43

Ok so a disclaimer is necessary on this one, be warned I’m going to be really anoying and picky…. don’t say I didn’t warn you 😆 😆


1) Isn’t it kind of impossible to speculate on how self hatred and unacceptance impacts a person who is not you… and who I’m guessing refuses to admit they have self hatred since they havn’t come to terms with being gay. And if this is true where does anyone get off implying that someone is in fact self-hating when you really have no idea what they are feeling and only guessing based on your own experiences and your own framework for being pro-gay. I don’t accept that my homosexuality is something to embrace but if someone called me self-hating I’d roll my eyes and put them in the arrogant, know-it-all box.


3) Without meaning to sound flippant my advice is to get over it. If you expect your ex-gay friend to accept you and the choices you have made in responce to your homosexuality then you need to do the same for him or her. You’d be pretty offended to find out your friend wanted to bang your head in for accepting your homosexuality so why should you be any different just because you believe you have the better take on the issue? Pro-gays have a go at people who claim absolute truths all the time but really, to say that being ex-gay is a bad choice for a particular individual and doesnt work on anybody and never will is to claim an absolute truth.



gettingthere
 
Joined in 2008
November 8, 2008, 17:17


3. What attitude should I have to my ‘ex-gay’ friend? I really want to ban his head in (figuratively) and tell him what a warped attitude he has. Or tell him off. Instead I am polite. What should I do?


This is an area I admit to having difficulty with, mostly because I’m going through it right now. Not specifically the ex-gay relationships, but the people who disagree with you. I think you need to strip away the details and find what is the basic conflict here. If you think about it, it’s really just a difference of belief. It can be a really difficult difference of belief and you can be 100% adamantly opposed to everything about the other side, but you need to realize your friend is a human being, not an abstract concept. If your friend is saying things that are outright offensive to you, then you can lovingly go to him and explain how what he says makes you feel offended. But we as gays are quick to say God loves us as gays, but we must also recognize that God loves those who are opposed to homosexuality as well. Remember that almost all of us went through periods of rejecting our orientation as well. We need to be patient with others who don’t agree. Who knows, they could end up becoming supporters later on. But regardless, you need to extend love and grace to everyone, including those who don’t agree with you. Yes, it’s very hard to do at times, but if you want to be love and accepted as you are, you must also love and accept others as they are.



Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
November 8, 2008, 17:38


3. What attitude should I have to my ‘ex-gay’ friend? I really want to ban his head in (figuratively) and tell him what a warped attitude he has. Or tell him off. Instead I am polite. What should I do?


This is an area I admit to having difficulty with, mostly because I’m going through it right now. Not specifically the ex-gay relationships, but the people who disagree with you. I think you need to strip away the details and find what is the basic conflict here. If you think about it, it’s really just a difference of belief. It can be a really difficult difference of belief and you can be 100% adamantly opposed to everything about the other side, but you need to realize your friend is a human being, not an abstract concept. If your friend is saying things that are outright offensive to you, then you can lovingly go to him and explain how what he says makes you feel offended. But we as gays are quick to say God loves us as gays, but we must also recognize that God loves those who are opposed to homosexuality as well. Remember that almost all of us went through periods of rejecting our orientation as well. We need to be patient with others who don’t agree. Who knows, they could end up becoming supporters later on. But regardless, you need to extend love and grace to everyone, including those who don’t agree with you. Yes, it’s very hard to do at times, but if you want to be love and accepted as you are, you must also love and accept others as they are.


is that an AVB head in a 16 year old body 😆


yes…..we must give in the measure we want to receive.


another thing for me is that I have to respect their life choice and keep the relationship/communication open. If ….in 5 or 10 years time….they come to the realisation that the most fulfilling life for all concerned is for them to accept their same sex attraction as natural, normal and healthy they they know I will support them in that as I’ve supported them all along.


If I have rejected them though and are estranged from them it might make it more difficult to make that decision.


If they tell me I’m sick, evil etc etc…..then that would be a whole different story.



inertia
 
Joined in 2008
November 8, 2008, 19:03

What attitude should I have to my ‘ex-gay’ friend? I really want to bang his head in (figuratively) and tell him what a warped attitude he has. Or tell him off. Instead I am polite. What should I do?


This is an interesting question… I mean it comes back to right/wrong, black/white etc. which is dangerous territory (I think) – after all, these are belief systems that people have! Although I am quite happy to “journey to find the truth” (like that, Anthony? ;-)) and also explore theology that accepts living authentically as gay etc. I also have one of my closest friends who doesn’t want to accept himself at all and is exposed to a lot of the ex-gay messages and probably even believes in these. This can cause me a lot of frustration, tension as well as doubt because it brings back all my old feelings about the issue… It also throws up a whole lot of questions for me about fundamentalism but that’s another story…


But you all make some awesome points there – about “practising what we preach” in a way! – i.e. all we can do is live our lives as authentically as we can according to our life experience and what we believe and being led by our most innermost voice – and love and accept each other on the journey. Who’s to say, really, what the future holds!



Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
November 8, 2008, 20:54

this maybe a poor analogy but….. if I know someone who is obviously in a co-dependent relation whether they be the victim or the rescuer …..they are playing a game together. Are they aware of the destructiveness of the relationship or realise how unhealthy it is……no….or otherwise they would leave.


If someone is ‘ex-gay’ they might not be aware or the wife not be aware of all the unhealthy elements of the relationship. They play a game of denial together.


One day though some wake up.


I still have to respect that we all on a journey and responsible for our own decisions. It helps to remind myself of my years of blindness…… so believing that what I was doing was pleasing to God.



Sandy
 
Joined in 2007
November 9, 2008, 09:59

Maybe I’m just in a jaded, cynical place right now but I think there is too much made of the ex-gay/pro-gay divide. It’s fueled by emotion when really the only difference theologically at least is a very small discrepancy in belief.


I’ve been reading a case study recently on a woman with a brain tumour who during the six months she had left to live believed that she had met the love of her life and they went on holiday all over the world. In reality she didn’t leave the house much and there was no Mr Wonderful. But her last six months were the happiest and most fufilled of her life because she believed something that was false.


I know I’m going to get no where suggesting that maybe there are people out there who are ex-gay genuinely and just because it didn’t work for some doesn’t mean it doesn’t work period. So I’ll take another tact and say this: if the individual truely and honestly believes they are ex-gay and they are happy and fufilled because of it and not having the stress and anxiety associated with being gay and Christian then what the hell is wrong with that? They are not commiting any kind of sin and, if anything, their relationship with God is strengthened due to the “healing”. Maybe for some it will all crumble eventually but for many others it doesn’t and they live happy and fufilled.


I know I go on and on about honesty and integrity but lets face it: someone has got to be wrong unless God is postmodernist… which I highly doubt. Is it so hard to believe that there are people out there who believe just as strongly as you do, just as genuinely as you do that ex-gay is a real solution and are just as happy as you are with that outcome? I know the defintion of denial entails that you don’t know you’re in denial because then it wouldn’t be denial would it? But think about the way you feel when someone says that to you. All your hard work and prayers and self-reveraltion are all a product of an elaborate attempt to protect yourself from the truth?



Anthony Venn-Brown
 
Joined in 2005
November 9, 2008, 19:02

thanks Sandy……..it seems from the ‘ex-gays’ that I’ve connected with they are not genuinely happy or fullfilled…….certainly there is a level of release on some levels but there is a pay off on another.


I think this happens particularly with those who out in the public and running ‘ex-gay’ ministries…….there is so much to loose if you are completely honest so you hold on in hope. Your denial of what is really going is is your protection from the consequences of truth.


Having been married for 16 years and would have claimed to be ‘ex-gay’ I know what that world is like.


Two more things i think are important to consider in the ‘ex-gay’ debate.


1. If they just went off and lived their ‘happy heterosexual’ lives and didn’t tell everyone else they should do the same then I think we could just let it go. But because they can’t respect the fact that there are such things as gay christians……we have a problem.


2. One of the things that upset my former wife the most when she finally read my book was to discover that there were so many opportunities for pastors and myself to be honest with her about what was going on. In these situations the wives don’t always have all the facts. Had my wife been told when things weren’t going well…..then she could have made her own decision about whether to stay in the marriage or not. She felt excluded and betrayed by myself and pastors.



Sandy
 
Joined in 2007
November 9, 2008, 19:17

But because they can’t respect the fact that there are such things as gay christians……we have a problem.


Well you have me there 😕 😆 But it works both ways, pro-gays aren’t exactly overly tollerant of ex-gays either by all accounts i.e. wanting to bash them over the head. I get your point though. Still, increasingly its becoming an individual choice is it not? To choose to be try to be ex-gay or to accept pro-gay theology. For most Christians with access to technology both are options and I think its a good thing to have options. For the conservative Christian who is not convinced of contemporary revisions to not have ex-gayness as an option is pretty depressing. Its pretty much suggesting that God’s leaving you to fend for yourself.


There are many reasons I have never chosen to ex-gay myself but I have respect for those that do as do I respect those who choose a different take on theology. I’m somewhere in the middle and from my vantage point I can see the merits of both sides. Tollerance needs to reign mighty here I think and stating absolutes like no one can change and “practising” (winces) homosexuals are not Christians is not going to get anyone anywhere.



flash
 
Joined in 2008
November 9, 2008, 19:40

I am an ex-gay. I used to post here under a different name when I was an out gay but this year I believe my orientation has been altered. When I was an out gay I came to the conclusion that you cannot reconcile homosexuality with what the Bible says no matter in what way you try to twist it. I also could not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Can anyone on here say that their relationship with God is as strong as it was before they came out? When I was out my sin alienated me from God. I still have the odd moments when I am tempted but we have to remember that temptation is not sin. Even Jesus was tempted. However if we walk closely to God through prayer and staying away from things that we know lead to temptation then I believe the orientation can be overcome. I will not criticise my gay friends as we are all sinners but I will no longer accept it as natural or God-intended.


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