It’s not news that the solution Exodus gives to young people for their attraction to the same sex is to refrain from acting on it and “deny themselves for Christ.” But a recent article brings Exodus to a new Orwellian level, this time by saying that being ascetic with one’s interpersonal relationships is a Godly calling when you are gay.
In “Loneliness is Good,” an article cross-posted to the Exodus Student Blog, Mike Goeke tells of his struggle to find Christian male friends after being told doing so would be a way to help heal his homosexuality.
I read many books, and a common ‘cure’ for my problems included finding some good male friends with whom to have healthy, authentic relationships.
This is in line with the disproven hypothesis that gay men become gay because their lack of “authentic” relationships with other men, especially of their fathers. But despite joining an inter-denominational Bible group, Mike found himself more alone than ever:
I sat alone most nights, and rarely spoke to anyone. I looked around the room and everyone seemed to know everyone else. Instead of finding friends, my loneliness only seemed to grow heavier.
One night, after he had decided to give up on Bible study altogether, God caused him to come to a realization.
In the dark of my room, as I expressed my frustration, I sensed God speaking into my heart. He said, not audibly but clear nonetheless, “go to the Bible study to meet ME.”
In the days that followed, I realized that my greatest need at that moment was not connecting with a friend. My greatest need was connecting with my God. As I quieted myself down, it became clear to me that God could not entrust me with the kind of friendship I longed for at that time. I had set up ‘friends’ as a sort of idol and made friendship the key to my joy and my fulfillment and my healing. I would have devoured friends had He given them to me then. God was gracious in many ways to deny me what I so longed for because it compelled me to Him and the true source of my affirmation and identity. And, amazingly, as I pursued a deeper relationship with God, I found myself developing relationships with other men, and the friendships I had longed for began to happen.
For ex-gays, just about any red flag or stumbling block can be justified as part of the struggle, maybe even as a message from God Himself. Struggling to make friends? God must be denying you friendship for some reason. And it must be related to your struggle with homosexuality. Exodus’ real purpose, it appears, is helping one rationalize all of life’s stumbling blocks into something God intends.
I have gone through several seasons of loneliness. I believe that God orchestrates those seasons in my life – in all of our lives – to help pull us back to Him. We can be so prone to lose sight of Him and to make something else or someone else our center. But when He becomes all we have, we realize more clearly that He is really all we need. When He, in His godly and relational perfection, speaks affirmation and friendship and love and acceptance into our souls, we are perfectly satisfied. And when we are perfectly satisfied in Him, we are so much more ready to be a true friend to someone else, and to receive true friendship in a healthy way.
I agree that any obsession or extreme dependency can be unhealthy. It can indeed cause one to lose sight of what’s important – for the religious person, it can cause one to lose sight of God. But why must simple social awkwardness or a struggle to connect with strangers be conflated with one’s struggle with same sex attraction?
God designed us to be in community and to be in friendship. Those are good things, and things we all must have. But God did not design us to idolize or worship friends and relationships.
It’s natural for human beings to seek out communion with other human beings. We are, with few exceptions, social creatures. Experiencing loneliness, even in an extreme way, does not mean one is ultimately “idolizing friendships.” But I suspect a different motive behind Goeke’s longing for and wariness of male friendship.
Befriending someone is a natural first step to a romantic relationship – something disallowed as a celibate gay person.
He promises that He can satisfy you, and you will discover the immensity of what it means to be fulfilled and have abundance in Christ alone. And when your eyes are off of you and on God as the true center of your existence, you might just realize that you are not alone after all.
But such ethereal comfort is not the same thing as earthly comfort. This article does nothing to address specifics of a lonely, if religiously devout, life. The plain fact is, not all religious people are called to be celibate, and being forced to embrace such a lifestyle can cause extreme loneliness that feels anything but “good.” In fact, it can lead to depression, despair, and all the consequences associated with it.
It is a twisted way of telling young gay people that a “Godly” life of loneliness is how it “gets better.”
I reckon that the gay Irish priest Fr Bernard Lynch gave the short answer to this kind of pernicious thinking when he said, “Holy Communion is not a substitute for human communion.”
Sad to think of people wasting so much energy on fights they don’t really have to take on. Energy that could be going into really living.
What can really make a person feel so starved, is that you see people all around you seeming to enjoy the most basic of things WITHOUT EFFORT. Sometimes material excess is used to fill these voids of little or unsatisfying human contact, but NO ONE says a hetero kid is to deny themselves the effort or learning how to connect in the most intimate manner with another. Indeed, it’s an expectation for society. The first line of defending discrimination for gay people from marrying is because of non spontaneous baby making, as IF it takes a committed relationship to do THAT.
This treatment of gay kids, to remain STARVED as they watch their peers feast, is so cruel. I mean, so very, very cruel. They know that other young people aren’t required to substitute life with an intangible (whatever the hell THAT is supposed to entail), instead of learning how to optimize their lives with someone JUST LIKE THEMSELVES.
This is like feeding these kids air, and telling them that it’s real meat and drink. There is no amount of hypnosis or denial that’s going to make THAT stick. As with food, and water…no soul can go without the deepest love either.
And Exodus might as well be demanding they go without food and water for all the good their advice and exercise in deprivation is concerned.
The other contradiction regarding married life for gay people is that a child will be deprived of a parent of the opposite gender. Evidently that gay people be deprived is of no concern.
Marriage isn’t about who is good enough to be married, but that marriage is good for a person whoever and whatever they are.
It’s the hope for love, and learning how to find and keep it that makes a person strong, confident and whole. That works for everyone. And love starvation is the worst thing you could to a person.
And perhaps, that is the point. That Exodus wants to do just that to break the souls of young gay people so that they don’t have the will to challenge the Exodus agenda.
I’m with you Dave, the anti gay force gay people into a war that does nothing and no one any good, and takes much expense and energy from both sides that could be put to more urgent things.
It continues to wear on me how those who wish to do so can use scripture to justify anything — anything. At what point does this make scripture itself irrelevant? How ironic.
Well, you can take out “Exodus” here and substitute “fundamentalist Christianity” in general. It’s one thing to find God in the midst of pain and hardship, and quite another to blame such hardship on Him.
@College Jay
Good point, Jay.
This is absolutely true. And I believe it takes a gay man to say those words, because who are expected to remain alone and untouched by the rest of humanity “for the good of society” but gay people?
This sums it up more succinctly than I was able in the article. It’s a thought I was unable to articulate but nonetheless stand by.
Besides identifying with much of what he said, this jumped out at me too.
What do they think, that if you’re gay you view everyone else of the same gender as a sex object?
I’ve heard this sentiment expressed many times before and I feel plagued to meet the challenge. But as he also says:
At that point, the pain of loneliness as a tool is well past its shelf life. And as you said, Emily:
It’s like they’re given the choice between hell on Earth or hell in the afterlife.
—
And now for the smart aleck in me…
The Exodus Theme Song: The Carpenters: Goodbye to love (YT)
They should put that on their brochure.
—
“I questioned companionship”
“In a relationship? Change is possible”
“Those living the social butterfly lifestyle…”
“There’s no social butterfly gene”
“Befriending someone is a natural first step to a romantic relationship – something disallowed as a celibate gay person.” So the Emily writes. My question is why conflate friendship intimacy with sexual intimacy? We don’t have to have sex with our kids, co-workers, relatives, neighbors or even our heterosexual spouses to have a deep, honest and upbuilding relationship of friendship. If I get you right I think you may miss Mike’s point. Fulfill your self with anything other than God, make anything your pen-ultimate, whether sex or money or power or relationships and it will not satisfy. What you think is the solution becomes the problem, and the slave your master. There was one who kept his trust, first in his relationship with His Father, when all others failed Him and he ended up as the greatest lover of those “others” that rejected Him. That is about what Mike is saying… until we love the Father we will not really know what it is to love his children and the good news is it all does not have to be sexualized. I hope you will read it in the gospels.
So Regan, do I understand you to say that because some, and not all by the way, heterosex kids satisfy their hunger for intimacy best by sex, homosex kids must not be denied the same? That is an odd plea for justice. Two sex-“intimacy”acts make a right. But then again I see the bedrock assumption in these conversations here is that we are to equate sex acts with intimacy. Who among can add that up to have been the proper relational math in the past for us? I understand sex is powerful but I think we give it to much mastery over human interaction. I say starve the sexual appetites of all of us. The diet may be healthy.
Craig, I don’t really care who you are, but we’re not going to mistake you for someone who cares about what we’re discussing here.
Emily did NOT did not conflate the things you said she did. It’s true what she said about a friend being a natural first step to a romantic relationship. And there is absolutely no reason for you to construe that as ALL friendships lead to it, or familial relationships do, from what she said.
And no, you do not understand what I said at all.
In fact, you’ve gotten the ‘bedrock assumption’ all wrong too.
As for giving sex too much mastery over human interaction: who are you talking about? Gay or straight people?
If you say starve the sexual appetites, yeah well don’t posit that as if gay people are allowed any choice in that.
The point of the article is that gay children are supposed to deny and starve themselves over their lifetimes of EVER forming any adult, romantic relationships with another gay person of their choice.
And even in the most crucial stages of their formative years in this, they are charged with denying those feelings, repressing them and all the while, their straight peers are freely encouraged, supported and allowed to develop the healthy self esteem and relationship skills that are essential to their well being as adults.
It’s even more painful to have to witness all this, and be told that YOUR developing the same way is not only evil, but will destroy civilization as we know it. And you see your straight peers making all kinds of mistakes (and forgiven them as the folly of youth, or necessary teaching moments) and can do it again and again throughout their lifetimes, no matter how much wreckage.
That is to say, witnessing entire examples of hypocrisy, contradictions in terms wouldn’t be healthy for anyone.
That do as I say, not as I do dictum directed at gay people got old decades ago.
It’s bullshit.
There is no reason for a gay person to go on the kinds of starvation diet no straight person has to go on, on condition of losing their human, civil and equal rights.
It’s confusing and unfair to gay young people, and it’s wrong their straight peers are not taught to be compassionate and empathetic in assuming the emotional needs of their gay peers are the same as their own.
And this isn’t just about sex. This is about gay kids being denied ALL kinds of other serious and important relationships. Like with their parents, or siblings…unless they starve themselves first.
You think starvation is a good thing?
YOU go first, and see how you like it over your entire LIFETIME.
@Regan DuCasse
Very well put, Regan. Absolutely correct.
I think Regan has you well pegged, Craig. Your assumptions are very telling and you seem either deceptive or hopelessly detached from your humanity. In what other context would it ever be acceptable to hit people, particularly young people, with this monastic double-talk, painting a future of deprivation and loneliness. If God has truly been to Earth as a human being, I refuse to believe that He could want such a life for them. And using scripture to unnecessarily burden the lives of others is something I seem to remember He was never happy with either. Depriving oneself of this or that for a time for spiritual growth is a very personal thing, not something to be prescribed for others. To be blunt, it’s none of your business.
William, David and Regan,
I am not sure you know me so don’t assume too much about getting me pegged, especially about being uncaring. That is as unloving a thing to say as when straights say such things about gays isn’t it?
I don’t follow all your rebuttals but this is good conversation. You all make some interesting points. But I have some trouble with a few. If any of the views I have are none of anyones business why do you have postings arguing points that are incredibly personal instead of just keeping them to your self. We kid ourselves if we think we are not prescribing for others when we have these websites.
And yes I am saying sex has assumed far too much mastery over human interaction whatever form you wish to imagine. That is the premise of the article, that so-called, gay kids should be allowed to do what so-called straight kids do. I think both expressions are disordered, pre-marriage. My point is, and I think you agree, that sex is not needed for intimacy and friendship in its fullest expression, right?
Also it is just not true that denying feelings is a bad thing. Get clear on that by reflecting on how any or all of your feelings if driving you in any direction, end up. Go ahead today and let any of your desires, wants and emotions give full reign over your interactions today with others and events. Let me know how that turns out, ok? Or are you just carving out sex drives as legitmate and all others may need to be reigned in? If so then do you think maybe sex is the master here?
Repressing same or opposite sex attractions does not necessarily work against “develop(ing) the healthy self esteem and relationship skills that are essential to their well being as adults.” I think the article and your rebuttals give way too much weight to sex.
Let’s take your beliefs about God and sex. You can refuse to believe what you want about sexuality, that homosex and even heterosex outside of a one-life-time relationship just must be God’s way for us. You can believe that “why would God make you this way and not affirm it?” We can believe all we want about anything but believing it does not make it true does it? Is that your standard when you walk out of the house today? Should you come to believe your first step out the door was a step onto the planet Mars, would your belief make it true? What makes you think God thinks the way you feel? That is a God of your making when you assume that.
What if Scripture is not the real burden but your life and my life are the real burden? Maybe you have that burden thing backwards. If you don’t fine, you are a happy well put-together bunch of great folks with no problems inside or out burdening you. Read Jesus’ words in John chapter 8 verses 34-36 and what he says about the mastery of feelings, desires and affections that are against God’s will.
@Craig
Yes, Craig, all good stuff, but most of it irrelevant here.
Yes, there are desires and emotions that are negative and therefore need to be reined in, and that includes some sexual desires and emotions. Is the mere desire for a sexual relationship one of them? No.
Of course human sexuality, like everything else that is human, can be abused. Is a gay relationship an abuse of human sexuality? No.
There are a number of reasons why a particular sexual relationship may be a bad thing. Is the fact that it is a same sex relationship one of those reasons? No.
We don’t tell young straight people that their natural sexual attractions are a bad thing which they should try to get rid of and which must never, under any circumstances throughout their lives, be expressed in sexual relationships. To do so would work against “develop(ing) the healthy self esteem and relationship skills that are essential to their well being as adults.” So should we tell that to young gay people? No.
John 8:34-36, which you cite, says that “everyone who commits sin is a slave.” Is being in a loving gay relationship a sin that makes one into a slave and from which one needs to be set free (v. 36)? No.
Well William,
I see you like to answer your own questions. And yes a gay sexual relationship is wrong as are many other sexual and non-sexual things I do and probably you. Don’t privilege yourself with this sexual identity idol which is much of what this website does. I get it you seem very sure of your view of sexuality so I know that calling it wrong will not bother you (or others) in the least. If it is not true for you then let this view go.
BTW is your standard that the term “Loving” before relationships makes a relationship right? There are a lot of relationships you’d be loath to put in after the qualifier “loving” wouldn’t you? Why?
Since you and I are equally sinners what was Jesus’ remedy in verse 36? And before we get into the gay theology, go to Luke 24:27 assuming you probably want to jettison Paul from the discussion. Note when Jesus refers to Moses writings that = Leviticusand that = all kinds of non-marital male-female unions are wrong. But let’s end this on a good note. See John 3:16-21 and know there is no sin, gay, straight or otherwise that can separate you and I from Christ if we turn to him for freedom, from any sin. But I understand you don’t consider gay sex wrong, if loving. So that is fine, just dismiss this little message until some day you may want to ponder it, if ever. I hope you do. Because I know you are more than your desires and post 19th century sexual identity tag. You are a whole lot more. You are the image of God.
@Craig
Craig, I may be wrong, but I doubt that you would call the acceptance of a heterosexual orientation a “sexual identity idol”. I therefore fail to see why the acceptance of a homosexual orientation should be called a “sexual identity idol”.
I have no difficulty in conceding that there are various circumstances which make even a loving sexual relationship wrong. One that immediately springs to mind would be that either (or both) of the partners in the relationship is breaking a commitment to someone else. I most emphatically do not regard the fact that it is a same sex relationship as one of those circumstances.
As for Moses and “Leviticus and that”, even assuming the historical existence of Moses – which itself is problematical – he didn’t write the so-called Mosaic Law. And no matter who did write it, I see no reason why we in this 21st century should be bound by it. It contains much that is good and just; it also contains much that is immoral or superstitious. The best thing that we can do with it is to keep the good and to throw the bad away. In fact we are not dependent on the Mosaic Law at all for our morality: right and wrong would still be right and wrong even if not a word of the Pentateuch had ever been written.
As for this “little message” of yours, I can tell you that I have heard a similar message many, many times already and pondered it over and over again, and I could not adequately describe, even if I wished to, the damage that it did to me, especially during my teenage years. That is why I now regard it as wicked and abusive, and why I have decisively rejected it.
@ Craig,
Some of the regulars are familiar with this analogy. I consider the attitude that straight people have in assuming that gay people can and should change, akin to the phenomenon of anorexia in our society.
Or the burn scars that blacks have from hair straightening chemicals. Or Asian who spend money for painful and infection risky eye altering surgeries.
All these are examples of wanting to risk health and welfare to fit into the unrealistic standards that society wants them to fit into.
However NORMAL and healthy those attributes they are born with are.
It wouldn’t be any surprise that a black person, born into and living under the conditions of Jim Crow, would hate to be black.
Or a girl hate her natural and healthily curvy body because the richest, most successful women are essentially very thin.
Girls have DIED from developing anorexia.
So, if you want to talk about starvation, ex gays or gay people coerced by societal pressure into AFFECTING heterosexuality, or living as a eunuch: are emotionally anorexic.
There otherwise healthy desires and needs, are challenged as otherwise…and gay young people have DIED because society assumes that changing is not only possible, but desirable.
Craig, I don’t have to know you to know how TIRESOME you are, as the messaging is too.
Most of us have heard it all our damn lives and NOTHING new is or will change.
Religious sins, have more to do with things people avoided because there was lack of medical, social, or scientific intervention. Most of them are symbolic, and not necessary to adhere to.
MORAL sins, never change. They are about abusing, creating deliberate harm to and betraying another human being.
I’m done with those two things being conflated virtually exclusively on the subject of gay people and their lives.
What you have to say Craig, is…boring. Most of us have been onto a whole new world and you have as yet to catch up.
You don’t have to.
But don’t be offended because we don’t feel like being dragged backwards with you.
William,
Good thoughts, wise too, and I do regard anything placed as a pen-ultimate before God as an idol if it captures the heart, mind and soul, taking over ones life. What are those things or idols? Imagine your worst nightmare, see Adler. And that is it. That worst nightmare, that which we could not live without may be a homosexual relationship or a heterosexual one. Either may be an idol. We become what we worship. A heterosexual identity can become an idol too. Any identity not first in God causes us to be less than the image of God. If I make my identity gay, straight, liberal, nihilist, anarchist, churchman, job or marital status the ulitimate in my life they assume a rule over me that only belongs to the God who made me.
The damage you have done to others ought to be considered in your classes of people and beliefs to dismiss too William. That is the painful step, none of us wants to take so we see, or actually blind ourselves as being far more pristine then we are…we become what we worship.
I also suggest you make the classic error of chronological elitism. You assume your moment in time is the point upon which to measure all others. What you consider regressive and immoral happens to be your view today on Friday, since today is a day you pronounce all biblical norms anathema that you do not like. Well guess what happens on Monday, as we “progress” and as the truth turns I would guess another view could enter our collective minds that Scripture was right about homosexual and heterosexual sin. Watch out about the idea that we discern truth by the calendar. Since a day will come when the future looks at your views and says “how regressive.” Your keeping of the good will one day become anothers view you were all about keeping of the bad. Such a slippery way to discern truth.
I cannot apologize for others but you are correct that the Christian church has done a great evil when condemning homosexuality outside the church while condoning heterosexual sin inside the church. It is hugely saddening that the church has not ministered at times over the suffering of homosexuals and has caused a great deal of it, against God’s word I would add. It is not the churches place to condemn the homosexual, that was the apostle Paul’s view too, in I Cor. 6 I believe, maybe 5. Peruse it and see it for youself. If you decisively rejected that message I would say you got the wrong message, or maybe your assumptions about how to tell what is true is a little too bound by the calendar and age you live in. The church is full of hypocrites I being foremost, since I can only speak best about myself. So we get it wrong, but sometimes get the message right and that is what Exodus is about.
Regan
No need to resort to diatribes. Your analogies are used all the time and really you need to dig deeper into how an analogy works well only when the two are more alike then the ones you offer up. But more sorry I offended you. Tiresome and boring I can certainly be.
And you don’t offend me. Being backward by backing up is not a bad place to be when you are gone down a wrong path.
@Craig
What. Ever.
@Craig
What a lot of badly worded and ungrammatical verbiage to try to justify an unenlightened attitude. As for Exodus and similar spiritually abusive frauds, their days are numbered, thank God.
Regan said:
I have to agree, “tiresome” is a good description. You’ve been given an opportunity to state your case, Craig, but I was hoping for something a bit more challenging. You come from a parochial point of view which is, by definition, rather limiting. Also, try to remember that attributing something to God or scripture is not, in itself, enough to make it so. Just because sexual orientations were not understood well before the last century, does not mean those traits or state of being did not exist before that — we know of course that they did.
As for Exodus, since you did actually make a comment germane to the topic, they spend most of their time these days trying to justify their existence (and their use of funds). I doubt very seriously they will exist as an organization in another 5 or 10 years. The local groups which claim allegiance to their views vary greatly, from bizarre and near cult-like to moderately useful for some who are greatly burdened by negative belief systems. Some of them may hang around longer, but the end of all that mess is certain to be sooner and not later. As such, they are quickly becoming a minor point in the discussion.
XGW is not a religious forum per se, though the subject is a necessary component of the ex-gay equation. Many people who read here have been damaged by religion and have an understandably negative reaction to gratuitous proselytizing. Please try to keep that in mind and conduct yourself accordingly. Thank you.
David and William
I was hoping for points in rebuttal a bit more challenging too, rather than the adhominems and calling another point of view parochial or someone unenlightened.
I’m sorry Craig, it is what it is. You didn’t give us much to work with.
Oh la di da, Craig.
I don’t think there is any reason for a gay person to have to constantly be on trial, to have to subject themselves to religious opinions, directives, contradictory and hypocritical assignments…and most of all, continuing experimentation with their psyches. Why can’t anyone just let a gay person BE?
In cruder parlance, why is it such a preoccupation to KEEP f**king with gay folks from the time they are kids?! And if the soil is getting less fertile in America, Exodus will spread the manure in parts of the world considerably LESS understanding and more hostile of gay people.
Craig, YOU, looking for something more ‘challenging’? Apparently the greatest challenge of all, is getting the message that gay folks don’t NEED this crap, and neither do their allies.
It’s old UGLY business.
It’s not new, it’s not news, this whole ex gay industry in some form or other isn’t doing anything important or good enough to keep doing it.
What would really be impressive, is when Exodus can make a dent in the indoctrination of children into street gangs. Or domestic violence.
Heterosexuality isn’t an achievement. No sexual orientation ever is.
So the preoccupation to make the world full of heterosexuals will make it a lot MORE boring, and less full of healthy and well adjusted people who add a lot more color and interest to the landscape.
Craig, I was over you days ago. Now…get over yourself.
Craig,
Until you settle your home on the holy foundation of unconditional love, your judgements on a topic you know little of will keep you off balance and in your swamp of judgmental thoughts. There is no anti-christ more powerful than a deluded fearful mind. It is potent and befalls others in your wake. These irrational inner meanderings that have possessed you about sex are for you to “ponder” and resolve. That’s your job, no one elses though help is there for you if you simply “ask”.
We here have done our “work” and have found peace on the matter. Is it not time you do the same?
@Craig
I called your attitude unenlightened because that is what I consider it to be. Not only do I find it erroneous in the abstract; its concrete effects, if it is internalized by gay people, can only be psychologically and spiritually pernicious. As for a rebuttal, challenging or otherwise, there can be none. A dogmatic belief which has not been arrived at by reason cannot be rebutted by reason.
“There is no wickedness so violent as that organized by the fanatic who thinks he is doing God service, nor is there any harm worse than can follow the footsteps of a well-meaning, blatant fool.” – Sir Oliver Lodge
Someone needs to carve that in the side of a mountain somewhere, and follow it with the Sir Oliver Lodge quote.
Hooray, i can access the website and post again. i haven’t been able to do that for months!
Craig, I was going to stay out of this because I really don’t have time to write, and i don’t find it all that useful to talk to fundamentalists who think that they really know the mind of god. But I was thinking a great deal of what you had to say about idols and false idols, and putting those idols before god.
In reading and re-reading your comments, I can find two very obvious idols that you, in common with so many other fundamentalistas, are quite willing to sacrifice the souls and lives of gay people to appease.
One of these is bibliolatry– the near worship of the bible as the very near word of god, despite the contradictions, errors, mind changings, and cherry pickings . It has never been merely a matter of “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.”, as much as bible believing Christians would like to think that it is. The correct description would be; “I believe that god said it, in that I believe that I understand it and what I understand is what it was that god said. And that settles it because then I don’t even have to think about.”
The classic example: the story of Sodom, whence we get the word sodomy. The word has undergone a great many changes in meaning over the centuries: homosexual relations, non-procreative hetero sex, sex with animals, even witchcraft, I believe. And we are always being treated to bouffant-haired preachers expounding upon the sin of sodom, as if they actually knew something.
And yet, letting the bible be its own best commentary on itself, we find– what? No mention of the homosexual angle. And reading the story? Well, even a little bit of critical thinking shows that it is
a) a story so ancient that it is not referring to the Heavenly Father of Jesus. It could not, because this deity gets to one place or another by WALKING, and must send someone to Sodom to know if indeed their iniquity is indeed very great. It must be of the age of one of god’s previous incarnaitons, probably when he was the Midianite Storm God Formerly Known as El. And,
b) a story that has nothing to do with male homosexuality at all. “All the people of the town” gathered around Lot’s house, not just the alleged ‘mo’s. Righteous Lot offered them his virgin daughters (every child deserves a mother and a father), something that would hardly make sense if they were a bunch of ‘mo’s. And what would have happened had the offer been accepted and the daughters raped? Would we be taking this as a condemnation of heterosexuality?
Somehow, I don’t think so. What do I think? That someone– a lot of someones– over the past 2000 years has had a major agenda going, one that has little to do with morality and sin, but a great deal to do with plain old homophobia. Could that have been someone with, perhaps, an unnamed and unnamable thorn in his side?
The other obvious idol that so many fundamentalistas seem so enamored with is self-righteousness. But i’ll write on that later. I have to go to the gym.
Ity ain’t easy being 61.
“There is none so deceived as those who won’t entertain the thought that they may be.”
We could say the same to you.
Quite appropriately.
@Craig
How is it deception to be open and introspective about one’s sexual orientation? For a gay person, being honest and truthful about it is a brave thing. Because one can’t know how it will be responded to. Who gay people have to depend on, like their own parents, will likely abandon them. There is much more to lose in being honest when you’re gay, and there is more integrity in being so. Than deceiving heteros into thinking you’re something you’re not.
It’s not saying much for a dominant culture that encourages deception, and WANTS it from gay people, then turns around and is angry that a person wasn’t honest in the beginning.
Gay people are already confronted with that dichotomy regarding deception and although preferring NOT TO, heteros create an environment making it NECESSARY, if a gay person wants and education, to not be assaulted, to not be abandoned or abused by their family. To be employed or have a basic social life.
So if you want to talk about deception: why do straight people hate for gay people to be honest and forthright, and then LEAVE it alone?
Why do straight people resent it that a gay person isn’t honest as much as when they are?
It’s gay folks having to deal with damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
So there isn’t any real choice here, and expecting gay people to AFFECT heterosexuality is an UNFAIR price to pay. As is expecting gay people to forgo having an intimate romantic relationship in which to thrive and be secure.
This is not only expecting gay people to be deceptive, but also to be inhuman. Neither of which is a normal or healthy way to live.
And our society shouldn’t be demanding that gay people have to live in such an abnormal and unhealthy way, just so the heteros can maintain the FICTION that they are superior in any way.
@Craig
“Thou sayest it.”