Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
All you need to do is look for stories documented online of those of us who committed suicide because they couldn't change their orientation, or because they were disowned by their parents, or were tormented by bullies o the point they felt there was no other way out. Of course, you won't read these stories, or immerse yourself in their lives and in their pain, but in those stories is your proof. No one would choose this.
Here is one story, as told by her Mother, because she is no longer here to tell us herself.
I don't know how close to suicide a young gay friend of mine was some ten years ago (we were house mates) but I do know from him that he practically wore out his knees praying to God to make him straight. He was 18 and very involved with the local SDA Church. The last thing he wanted was to come out as being gay to his youth peer group. He felt that dating girls might awaken some latent heterosexual feelings within him. He was handsome and had no problem attracting girls. He did date several of them though his 'romance skills' were somewhat awkward.
But, alas, he remained gay.
I witnessed his struggle, a struggle that he'd had since as far back as he could remember. Coming from a very religious background made his situation worse as he knew that the very God he claimed to worship condemned him ...even though, then, he was as pure as the driven snow never having acted on his homosexuality. It was at this time that both he and I studied the so-called 'clobber passages' of the Bible with, hopefully, an open mind. Even though he knew his Bible backwards, the Leviticus texts posed problematic because neither of us knew what, precisely, they were referring to. I mean, there were no examples in Leviticus of two men having slept together which would had prompted God to prohibit this. So, we put the Leviticus texts into the 'too hard basket' ...for now anyway.
The next passage of scripture that was notorious for condemning homosexuality was, of course, Sodom and Gomorrah. We scrutinized every reference to S&G that we could find, using a Bible Concordance as a guide, and were absolutely gobsmacked to find absolutely nothing about homosexuality! What was going on here? There HAD to be something about homosexuality ...every Christian and NON-Christian in the world KNOWS that homosexuality ran rampant throughout S&G and displeased God so much that He destroyed these cities!
Then, we arrived at the saga of 'the men and the angels'. We really didn't know what was going on here. I mean, EVERY male of the city, young and old, beating down Lot's door to have sex with the visitors. Does that even make sense? We later found out that the Torah (the Jewish Bible) states that ALL THE PEOPLE of the city (not just the males) came out to be 'intimate' with the strangers. Would this have even been physically possible? It really made no sense, not to mention that 'rape' and not sexual gratification seemed to be the intent of the people if the story were true. Then we came to the part where Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for 'looking back'. What? Are we really supposed to believe this stuff?
While this strange story puzzled us to the point that we couldn't make head nor tail of it, we still found no reference to homosexuality per se. How could Christianity have gotten this story and its alleged link to homosexuality so wrong? This was not to mention that poor Gomorrah was also destroyed even though it had no connection at all to even 'the men and angels' part of the story.
I made a point of organizing a church Bible study on Sodom and Gomorrah based on the findings of my friend and I. And, just like us, the Bible study group came away with the newly discovered knowledge that NOWHERE does the Bible even hint that homosexuality was a part of the 'wickedness' of Sodom and Gomorrah! For some reason or other mainstream Christianity has run with this lie for a long time and is STILL running with it!
A study of New Testament references to same-sex practices led us to the same conclusion ...that homosexuality per se is NOT addressed in scripture other than in reference to idolatry practices. So why IS Christianity using deception as part of its anti-gay agenda? Doesn't it realize that its members can, just like us, study the scriptures and discover this deception for themselves? Of course. But, they also know that the vast majority of Christians prefer to be spoon-fed by the leaders. Plus, they (the members) have already been well brainwashed in this area and are willing receptacles to soak up whatever the leaders tell them. The leaders know this and so they can continue to treat their stupid congregations like mushrooms.
My friend eventually took the bull by the horns and told his parents and three siblings as well as his church youth group that he was gay. To their credit, it would appear that no one turned their back on him. His mother already intuitively knew, although his father claimed not to have known. His youth group seemed to accept this as no big deal. I feel there may already have been a couple of gay folks in the group. My friend was careful not to mention this to the adults of the church as he suspected that they might not be so accepting of him. He eventually got the degree that he'd been studying for at uni for the previous 5 years and left town to pursue a career in medicine. The last I heard was that he was doing well in medicine, that he was no longer with the church and that he had a long term relationship with his (male) partner.
So, I made it a major goal in my life to fight the lies of Christianity with its own book ...the Bible.
The Pan-American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation):
The Psychological Society of South Africa:
And from the Indian Psychiatric Society:
The list goes on -- from Hong Kong, to Australia, to India, the overwhelming conclusion is that there exists no evidence to support that a person's sexuality can 'change'. At most, sexual orientation can be suppressed or resisted, but even those measures have limited success.
Thank you for the link. As far as suppression goes, it will work, but it leads to the slow agonizing death of the soul.
The reason I said to read people's stories and experience their pain first hand as much as possible, is because I know the research cited above will be quickly dismissed as some kind of "gay propaganda" or something. Which is also why I stated that not many of those with opposing opinions will read those stories, and share in those experiences. They'll likely just dismiss that too.
I don't know how close to suicide a young gay friend of mine was some ten years ago (we were house mates) but I do know from him that he practically wore out his knees praying to God to make him straight. He was 18 and very involved with the local SDA Church. The last thing he wanted was to come out as being gay to his youth peer group. He felt that dating girls might awaken some latent heterosexual feelings within him. He was handsome and had no problem attracting girls. He did date several of them though his 'romance skills' were somewhat awkward.
But, alas, he remained gay.
I witnessed his struggle, a struggle that he'd had since as far back as he could remember. Coming from a very religious background made his situation worse as he knew that the very God he claimed to worship condemned him ...even though, then, he was as pure as the driven snow never having acted on his homosexuality. It was at this time that both he and I studied the so-called 'clobber passages' of the Bible with, hopefully, an open mind. Even though he knew his Bible backwards, the Leviticus texts posed problematic because neither of us knew what, precisely, they were referring to. I mean, there were no examples in Leviticus of two men having slept together which would had prompted God to prohibit this. So, we put the Leviticus texts into the 'too hard basket' ...for now anyway.
The next passage of scripture that was notorious for condemning homosexuality was, of course, Sodom and Gomorrah. We scrutinized every reference to S&G that we could find, using a Bible Concordance as a guide, and were absolutely gobsmacked to find absolutely nothing about homosexuality! What was going on here? There HAD to be something about homosexuality ...every Christian and NON-Christian in the world KNOWS that homosexuality ran rampant throughout S&G and displeased God so much that He destroyed these cities!
Then, we arrived at the saga of 'the men and the angels'. We really didn't know what was going on here. I mean, EVERY male of the city, young and old, beating down Lot's door to have sex with the visitors. Does that even make sense? We later found out that the Torah (the Jewish Bible) states that ALL THE PEOPLE of the city (not just the males) came out to be 'intimate' with the strangers. Would this have even been physically possible? It really made no sense, not to mention that 'rape' and not sexual gratification seemed to be the intent of the people if the story were true. Then we came to the part where Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt for 'looking back'. What? Are we really supposed to believe this stuff?
While this strange story puzzled us to the point that we couldn't make head nor tail of it, we still found no reference to homosexuality per se. How could Christianity have gotten this story and its alleged link to homosexuality so wrong? This was not to mention that poor Gomorrah was also destroyed even though it had no connection at all to even 'the men and angels' part of the story.
I made a point of organizing a church Bible study on Sodom and Gomorrah based on the findings of my friend and I. And, just like us, the Bible study group came away with the newly discovered knowledge that NOWHERE does the Bible even hint that homosexuality was a part of the 'wickedness' of Sodom and Gomorrah! For some reason or other mainstream Christianity has run with this lie for a long time and is STILL running with it!
A study of New Testament references to same-sex practices led us to the same conclusion ...that homosexuality per se is NOT addressed in scripture other than in reference to idolatry practices. So why IS Christianity using deception as part of its anti-gay agenda? Doesn't it realize that its members can, just like us, study the scriptures and discover this deception for themselves? Of course. But, they also know that the vast majority of Christians prefer to be spoon-fed by the leaders. Plus, they (the members) have already been well brainwashed in this area and are willing receptacles to soak up whatever the leaders tell them. The leaders know this and so they can continue to treat their stupid congregations like mushrooms.
My friend eventually took the bull by the horns and told his parents and three siblings as well as his church youth group that he was gay. To their credit, it would appear that no one turned their back on him. His mother already intuitively knew, although his father claimed not to have known. His youth group seemed to accept this as no big deal. I feel there may already have been a couple of gay folks in the group. My friend was careful not to mention this to the adults of the church as he suspected that they might not be so accepting of him. He eventually got the degree that he'd been studying for at uni for the previous 5 years and left town to pursue a career in medicine. The last I heard was that he was doing well in medicine, that he was no longer with the church and that he had a long term relationship with his (male) partner.
So, I made it a major goal in my life to fight the lies of Christianity with its own book ...the Bible.
I'm glad that story had a happy ending. So many of our stories don't. It amazes me the lengths some will go to to deny that incalculable harm has been done to LGBT folk by some Christians, and their refusal to learn what those clobber passages really say when read in proper context.
And I'm thankful you're an advocate for those of us mistreated by certain Christian individuals and groups. You probably saved your friend's life.
I'm glad that story had a happy ending. So many of our stories don't. It amazes me the lengths some will go to to deny that incalculable harm has been done to LGBT folk by some Christians, and their refusal to learn what those clobber passages really say when read in proper context.
And I'm thankful you're an advocate for those of us mistreated by certain Christian individuals and groups. You probably saved your friend's life.
There are, of course, more and more 'progressive' churches these days that are accepting of LGBT people ...thanks, I believe in large part, to the efforts of people such as Bishop John Shelby Spong, who I so admire. I just love his lectures and the intelligence, the Christian warmth as well as the humor that he injects into them. His rather unconventional way of preaching the scriptures and his reaching out to the marginalized has actually resulted in past death threats from among some of the Fundamentalist Christian Fraternity!
Here is a video by JSS called Homosexuality: The Battleground for a Dying Form of Christianity:
It's 1:23:20 in length but the last 23 minutes are for question and answer time. JSS comes on at the 12 minutes mark following a couple of preliminary speeches. A story similar to the one told by the woman, Mary Lou Wallner, in geekigurl's previous post, is told by JSS at the 38:45 mark. It's quite heart-wrenching, so be prepared. I really would urge everyone on this thread to watch the video in its entirety as it is very special. I would especially urge Vizio, 99, Jeff, and Maccabee to watch it but I seriously doubt that they will since I suspect they have a mindset that they don't want to change. I believe they wouldn't want anything to get in the way of their pride.
Since sexual orientation is immutable, what you are saying is lesbians and gay men should be celibate for the rest of their lives, and never allow themselves to fall in love, or be loved by another.
Christians throughout history have affirmed that celibacy is a spiritual gift and a calling, but not something that should be forced on anyone.
Matthew Vines wrote "Good teachings, even when difficult are not destructive to human dignity. They don’t lead to emotional and spiritual devastation, and to the loss of self-esteem and self-worth. But those have been the consequences for gay people of the traditional teaching on homosexuality. It has not borne good fruit in their lives, and it’s caused them incalculable pain and suffering. If we’re taking Jesus seriously that bad fruit cannot come from a good tree, then that should cause us to question whether the traditional teaching is correct."
I know of Mathew Vines, and seen his video. Anyway here is a response of the 40 questions Mathew Vines has asked to Christians: Dr. Michael Brown Has 40 Answers and 2 Questions for 'Gay' Christian Matthew Vines
Here is one of the questions Mathew Vines asked and here is the response by Dr Michael Brown:
Mathew Vines: Do you accept that lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for most gay people if all same-sex relationships are sinful? Dr Michael Brown: I accept that our Father knows best, that His ways are ways of life, and that if He does not enable someone to enter into a heterosexual relationship then He will give grace to that person to be celibate, just as He gives grace to a believer suffering decades of imprisonment and torture, just as He gives grace to a drug addict to get free from addictions, and just as He gives grace to many heterosexuals to live in lifelong, non-chosen celibacy.
Only the Lord knows best. Anyway I do know several men that have had same sex attraction and now married to women for a long time and have children. They do not want to go back to the old gay life.
I know of Mathew Vines, and seen his video. Anyway here is a response of the 40 questions Mathew Vines has asked to Christians: Dr. Michael Brown Has 40 Answers and 2 Questions for 'Gay' Christian Matthew Vines
Here is one of the questions Mathew Vines asked and here is the response by Dr Michael Brown:
Mathew Vines: Do you accept that lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for most gay people if all same-sex relationships are sinful? Dr Michael Brown: I accept that our Father knows best, that His ways are ways of life, and that if He does not enable someone to enter into a heterosexual relationship then He will give grace to that person to be celibate, just as He gives grace to a believer suffering decades of imprisonment and torture, just as He gives grace to a drug addict to get free from addictions, and just as He gives grace to many heterosexuals to live in lifelong, non-chosen celibacy.
What a callous response couched in pious rhetoric. Dr Michael Brown indeed! I'm sorry but I can't handle these religious snobs who claim to speak for some heavenly deity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by other99
Only the Lord knows best.
I agree. I believe the Lord knows best and approves of the love shown by two gay people who want to commit their lives to one another. What do you have to say about that?
Quote:
Originally Posted by other99
Anyway I do know several men that have had same sex attraction and now married to women for a long time and have children. They do not want to go back to the old gay life.
Good for them. Here is a link to an article as to why gay men marry straight women:
I know of Mathew Vines, and seen his video. Anyway here is a response of the 40 questions Mathew Vines has asked to Christians: Dr. Michael Brown Has 40 Answers and 2 Questions for 'Gay' Christian Matthew Vines
Here is one of the questions Mathew Vines asked and here is the response by Dr Michael Brown:
Mathew Vines: Do you accept that lifelong celibacy is the only valid option for most gay people if all same-sex relationships are sinful? Dr Michael Brown: I accept that our Father knows best, that His ways are ways of life, and that if He does not enable someone to enter into a heterosexual relationship then He will give grace to that person to be celibate, just as He gives grace to a believer suffering decades of imprisonment and torture, just as He gives grace to a drug addict to get free from addictions, and just as He gives grace to many heterosexuals to live in lifelong, non-chosen celibacy.
Only the Lord knows best. Anyway I do know several men that have had same sex attraction and now married to women for a long time and have children. They do not want to go back to the old gay life.
There is no gay life. There is no straight life. There is just life.
What do you mean by "gay life' - rampant promiscuity? Why do you think all gay people are like you? Celibacy is a spiritual gift, it isn't given to all.
You did get this right, and I believe that God does know what is best for you. Not you, and not Michael Brown, who also seems to be under the ludicrous and slanderous assumption that all gay people do is run around, do drugs and have sex with each other, which is absurd beyond reason.
There is no gay life. There is no straight life. There is just life.
What do you mean by "gay life' - rampant promiscuity? Why do you think all gay people are like you? Celibacy is a spiritual gift, it isn't given to all.
You did get this right, and I believe that God does know what is best for you. Not you, and not Michael Brown, who also seems to be under the ludicrous and slanderous assumption that all gay people do is run around, do drugs and have sex with each other, which is absurd beyond reason.
But if they don't think this way, they won't have a good reason to use the Bible as an excuse to hate a group of people, namely gay people. If they suddenly realized that gay people are just like straight people, only attracted to the same sex, then their argument would make a whole lot less sense. (Not that it makes sense to rational people now...)
Fact is, people who think like this are simply bigots. They do not like gay people, so they make up little lies in their head about them, and then use those lies to discriminate and bully. At some point, they actually start to believe the nonsense that they made up, or someone else made up and fed to them. It is truly a sad way to live life...
So to reiterate for other99, gay people are just like straight people, only they are attracted to the same sex. There is no "gay lifestyle", as geekigurl pointed out.
Only the Lord knows best. Anyway I do know several men that have had same sex attraction and now married to women for a long time and have children. They do not want to go back to the old gay life.
You know several gay men who have been so browbeaten and intimidated with scorn and intimidation and threats of nonexistent hellfire that they've decided the pain of living a closeted life of pretend straightness is preferable to living the pain - inflicted upon them by those such as yourself - of an openly gay life.
Happily, many gay men and women find themselves in better situations and do not face such terrible choices.
Last edited by Unsettomati; 02-20-2017 at 08:21 AM..
Reason: sp.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
