"Christophobes"???  Where?  Having a phobia towards Christ would mean the person believed Christ exists.  Are you a purple-spotted-monkey-o-phone, Pax? 

Nope. What I fear is the bigotry and anger of people who believe in Christ and use him to justify their prejudices.

  Mormansim itself is a cult that uses a bizarre,ecletic mix of theology from Protestantism and Free Masons

Mormonism is only labeled a cult, today, because it doesn't have two thousand years of covering up it's mistakes.  And, it had the poor luck to come about just as a majority of the population became literate.  Do I think Mormonism is a cult? Yes. But, I think it's hypocritcial for a Christian to point it out. 

Mormonism is most definitely not akin or drawn from protestant leanings.  Freemasonry inspired some of the rituals.  Mormonism is centered around the idea that there's no trinity - period.  They believe men can become gods- and that this planet is one of thousands in which men have risen through the principle of plural marriage and service to be gods of their own planet.  It's a polytheistic culture that attempts to look monotheistic. 

Not that I am in a postion to judge anothers walk with God ,but may I point out that you never gave Christian teaching it's full chance.

True. Thirty years is nothing compared with Job, is. "You never gave Christian teaching it's full chance" is the phrase I heard the most WHILE I was a Christian and, incidentally, WHILE I was on my knees praying.

There are so many variations on what people tell me "You did wrong". It see lots of irony on those claims. 

1. You didn't pray enough. (
2. You didn't open your heart.
3. You really DIDN'T have faith, did you.
4. You went to the wrong church.
5. You didn't stay long enough at the RIGHT church.
6. You let your lust overwhelm you.
7. You let Satan rule you.
8. You can't hear the voice of God but you can hear his spirit.
9. You didn't give Christian teaching its FULL chance.
10. You didn't give Christ a chance.

I won't ask you to explain what "full" teaching means because once you do so, someone else will say that your guidance is insufficient and tell me about the "real" full teaching, or the Christ-centered full teaching, or the "proven" full teaching.  To find out, of course, whatever "teaching" is the right one, I'd have to sacrifice the remainder of my life as the guinea pig, after having BEEN the guinea pig for the first 30 years of my life.

I'm an admittedly sentimental person. You do understand how being separated from your religious faith is like losing both arms, don't you? That's where the sentimentality comes in. I know that religious faith has the potential for good and I still see people using it for good so I'm happy to call them neighbors.  But I'm not a masochist. I LIKE my stable mental health so I'm not a candidate for trying yet another round of, "This is do the trick for sure".

Sorry. My guinea pig days are over. Everyone has their own idea/opinion about what will "cure" or "heal" or "change" a homosexual. I tried most of those suggestions and, obviously, they don't work. What the all added up to was, "Don't act on your homosexual nature." and I dare say that this "FULL" teaching you're referring to is, at it's core, another angle on embracing celibacy along with the demand to forever and always condemn homosexuality.  That's a fools job.

Thanks Pax, the first link doesn't work ,but the second to Exodus does.  A lot of people just try to tar Christians as judgmental haters, so they can easily disregard the Christian message of hope and not have to struggle.  While there are many examples of that there are many more of those who "love there neighbor as themselves" and have courage to fight against the temptations that arise from themselves, this world, and the evil one. 

Thank you again HM for your thoughful input.  Not that I am in a postion to judge anothers walk with God ,but may I point out that you never gave Christian teaching it's full chance.  Real Orthodox Christianity has long kept the original Christian traditions of contemplation and spiritual warfare against all self destructive passions, the first being pride.  In the West many people are ignorant of this knowledge ,because the mainstream Roman Catholic/Protestant sects have long lost those roots.  Mormansim itself is a cult that uses a bizarre,ecletic mix of theology from Protestantism and Free Masons.  So of course you could find no practical knowledge to purify you of passions in those settings nor God's grace filled Sacrements.  The battle against all passions is a lifelong thing that nevers stops.  You won't reach perfection in this life.  As God told one of his Saints Silouan, "Keep your mind in hell and despair not."  This means always be aware of how sinful of a person you are ,but don't despair of the Lords mercy and power to heal and make you whole in do time.  

Mr. Lee has produced a multi-layer argument of daunting depth. Daunting because there are so many issue that are explicitly stated, but about twice the number of implicitly suggested. It's an essay that cannot be knocked out in fit of inspiration over a few hours. This is a soul-searching work that took at least a week, if not months to write.

There may not be a way in our discussion to, using Mr. Lee's word, "deconstruct" all of his meaning, both explicit and implicit. So, in approaching this, I have to return again and again to his original essay and log both reading and thinking time.  

I certainly want to be fair about it. It's deeply felt stuff for Ron Lee and it contains comments that touch me personally. 

I so very tempted to skip to something at the very end and talk about that but I'm a little torn.  Mr. Lee expresses a lot of anger about things take seem to arise to his mind from his past.  Juxtapose that with what he is doing right now.

"I am attending a militantly orthodox parish in Houston that is one of God's most spectacular gifts to me. My best friend Mark (not his real name) is, like me, a refugee from the homosexual insane asylum."

This really hit me hard. Part of the whole struggle to suppress ones natural sexual orientation urge, whether gay or straight, has for many people meant taking the deliberately step to weigh the level of strident condemnation of, say, one church's doctrine against another's. If you feel your usual church isn't making strong enough demands on you to provide a level or encouragement to refrain from a behavior, you might shop around until you find a religious environment that fits your idea of how strict and vigelent personal conduct my be.  Lots of people who struggle to resolve their faith with the personal conduct take this exact journey.  

If, for example, your Baptist church is too modest to harp on sexual ethics - ethics you believe are essential to your goal of reaching the ultimate experience of obedience in your faith, you might turn to, say, a Mormon congregation where issue on sexual conduct are directly addressed. Not sever enough? Perhaps an orthodox Catholic congregation with a strident leadership; on that has been humiliated by the lax management of certain other Catholic parishes in the matter of pedophile priests.  Imagine a parish in which the priest holds powerful and persuasive views on homosexuality and is absolutely undaunted about teaching those views to any and all comers.

If you're A) struggling with your homosexuality and B) want to maintain your religious beliefs with conviction, mighten this orthodox parrish with this stident and devout priest and teacher be the precise haven you seek?

Yes.

How do I know?

I joined the Mormon church for that very reason. I shopped around until I found a church that had a tradition of stridently teaching about the "horrors" of homosexuality and I installed myself into that church immediate, along with my wife and child. I had gone for nearly two decade "behaving myself" on my own power. As time passed, the burden just got bigger and bigger.  Yes, I lusted in my heart, just like every man does. But I NEVER broke. I just kept putting myself in the presence of people who had no hesitation about condemning homosexuality and with the Mormon, it was on their religious study schedule along with every other lesson. It got addressed.

I told no one but my wife that I was gay and she was good enough to keep that a private matter. It was between myself and God, but I never heard the voice of God speak to me. I was utterly alone the whole time I struggled, so I grasped for any kind of reinforcement that would keep me in line with my religious beliefs.

Mormons. Why them? I asked myself that question many times. I had been a genealogy hobbyist from the time I was 18 so I was pretty familiar with the LDS doctrine. It has some bizarre (to a Pentecostal) doctrine that diverges sharply from mainstream Protestant & Catholic beliefs.  But here's the thing for ALL Christians to envy about this church: Family.

If you read about gay Mormon in magazines these day, the quotes from the people are replete with two words: "My family."

That's because their faith is their life from birth and they are actively engaged in focusing on family so much, Mormons are correct when they say "Being a Mormon is like holding down two extra full-time jobs." You live, eat and breath your religion every minute of every day and the church NEVER lets an idle moment be wasted. Your religious responsiblities are cut and dried and you have work to do on those responsibilities every minute of every day for you whole life.

You don't have time to dwell on anything except your family and when you're not dealing with your own family, you are partnered with another man to go visit EVERY other church member in your "ward" every single month. Between those visits and your own family, every Mormon ward has a project to be attended to. Fresno had something like 1,200 acres of grapes the "stake" owned (stake is like a diocese or a large group of wards under the supervision of one tent).

So, here was a church that fed my need for being condemned and it kept me so busy focusing on my family, I actually got a little rest from the anxiety over my still persistent homosexual orientation.

The Down Side: Sexual orientation won't leave you along no matter how many hours you pray, how much time you spend on distracting yourself from it, no matter how much spiritual responsiblity you take on. I found myself becoming so deeply intertwined with my Mormon brothers, I'd dream about them and then I'd suddenly find myself pining over one, miserable for him, so distracted by my thoughts for him. I'd go into a terrible depression when that happened. In the end, changing to a more "orthodox" church had no effect on me. I just learned to absorb more abuse from people who had no idea I was gay. I LOVED the minister I had as a Pentecostal and had go distance myself from him so I wouldn't out myself and spill my guts to him.  

In my 30th year of being a Christian, I was like a walking dead man. No hand from God. No person to confide in. No pain too great to keep my sexual orientation from just "popping up" when it wanted to. I could be in the middle of church and have my game face set and the guy I was smitten with could do as little as reach up and smooth the hair on the back of his neck and I'd get hit right between the eyes with my desire to be loved by him and to love and serve him for all my days. It rattled me day in and day out and for years and years and years.

At some point you realize that no matter where you go, if you are seeking to love and be loved, you are going to be faced with one man after another whom you can NEVER, EVER express your love for because your religious faith forbids it AND because a straight man will not return your love. Some straight men may be kind to you when you express serious affection to them. But most are easily and sometime dangerously offended and you never know which is which. So why punish yourself by putting yourself in the company of men you could easily grow emotional over when you know it's a setup for certain failure?

That's what suicide is made of. It's having your hope beaten to death at your own hands. I certainly did consider just ending it. But I had a wife like no other man. She was unstable, a terrible mother and I just could not consider the idea of leaving my only child in the hands of such a person. My daughter saved my life and when my wife's behavior grew so erratic that she finally abandoned us, I swore I would find a way to end the misery of my conflict with my faith and raise this kid in the healthiest environment I could.  

After relying on my fellow Christians for the whole of my days, I turned to a mainstream counselor. He wasn't "pro gay". He was "pro good mental health." 

I got my mental health back by deciding not to keep my homosexual orientation secret any more. I went to the very man I was so fond of. He was the Bishop in my ward and I spilled. I got it all out, and I asked him to keep that information confidential.

He did. For about five minutes from the time I left his office. After those five minutes, the entire ward knew I was gay and they wouldn't speak to me and could barely look at me. I'd made no plans to leave that church! But that what the natural outcome is when no one will receive you as a brother any more. NO ONE.

That's what did it for me. My 30 years as a Christian came to an end, but I didn't lose my mind and go plunging into sin. I just gathered my wits and I decided that I'd never put another woman through the situation of living with a guy who could not love her any more than he did a sister.

What I found later in embracing my sexual orientation was the OPPOSITE of what Ronald Lee experienced. I found my LIFE. I found someone to love who loved me back and who also loved my child with tenderness.

I, in contrast to Ron, felt freed for the first time in my life. The concept of romance, that had mystified me for so long, suddenly because real to me. I could feel it and I still feel it to this day.  My husband and I go out to dinner on Fridays and we have a very romantic ritual I love.  He, or I will lift a glass to toast and one of us will ask the other, "What's your toast". And the response is always the same thing. "I love you."

With my freedom in hand, I had not the slightest motivation go and throw myself into the hands of promiscuity. I had my daughter consider every single day and as difficult as it was to live alone, that kid made it all worth while. I wasn't a foot-loose and fancy-free college boy like Ron. I was someone who was handed a hoe handle at the age of ten and put to work doing a man's job because my family depended on ME.

I came out to my brothers and sisters and for ten LONG, ugly years, my brother would not communicate with me in ANY form. Imagine my dismay when the brother who was one year older than I called me one day to tell me our mother was sick and in the middle of a divorce and, "Well, could you send us some money?"

I did so immediately. What would you expect? Abandonment?  That's when my brothers finally allowed themselves to see that I was the SAME brother they always had known. I didn't just send money. I bought my mother the only home she ever owned. I stayed with her throughout her illness and I'd ask her, "Mom, what's your favorite flower?"  "Dalias.", she'd say.  I'd plant six dozen dalias in her flowerbed that day. Then I'd ask here, "What kind of shade tree do you like."  "Weeping willow."  She had ten of them in her yard that day.

It really was money that talked to my brothers, not my compassion for our mother.  These are the brothers who watched my father wear out my behind for playing Miss America with my sisters. These brothers watch me get punished for telling my parents I wanted to marry the farmer we rented our farm from, when I was about ten years old. These two sat our dinner table and heard my father say, "Ray, I notice you don't hold a tea glass like other boys."

Yet, when we became adults, these two couldn't imagine, having seen me play with the girls at school every single day, that kids like me grew up to be homosexuals in adulthood. I didn't know it myself untill I read about it in science research that kids who behaved like I did in early childhood, almost always identified as homosexual in adulthood.

All my brothers knew what that I was an embarrassment to them. My older brother probably had 40 fights when we were in elementary school and 39 of them were because he was protecting me from boys who couldn't handle seeing a boy play jump rope with the girls, or jacks with the girls and whatever with the girls. 

My Dad was embarrassed. My mom was embarrassed. My sister? They LOVED having another playmate, but my older sister did bristle over my sissy boy behavior.

So, I endured ridicule from my family, ridicule from my church, ridicule from my classmates, ridicule from the US Air Force, ridicule from IBM employees where I worked, and finally had my church and my own family turn their back on me.

Ronald Lee couldn't get a date.

He seems surprised that no one met his religious standards.

He feel betrayed by some priest who wrote a book to try and comfort people like him.

What does Ronald Lee do?

He finds a church that will INSIST his sexual orientation is evil so he'll feel more confident in fighting his homosexuality.  He now has a "best friend" to confide in and he says this friendship is PROOF that men can have powerful friendships that aren't sexual.

Where have I heard that before?

I know. From the founders of Exodus, the ex-gay organization from HELL!  It was found by gay people just like Ron Lee, who were tired of trying to find that one special guy who shared their religious values.

They did so at Exodus.

The also fell in love and abandoned Exodus for the very reason the started the organization. The found Mr. Right at church, not at a book store or glory hole in the local park.

That's what pushed my button. Ron Lee's friendship with "Mark" (not his real name) sounds just like the situation with those guys who started Exodus.

Here's the final word from me. I'm glad for Ron Lee. He's on stable footing and I qualify to judge what stable footing is.  Religious belief has the power to do good and I hope he'll remember that.

Christ told us, "So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you."

That's his job now. Not destroying the lives of gays and lesbians who achieved happiness in spite of all the muck we had to endure to get to the "happy" part. I feel sorry for his misfortune. I just don't want him to make his misfortune mine, too. I did what any sane person would do under such circumstances. I distanced myself from the pain and, as it turns out, that's where I found my courage.

Oh, there ain't no use denyin',

I'm just a dandy lion,

a fate I don't deserve.

I'd be tough, I'd have prowess,

be a lion not a mou-ess,

if I only had the nerve.

What make a King out of a slave?

Courage!

What makes the flag on the mast to wave?

Courage!

What makes the elephant charge his tusk

in the misty mist, or the dusky dusk?

What makes the muskrat guard his musk?

Courage!

What makes the Spinx the 7th Wonder?

Courage!

What makes the dawn come up like thunder?

Courage!

What makes the Hottentot so hot?

What puts the ape in apricot?

What have I got that Ron ain't got?

Courage!

The truth is, Whitman, Wilde and Auden are (have always been) in EVERY bookstore and library in the NATION. Whitman was the first Poet Laureat of the United States in our nation's history. Auden was a Pulitizer Prize winner and Wilde was a much beloved playwrite of the early 20th century. You don't have to go to an adult bookstore to read them. You can go to ANY library or commerical book store and get an unlimited number of copies of ALL of these classic books written about, and by, gay authors.

Most likely, the bookstore were forced to offer this literature to comply with state and federal law that literature sold in this kind of store must consist of at least a representative percentage of books that were generally understood to have some "redeeming social value". It was/is a standard and indicitive of the evolution of the laws regulating adult material (books, film). These days adult books stores sell sports magazines (cheaper than fine literature) along with the porn to comply with state laws.  That's why the books seem to be a fish out of water. The real intent for such a store was to sell adult literature. It's a niche industry that has virtually vanished in the age of video rentals and web-based pornography. In short, this kind of store is going the way of the dinosaur because it can not complete with the internet.  Up to ONE of these stores might exist in an entire geographical region, and they are almost always catering to heterosexuals.

Since I lived on the Texas/Oklahoma border, what I saw was that pornography was sold openly to everyone. Zoning laws around the major cities of Texas are such that it makes it extremely easy to find adult material. Why?  Because cities generally force the business far to the outskirts of the community and in Texas you see all the A-Frame building standing all by themselves out in the middle of the countryside with anywhere from 1 to 100 vehicles parked at them, including tractor trailers, RVs and pickup trucks.  These consumers are the heterosexuals of the community, engaging in their constitutional right to own this material. Because of their location; one that makes it IMPOSSIBLE not to see it because there is NOTHING else around it except for distant trees, you just can't miss it when you drive along the interstate highways in Texas.  Oklahoma?  Puh-leeze!  Okies are offended if a restaurant waiter so much as ask them if they'd like a cocktail. "Do I look like the kind of person who would drink a cocktail?", they scream. You just as well slap them in the face as suggest they look like someone who would ever have liquor on their breath. So, Oklahoma does have a few of these dens of inequity but it's almost like you sort of have to know someone who knows where it is in order to find it. (more coming)

Thank you for your input HM and Goofy.  That is just what I wanted an open discussion of the article.    

When do we get to discuss t he sordid life of the clergy?  Or, Christian Domestic Discipline?

About Ronald G. Lee:  I've met a few people like Ron Lee (the author of the essay) in my time. I do have a sense of pity for him (and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way) because he had so many experiences that didn't meet his religious or ethical standards.

As I mentioned to Wayfarer, who invited me to participate here, I could have written this story Ron Lee wrote myself, but in the opposite direction.  It appears to me that Ron began his search for love in fairly typical gay fashion.  I can count among my own friends a majority of them who met in bars, book stores, bath houses and rest rooms where they were cruising for sex. But my story about them ends differently.

I live in Cathedral City, California, 15 minutes away from Palm Spring, which may be the most popular retirement community for gays in the world (Fort Lauderdale? HUGE). Here the RULE is that thousands of gay couples with relationships that extend for not a couple of years, but decades, are living out their lives.  My own relationship is in it's 25th year. My husband, who is 30 years my senior, had another partner for 32 years. That partner was 15 years older than my husband, born in 1908, and died in 1981, two years before I met my husband.

This is the kind of relationship I see in my everyday life, not the "just-missed-it" scenario described by Mr. Lee.   Lee gets right to it, very early in his essay, and continues to encourage what I think of as a myth: that gays die old, unloved and alone.

I do know men who are alone and seeking a companion of their own, but I'm surrounded by gay couples who have between 20 and 60 years together. Our best friends who live in Laguna Beach celebrated their 57th anniversary last year and then one of them died, at the age 89. 

Knowing this, I had the initial impression that Mr. Lee just hung out with a far different kind of gay person than I do. When I came out, promiscuity was not an option. I was the father of an infant child. I made my decision in favor of responsibility before I came out, in my Christian youth. When I finally did come out, I met my future husband right in my own home with my child at my side.  We made a commitment to each other and we stuck by it and had a life that is so little different from any heterosexual marriage, it's virtually indistinguishable outside of having a same-sex couple behaving like parents.

Our friends were like us because that's the kind of friends we wanted. I'm not 100% sure after so many years, but I did notice it almost by accident that all of our gay couple friends had children just like we did (actually, more kids, as many as 8).  Some were religious and some not at all.

I'd say that there are some veins of truth in what Mr. Lee tell about in the gay community. The one that made me giggle a little because it was so very true, was the mention of going online and having someone hit on you to ask you about your physical endowment.  Like with Mr. Lee, that particular question sets off major alarm bells in gay men who are seeking a serious relationship. It's the sexual-objectification of a man who is looking for someone to love and be loved by, not someone to hop in the sack with.  So, it's one of the most common of complaints among all gay men.

What Mr. Lee's essay lacks, I think, is an acknowledgment of the trials and toils of the life of a homosexual having any parallel in the heterosexual community. There's a virtual absence of acknowledgment.  Heterosexuals who read this essay can just as easily identify with it for the parallels that occur in straight society, as Lee can among gays.  Promiscuity is utterly rampant among straight people, both married and unmarried.  Relationships disintegrate between heterosexuals in numbers he just doesn't cite. Gay people can look at divorce statistics and, believe it or not, feel a pang of jealousy. Why?  Because those numbers are REAL. They are indisputable because the come from state statistical records.  Gays would like to know if their relationship are comparable, but can't know if they are forbidden to marry.  But Mr. Lee describes personal stories that, seemingly, are designed to authoritatively represent how gay marriages are bound to end, yet without statistical evidence born out of comparison with the same marital demographics.  It's like saying, "Gay marriages will fail, even if I don't have any historical or statistical basis for comparing them with heterosexuals."

Mr. Lee's  pal got married in Vermont and then split up?  Fine. One example. Whoopee. So, because of that ONE thing, gays should be legally barred from marriage? Read the divorce notices in the newspaper, Pal! You'll see a dozen a day in Bakersfield.  i can give you the names, addresses and phone numbers of 50 gay couple I know whose relationship have endure for 25 or more years. And, clearly, I don't know all gay couples so my friends are just a drop in the pan. But I can't tell you how the gay couple compare with straight married couple until these gay couples have the same status as straight couple. Marriage transforms people in ways that living together does not. Want a divorce? Fine. Hand over HALF of your estate to your spouse and pack your bags.  Makes you think again, doesn't it. Maybe you'll respond with, "I'm sorry. Let's try to patch this up."

Mr. Lee worries that gay couple won't be monogamous, but worries not at all that heterosexual couples won't be/aren't monogamous. How better to present and emphasize gay promiscuity than isolating it from heterosexual promiscuity. It's a standard technique of creative writing. When you want to emphasize something to magnify the effect, express it in isolation. That's what Mr. Lee did with a great deal of this essay and professional writers know it's a common technique used to magnify the emotional impact of the moment.  Want John Wayne to look like a rough, tough guy? Isolate him with someone who looks and behaves like Pee Wee Herman. John Wayne could wear a DRESS in that situation and still come across like Godzilla.

You can't help but know that the THREE BILLION DOLLAR porn industry is built on the back on straight people.  Check ANY cable network in this country and you won't see a single gay-themed Pay-Per-View adult film offered. It's ALL straight porn and the irony is the incredible emphasis on female-female sexual acts that are, one presumes, so popular with straight men, a film doesn't go out of Van Nuys, without at least one segment of females having sex with no man around. Why does that disqualify gays from embracing the responsibility of marriage?

Its harder to paint gays in isolation with their vices when you also show the parallels that are RIGHT UNDER THE NOSES of Christians.

The fat guy thing:  Presidential Chief of Staff Karl Rove's father, Louis Rove, was a morbidly obese man who lived right here in Cathedral City. He had a partner for 20 years and they had a very happy relationship. It's unfortunate that Mr. Lee's lesbian pal was like Mr. Lee and didn't seem to know about an entire sub-culture among gays known as "chubby chasers". They have HUGE social affairs and get-togethers.

This is Goofy's partner.

I happen to be a Christian gay person, who belongs to a local church that has no issue with my living arrangements.

After 38 years in this town, thoroughly immersed in the church scene, I have come to the conclusion that there is only one reason for people objecting to gay relationships- FEAR. They are afraid that God's gonna get us if we don't get rid of the gays. Meanwhile, there are diverse sexual practices of all kinds, both alone and with others ,going on inside and outside the churches, and nobody seems to mind if we don't mention them. If you really want to follow the scriptural mandates for sexual purity, the only sure way is in a state of celibacy- Roman Catholic style. For instance, if you have intercourse with your wife during her time of the month, you are in the same shape biblically as a gay relationship. I have not even addressed all the divorce and remarriage that regularly occurs among the Christians in this town, and they get to stay withing their local fellowships.

After all these years, I believe in a God who is less hateful and vindictive, and more loving and forgiving. If only we could emulate him.

This guy probably knew about the book store because he was looking for sex and someone told him where to go. He didn't care about the books in the front when he went there. The books were an afterthought, from when he decided to lead a spiritual life. He then remembered the books in the front and he sets you up to believe they were placed there as a lure to draw people in. When you are in the closet, don't know ANYONE who is gay, and have set your mind (and heart) to make your move, the few things you can do is 1) keep your ears open. A straight person will make some comment about how they "accidently" walked into a gay bar or book store. The gay person usually plays along with the conversation if they need to get specific details about WHERE the place is. 2) Look in the phone book. Cities everywhere, and since the early 1970s, have either a Gay Help Line, or a Crisis Line where people will unhesitatingly tell you where the nearest gay bar is.  

It was via this means that I, myself, was able to meet the FIRST gay person I ever knew. I was 30 years old when that occurred. It was a bar and, being from a religious tradition that abhors alcohol use, I was instantly turned off at the prospect of going to a place that served liquor to find a man to meet my heart's desire. Yet, that was the single place in the city of Fresno that the Help Line was aware of.

No surprise to me now. The history of the gay community shows that gays first started organizing their efforts only because gay bars were the one place they had to go. There were no gay organizations, no gay youth clubs, no PFLAGs, no Lamda Legal, no Metropolitian Community Churchs, no NOTHING for gays to meet each other except for bars. That fact ESTABLISHED the cultural precidant which make gay clubs the center of gay life.  

Eliminating the gay presence in bars was the objective of thousands of police raids in which jailing gay men was done because they were such easy marks.  Police chiefs knew how to pad their political ambitions on the back of gays. They could arbitrarily arrest gay men for no other reason than BEING IN a place known to be a gathering area for homosexuals. 

The statistics piled up and the police chief's reputation for being "hard on vice" was assured. Notwithstanding that over 99 % of the arrest made never went to court. Gay men who were in the closet preferred to pay a simple fine and be released and just forget the whole, humiliating experience. Police used extortion. They threatened to report the arrest to the gay person's employer, tell his family, OR register the man as a habitual sex offender, which would mean a permanent criminal record. It was MERELY a threat. These men weren't engaging in sex. They were simple THERE at the bar when it was raided. The threats, however, scared the daylights out of gays, so they most commonly just paid a fine for loitering and were released without bail.

What this points to is the age-old tradition in society of forever and always preventing gays from developing enduring relationships. It's just ONE thing that has been done to enforce the view that "gay relationship don't endure". True. They don't endure when the law has mood swings that continuously prevent gays from solidifying their relationship.  Texas doesn't want gays to together? Easy. Make a law in which gay men cannot have consenual sex in PRIVATE. Call it the Sodomy Law, and make sure it doesn't have any legal effect on heterosexual who engage in the EXACTLY the same behavior (i.e. oral/anal sex). That law and laws like it were installed in practically every state in the union. Until the US Supreme Court, in the case of Lawrence vs. Texas, ruled sodomy laws to be unconstitutional, gays in Texas were ALWAYS subject to a criminal offense by the mere act of private consentual sex. There's little wonder that, under the circumstance of being hounded, that gays would turn to the fleeting, negative, destructive practice of quick sex in the back of an adult book store.  Understand something. It took the Jews some 8,000 years to eliminate polygamy from their ranks. Why, then, is there a demand for homosexuals to be better than all the polygamist in Biblical history?  AIDS?

Good answer! It's a public health crisis. So WHY is it that HALF of Calfornians want to legally BAR the very gay people  they have accused of rejecting responsiblity for several centuries, from EMBRACING responsibility by marrying?  Our dignified author doubts marriage will matter. So if he doubts marriage will help, are we to go ahead and let more men die from AIDS until he resolves his doubts?

Hell NO!  He will NEVER resolve his doubts because his eternal soul is invested in keeping gays and lesbians in the ranks of the dead and dying. It's now his RELIGIOUS DUTY to condemn every possible aspect of any homosexuals life and he'd prefers death by AIDS for homosexuals to having to deal with his own self doubt.  (MORE COMING)

Grumpy, I only speak for myself, but the only agenda I have is to be able to live here with the very same civil rights as you and every other citizen, no more, no less.  Beyond that, what you do in the privacy of your home and what I do in mine is of no concern to anyone as long, as you said, no one gets hurt.  It's not about sex,  lust, or whatever terminology anyone wants to apply, it about an equal chance at building a decent life.  If prayer will help and be a tool of guidance for you or anyone else, I have no issue there. 

Try reading and discussing the article Grumpy. 

Yeah what the heck is the issue let the homos live. i personally don't aprove, and it doesn't make any biological sense. But hey they're not hurting anyone, well "christian" values. I'd rather have them move on with their agenda than regress to the darkages, as some people would have it, with prayer as our primary tool for everything.

I agree that promiscuous heterosexual behavior is deplorable.  Part of the over all implications of so called "Liberal Christianity" is that for a so called Christian body to accept homosexual permissiveness leaves the door wide opened to all sorts of permissiveness.  I don't think that very many people are gonna try to argue that God didn't really mean it when he said adultery is bad thing.  At least not yet any way.  The additional link I posted which is also from a homosexual site says that the apparent disparity of research is caused by homosexuals making a distinction between "emotional monogamy" and "Total monogamy".  Emotional monogamy is like saying I love you and I married you ,but I should feel free to see other people. 

1.  I make no distinction whatsoever with monogamy.  Monogamy is simply what it is.

2.  The homosexual community promotes no more promiscuity than the straight community.  Didn't New York loose a straight governor over this issue recently?

3.  If you want a realization of "meat in a relationship"  and "physical lust"  simply go to any straight bar on a Friday or Saturday night and observe.

Sorry Sage I don't remember much of the books.  But that quote was the metaphor the author used in his article; that of a few in the background behind a tissue of lies, trying to manipulate every one else. 

*thats* the movie,not the books.... 

Sage did you forget about "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" 

So Goofy do you think that homosexual culture as a whole promotes promiscuity?

Do you make a distinction between "emotional monogamy" and "total monogamy"?

Do you disagree with the author that most homosexual relationships are about " the meat" and quickly cool once the physical lust has been fed? 

As to the Oz metaphor~ any morals i learned as child came from those books~ love,courage,being "plucky",  being faithful ...so if somehow that metaphor is supposed to be "bad"...well wrong choice.

I am not a member of your church~ I could never question if it brings you true happiness. I am not gay and can not question that either.I can only note you seem happy enough and that my friends about to be married have been and continue to appear, madly in love and quite happy.

I'm not going to throw out statistics and try to baffle people with BS, but I can tell you this:  for the past nine years I have never experienced a more truer happiness than in the rest of my life since I met my partner.  And during that nine years, we have enjoyed a completely monogamous relationship, which is probably a little longer that some of the straight people in this town.

But that is a typical reaction to somebody who questions the legitimacy of homosexual behavior.  The author himself notes that he has been accused of "internalized homophobia" when he questioned if that life style could ever bring true happiness. 

asking "are you" is not calling you that WF. 

No Woof I am not homophobic, calling me that in itself is a stereotype.  I used the Wizard of Oz allusion ,because the author of the article himself said it was a fitting metaphor for the movement. I touch on the topic ,because HM seemed to want to preach to me about homosexuality yesterday and I happened to come across this insightful article from someone who is experienced on the subject.  I think it deserves a look and discussion. 

Ummm, are you homophobic, WF?  Or is it just because your religion tells you its wrong?   Is it something, that, just because you don't understand it, you reject it?  I bet if you were in a room full of men, some of them you'd never know what their sexual orientation might be and you'd probably find something in common and something likeable.  Please don't do stereotypes...

This link seems to reinforce the articles assertion that incidences of true monogamy are rare in the male homosexual community.  http://members.aol.com/gaym...