So glad I left the fundamentalist world after Bible College. It's not that 'la la la, my life is perfect now that I can acknowledge I'm a lesbian." It's "I can be honest about one of the many aspects of who I am." So sad/funny to me that fundies focus so much on the sex-act part of being gay. I could never have sex again (not that I'm having so much of it now), and I would still be gay. So what?

One minister I spoke with as I was coming out said to me, "It's a leap of faith." It is. I am glad I leaped, because with all of my faults, I'm real. And pretty normal. And a follower of Christ. And gay. Big deal.

This is a good example of the dangers of zealotry, all too common (though by no means limited) to religion. People put themselves through all sorts of difficult, unpleasant experiences: the Bar exam, divorce, mountaineering expeditions, to name a few things that come to mind--but something in each person tells them that it is a good idea, that it will wind up helping them somehow. Obviously the men and women attracted to reparative therapy think the same of changing their sexual orientation, but their situation presents a distinct problem, wrapped up as it is in their religion.

Rational people can decide whether they want to sit for the Bar, or buy a new house, or get married, and they can decide it in any number of ways. The key element that they have, though, is choice: they can ultimately decide to do or not do something and retain their guiding framework. Fundamentalists, however, have no choice--except to abandon their religion. For them, God has already decided everything and written it down, and it is their responsibility to live up to it. Obviously, as in the case of homosexuals struggling with their sexual identity, this kind of belief sets up some really tough hurdles. Because of a couple passages in Leviticus and Romans (which, for the record, are not all clear about their condemnation of homosexuality when viewed in their proper context), no gay person who subscribes to this form of Christianity can ever be happy, except by denying their natural sexual orientation and struggling with it. It is sad, and I think it shows how dangerous this kind of thinking is. It displays a capriciousness that is appalling to me--but seductive to so many--and ultimately, very dangerous.

Jesus makes no mention of homosexuality in the Bible, in fact his parting words were something to the effect of, "above all else, love God and love each other". Some of the worst offenders of this ideaology are Christians themselves. It's also interesting to me that these people who want to change a person's sexuality are so mentally limited that they are incapable of putting themselves in the shoes of others.

I believe the golden rule is another version of the teachings of Jesus. Another problem with people who claim they are "Christian" is that many of these people have never even read the Bible, they just listen to fringe lunatics and base their opinions on these nuts and their own insecurities. It's a sin that the rest of us are forced to listen to them.

A very interesting article, this.

I grew up in Europe, where it seemed to be a natural part of the mental development of every child that at some point they realised that Father Christmas was just a convenient fiction to explain the arrival of seasonal gifts, and then a few years later also realising that religion was also a convenient fiction that adult society used to instill certain values, notably tending sheep, adoring babies, putting money in the collection plate, drinking wine in small quantities, and marrying without any sexual experience.

The fascinating question about these homosexual fundamentalists is, as the article touches on, why they have not made the leap of faith to a less restrictive brand of religion.

I don't begin to have an answer to this, but I often think that in this time when the Anglican Communion is on the verge of schism over the issue of the ordination of gay (but possibly celibate) bishops, and when gay marriage (or various analogues thereof) is one of the hot issues of the day, it does seem kind of logical that churches should concern themselves with gay people and vice versa, because when the inevitable and inexorable march of history is away from religion and from marriage, these institutions are bound to turn to niche marketing if they want to survive.

Nothing testifies to the ineluctable nature of sexuality more dramatically than the tormented struggle of "recovering" gay people. And few things indicate more vividly the calumny of what passes for Christianity among the herds of evangelicals than their cruelty toward lesbians or gays of any description. It's a commonplace that the only thing such Christians fear and despise more than an atheistic, promiscuous queer is an unbowed Christ-confessing, monogamous homosexual.

Back in the 1980s a friend and I infiltrated a weekend gathering of "ex-gays" in Chicago. (He was writing an article for Windy City Times.) We also had a surprisingly complicated response to what we discovered among these young men and women desperately trying to "overcome" themselves. Most of the attendees weren't from the gay neighborhoods of Chicago but from small towns or rural areas. They'd grown up with conservative Christianity and compulsory heterosexuality; that was their whole life. Being comfortable with their sexuality would have required an extraordinary independence from every network of support and the ability to surrender what mattered most.

Instead, it seemed to us, they'd simply created an "acceptable" gay community for themselves of "fellow sinners." Relapses or "backsliding" was the main way they connected -- the way they found sex, intimacy and love even though it required a constant, lacerating martyrdom of repentance. No doubt the sex was hotter too: few things are spicier than a forbidden fuck. On the other hand, few things are more comically pathetic than "recovered" gay men with their suppressed sexual spark and spiritless wives.

Theodore Roethke wrote, "All lovers live by longing, and endure: / Summon a vision declare it pure." Being comfortably out in a homophobic society requires an imaginative leap for any lesbian or gay man. For those crippled by Christianity, it requires an almost superhuman resilience. The lost souls described by Tanya Erzen are indeed pitiable, but the ones who stand condemned are those Christians who embody the darkness of their faith.