i have had several comments from you all wondering where the heck i've been! great question! don't worry. i'm still here, still loving Jesus, and still very gay.
actually, i feel more "here" than ever, i love Jesus more than ever, and i'm gayer than ever. isn't life beautiful?
i have been entrenched in work, in a good way. i did want to blog, however, about how a couple of weeks ago my mom dropped by to pay me a visit but i wasn't home. somehow she got inside my house and then called me to tell me about it. my heart sank. i remembered that i'd just ordered a bunch of books online and they were sitting all around my house.
in the office, i had "gay children, straight parents: a plan for family healing" sitting on the floor - when i thought of her face and reaction to finding this book, my heart fell out of my butt. in the junk basket, which i knew she would look through, i had "stranger at the gate - being gay and Christian in america" and also "jonathan loved david: a look at homosexuality in biblical times."
wow. i totally thought i'd been outed by my obsession with ordering books dealing with LGBT issues.
but turns out mom didn't find anything. she didn't even realize that Hope is living with me. my mother still thinks i live alone with my goldfish. mommy dearest would not enjoy finding those books and finding all of Hope's stuff in my home.
huge sign of relief. i knew my mother would act strange if she'd found anything. but she was completely normal and so was my dad. i am so thankful they didn't find out that way. i am still working on the letter. it's already like 16 pages. and i just can't stop writing. i have so much to say!
three more fundamentalist right wing religious nut sightings:
i was attending a conference and the speaker had the audacity to say the following:
"homosexuals are the kids who were messed with when they were little. every single person who is gay was sexually abused in their childhood. gays who say they're not, just don't remember correctly. they have stuffed the incident. but it happened and that's what makes them gay. and once they reconcile that incident in counseling, they can be freed from their abominable sin."
i am waving the BS flag right here as i sit at my computer and retype that crapola. is anyone else irate over that horrendous and erroneous statement?
unbelievable. i haven't heard this one before. but i had to sit and listen to this bulls***. it was so offensive. it offended a friend of mine who was sexually abused. and it offended me because i am gay and i know for a fact i wasn't "messed with" - which by the way is a horrible term to use. and this man supposedly had a counseling degree. bull bull bull. i couldn't believe it. it literally made me nauseous.
instance #2 - i was talking with a pastor who said that some kids in his church think they're gay but he says, they're not gay, they're just really confused and really bored and so to pass the time in the small town, they are kissing people of the same sex. seriously?
instance #3 - i was talking with another man in ministry this past week who said that "the gays" - as he termed us - were the sole contributor of the downfall of our society. he said that it is the last step of degradation before God wipes us all out. wow. interesting how God has done nothing but bless and encourage and affirm me ever since i accepted my identity as a gay Christian woman.
and i have to live and breathe and operate in this environment. you might ask why? why don't i just get out? well, i honestly feel called to minister within the place where God has called me to. bloom where you're planted, i suppose. even when the soil is rock hard and full of hate. i guess God is big enough to achieve growth even out of that.
5 comments:
Okay, first I just have to say that the expression "my heart nearly fell out of my butt" is perfection and I plan to initiate conversations this weekend with perfect strangers for no other reason than to be able to say, "Yeh well, it all but made my heart fall out of my butt." What a gem.
I've heard the line before that gays have all been sexually abused and if they say they haven't then they're either lying or have repressed it. It's staggering to imagine that anyone could recreate the reality of other people's lives simply to make their erroneous conclusions seem true. It's so ridiculous it could be funny, if it wasn't, as you already said, so offensive.
Great post!
Great post - glad to see you here!!
LOL! LOL! Loved the saying! That was great.
bloom where you're planted.
Great post girl. Next time, please don't wait so long. ;)
I guess that it is only as we gay glbt "children" come out in our homes of faith that such nonsensical thinking regarding homosexuality will finally be placed in the trash bin where it belongs. Church leaders puff themselves up with their own words, preaching to those who believe them without challenge, while only looking foolish to those to whom they would claim to "minister." Feh!
As I mentioned before, one intent of my coming out letter was to provide my parents with a resource for helping others understand that such misinformation was crap, but of course, without using the word "crap."
"instance #3 - i was talking with another man in ministry this past week who said that "the gays" - as he termed us - were the sole contributor of the downfall of our society. he said that it is the last step of degradation before God wipes us all out."
Yeah, thinks the philosopher. God wiped out all traces of Greek culture. I mean, heck, we don't ever study Plato, Aristotle, or those crazy tragodic writers. And that crazy democracy stuff! And yeah, God wiped out all things Roman, too. I mean, heck, nobody ever looks at that silly "nation defined by law" stuff. And those nutzoid epics of Homer (the crazy Greek guy) or Virgil (that nutzo Roman). And don't even get me started on the silliness of studying the ethical theories of Greek or Roman philosophers. HA!
God sure wiped them out, yessirree.
Oh, was that a sarcasm alarm I just heard? Sorry, I was busy working on my rewriting of Western History. /end sarcasm/
Sigh, I have heard all these comments before, and they wear on me. I have yet to learn of any societies wiped out by the existence of a hated minority, though I've heard of many minority groups being wiped out by hating societies. It wears on me, though, when ignorant people are taught to hate in the love of God. And when they don't see it. Alas.
I wasn't sexually abused, either, though I spent many years in "ex gay" counselling trying to find some latent memory, or some miniscule possibility that something was maybe a little abusive. But then, who doesn't have something like that, gay or straight?
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