148. integument

One of the things that I hope to accomplish in writing about my experience as both a gay man and as an ex-Christian is to give hope and courage to those who are struggling with their sexuality or over their doubts about their faith. Regarding faith, there’s definitely a place for doubt and for questioning, but there comes a point where you have to ask yourself if there’s genuine belief within you or if your doubts are your intellect trying desperately to tell you something about yourself.

Regarding sexuality, there is no such thing as questioning. There may be confusion within a person over the kinds of sexual desire he or she is experiencing, whether those feelings be heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual; or an even more frightening reality of an individual coming to the realize that he or she is transsexual—that is, that he or she was born one sex but knows at his or her core, in the same way that you and I know that we are the sex we are, that he or she is the opposite. From conversations with transsexual friends, I know now how incredibly difficult and lonely a road this can be—but it shouldn’t be.

Yet still, there should be no questioning, or at least there shouldn’t be a culture that forces an individual to question what they know in their heart to be true.

This is especially true of conservative, anti-gay blogger Jonathan Merrit, who was came out recently as gay but has unfortunately taken the sad route of self-loathing Christian gays who make their mea culpas and then go into “therapy” (i.e., “reparative”, ex-gay therapy). They come out as a way of encouraging other closeted gays to do the same—to throw themselves on the “unconditional love” of their hateful communities and to seek “help” from monstrous so-called therapists who promise to be able to “fix” them (i.e., make them “normal”, i.e., heterosexual).

What Jonathan Merrit needs is help to accept himself as a beautiful human being who happened to be born homosexual. Although I never sought therapy (thankfully), having been there myself as a once-Christian gay man I know how terrifying and lonely it is to come out of the closet, especially when your entire community is made up almost exclusively of conservative Christians who believe that homosexuality is a sin and an abomination.

There is no brokenness about homosexuality. If there was, fundamentalists wouldn’t be fighting so hard against it and lying so much about it. If there was, all homosexuals would be leading disastrous lives and dying at age 42 (or whatever age they’ve worked out we die at). If there was, the president of Exodus International wouldn’t say that he’s never met a gay person who’s successfully changed their orientation, and Robert Spitzer wouldn’t have renounced his research finding that ex-gay therapy worked.

Regardless of whether you belief in God (or god(s)) or not, it’s such a waste of an already short existence on this wonderful planet to strait-jacket yourself into a life of loneliness and misery in order to satisfy the demands of a community that refuses to acknowledge any perspectives other than their bigoted, narrow, judgmental and puritanical one.

So my call to action for today is for anyone who reads this and agrees with the sentiment to write to Jonathan Merrit and plead with him to not go down the road of self-loathing and unhappiness and to embrace and love himself and the way that he was born. Plead with him to accept the potential happiness that’s there if he’ll just venture outside and look for it. I did, and my only regret is not having met my wonderful boyfriend Jay sooner.

http://jonathanmerritt.com/contact.html

Jonathan,

I saw the article this morning on The Advocate about your coming out as gay, and have to say that while I admire the courage it took to admit that publicly, even under pressure to do so, I’ve been where you are. I was born into a Christian family and was raised in the fundamentalist tradition, but came out as gay in 2008 at age 26 after over a decade of struggling with feelings that conflicted with the teaching of my faith. I did so after an extensive amount of research into the clinical and scientific origins of homosexuality, as well as researching the truth about what history and the Bible truly says about it. What I found is that there is nothing in the Bible to suggest that it condemns committed relationships between same-sex couples, and that there is no evidence in the scientific community to indicate homosexuality is anything but natural. What’s unnatural and harmful is attempting to alter your sexual orientation when there’s nothing wrong with the one you have.

It’s impossible to express to you the regrets I have over all of the wasted years that came with fighting with my innate nature and with not coming out sooner. But there was also an indescribable relief at finally embracing who I am. I had to ask myself whether it was more natural to try to fight what had come without bidding (I had no exposure to the “gay lifestyle” growing up) or to accept the evidence within myself. I have no regrets about that decision today. It took some time and looking, but I’m with the man I plan on spending my life with, and here’s nothing different about our love from that of my parents or any of my heterosexual friends who are married.

What I want to say by all of that is don’t throw away the chance to find that for yourself by throwing in your lot with the ex-gay community. Your “indiscretion” showed where your heart truly lies, and what it truly desires, and that’s not wrong. I know from experience that it may seem like giving up to “give in” to what the Church calls temptation, but it’s not giving up to truly embrace who you are. Listen to your heart.

Much love,
David Philip Norris

147. qualia

“It is a horrible thing for a man to be so doctrinal that he can speak coolly of the doom of the wicked, so that, if he does not actually praise God for it, it costs him no anguish of heart to think of the ruin of millions of our race. This is horrible! I hate to hear the terrors of the Lord proclaimed by men whose hard visages, harsh tones, and unfeeling spirit betray a sort of doctrinal desiccation: all the milk of human kindness is dried out of them. Having no feeling himself, such a preacher creates none, and the people sit and listen while he keeps to dry, lifeless statements, until they come to value him for being ‘sound’, and they themselves come to be sound, too: and I need not add, sound asleep also, or what life they have is spent in sniffing out heresy and making earnest men offenders for a word. Into this spirit may we never be baptized!”

—Charles Spurgeon

Earlier this month I met up with my Former Fundamentalists Meetup group at a coffee shop in Saint Paul. It was a larger turnout than usual, about ten altogether, with several new faces there, and some of our meetings are usually devoted to sharing our “coming out” stories of how we left Christianity or religion. (Not all are atheists, but the majority is probably nontheist.) The purpose of the group is really to provide a sense of community and belonging, and a safe place for people who have been abused or had negative experiences in religion to share their stories—and there are some sad and even horrific stories amongst our members.

One of the guys is a former member of Bethlehem Baptist Church, my old church, so we have fun comparing stories about our experiences there and with John Piper, the lead pastor there, and the awful things that he says and does. In all honesty, it’s not at all productive or helpful and not in line with my current proactive kick, but it does feel good to be able to vent once in a while and feel understood.

In trying to find one quote from the eighteenth century preacher Jonathan Edwards, I came across the above passage from Charles Spurgeon, the nineteenth century British preacher and evangelist. I was really struck by how antithetical his statement is to what normally passes for conservative Christian attitudes today and how indifferent many of those Christians are to the thought of hell as regards the “damned.”

At Pride last month I met a Christian couple who was going around handing out Bibles and having conversations with people there. To my surprise they weren’t concerned at all with preaching or converting anyone to Christianity—or away from homosexuality, which was kind of a shock. Mainly they wanted to share the “love of God” with anyone and everyone there, and find out where people were at since they figured that so many of us at the festival probably had negative experiences with and perceptions of the church. They didn’t believe that homosexuality was a good thing, but also didn’t believe that it was their place to judge or tell anyone how they should be—which was also a bit of a shock since most Christians I know see it as their duty to “proclaim the Truth” (yes, with a capital ‘T’).

What Spurgeon describes is almost exactly what passes for “compassion” in most churches now. Oh, they’re sorry that some people won’t enjoy the pleasures of worshiping God in Heaven for all Eternity, but it doesn’t really keep them up nights. They seem to take a secret enjoyment in knowing that they’re on the winning side, on Team Jehovah.

Johann Gerhard wrote that “the Blessed will see their friends and relations among the damned as often as they like but without the least of compassion.” Jonathan Edwards wrote, “The sight of hell’s torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever. . . Can the believing father in Heaven be happy with his unbelieving children in Hell. . . I tell you, yea! Such will be his sense of justice that it will increase rather than diminish his bliss.”

And this is supposed to be the more moral worldview? The one that encourages parents to take sadomasochistic pleasure in the damnation of their own children, and of their friends and neighbors? This is the loving God that supposedly sent himself to die for the supposed sins of the sinful people he created?

Now, I would be remiss in not saying that there are plenty of Christians who do not subscribe to this doctrine. All in all, they are good, kind, compassionate people who believe that their God is one of love. But I have yet to hear from them a satisfactory answer to why, according to their own holy book, their God has done such horrific things—ordering the mass slaughter of entire cities in order to populate them with his “chosen people” (Deuteronomy 3, Joshua 6), ordering kidnapping and rape (Judges 21), slavery (including selling your own daughter as a sex slave (Exodus 21:1-11)), child abuse (Judges 11:29-40 and Isaiah 13:16), and human (including child) sacrifice (Genesis 22:1-19, Deuteronomy 13:13-19, Judges 11:29-40, 2 Kings 23:23-25), to name just a few of his crimes against humanity.

No wonder the Christians are so lacking in genuine compassion when they see examples like this from their God in their holy book.

In a recent editorial in the New York Times, Frank Bruni takes on the perennial subject of Michele Bachmann and her very public image as an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian. He quotes Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, who said: “Before you speak to me about your religion, first show it to me in how you treat other people. Before you tell me how much you love your God, show me in how much you love all His children.”

Christians are quick to quote John 3:16, but seem to forget what follows it— “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world…”