201. confutation

Yesterday was Darwin’s birthday, so I watched an HBO documentary called Questioning Darwin, a look at the Creationist movement in the United States and its fierce opposition to the theory of evolution by natural selection. It’s basically a dissection of everything I was taught as a child about myself, the origin of life, and my purpose on Earth.

First, some quotes from Creationists in the film:

• “We believe in Creation, because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and God’s word, the holy Bible.”
• “If the theory of evolution is a fact, the Bible must be false, so we’re all stupid ignoramuses.”
• “I do not believe that we’re some sort of highly evolved primate.”
• “The Bible says we are created a little lower than angels, which is much more noble and majestic than the explanation that evolution gives for who we are.”
• “I don’t know how someone could observe humans and miss the dignity that’s put there by God alone.”
• “To put man down as just an animal, that we’re no different than a dog, is preposterous. God made us in His image, and so to say that man is an animal, and God created man in his own image… does one come back and say God is nothing more than an animal?”
• “If we are just a product of this random mutation process, where does morality come from? Where does hope come from? Where does love come from?”
• “If that’s the way the world works, then you believe in a God that doesn’t intervene. That takes away any possibility of miracles, any possibility of answered prayer, any possibility of the resurrection.”
• “To think I have no communication with God would be so devastating. I can’t even imagine adopting such a view just to make peace with Darwin.”
• “I can’t imagine life without knowing that God has a plan, and that that plan is not just for the here-and-now, but that plan includes a hope and a future, and a future way beyond whatever we’ll face here on Earth but a future with Him in heaven.”

What I hear in these voices is fear, thinly masked by certainty in a belief that promises to deliver both answers and purpose. These are people terrified by an existence that’s marked by uncertainty and danger. In a way, they’re right to be afraid, irrational as that fear is.

The beginning of my journey to atheism was indeed in finally accepting the theory of evolution by natural selection. I’m not sure when that happened, exactly—somewhere in the years after graduating from Northwestern College. The more I considered the fossil and genetic evidence that all life on Earth is related, and for the age of the universe and the Earth itself, the less likely it seemed that it was designed. For a while I flirted with the idea of theistic evolution, that God put everything in motion. Then something Julia Sweeney says in Letting Go of God stuck with me:

Intelligent design gets everything backwards. It’s like saying that our hands are miraculous because they fit so perfectly into our gloves: “Look at that! Four fingers and a thumb! That can’t have been an accident!’

Fact is, far from “fearfully and wonderfully made,” we more seem to be haphazardly assembled.

This view of a naturalistic universe had real implications for the beliefs my parents had handed me as a child, beliefs that mirrored the sentiments offered by the quotations above. How could a loving God allow such a world to exist? If I, a being made in the image of God, wanted to prevent suffering, how could an all-powerful being then not banish it completely?

At one point, several individuals talk about surviving substance abuse and how their addiction turned to Christianity. This is a popular talking point: without God we’re just animals, slaves to our darker impulses and passions—that we’ll tear ourselves apart. I don’t know how many presentations I sat through growing up: of “recovering sinners” warning us how bad it was on the outside, and that our only hope for overcoming sin and temptation was Jesus.

A fellow from Answers in Genesis sums it up at one point: “When asked what is the primary reason I believe evolution is incompatible with Biblical Christianity, I can sum it up in one word: death. Whether we’re young or old, death is inevitable.”

In the debate between Bill Nye and Ken Ham last week, this issue also came up. Ham said something to the effect of: “Bill Nye can’t tell us what happens after we die.” And that’s true. We don’t know. I don’t know. Yet somehow this becomes a talking point for Creationists to insert a Gospel pitch of salvation through Jesus Christ. You cannot talk to a Creationist who won’t do this at some point.

Their response to the news that we’re essentially alone in an amoral and indifferent universe is to try to shut their eyes tight and stop their ears. For them, if evolution is true, that means that life is pointless, aimless, meaningless. I love how Julia Sweeney puts it in Letting Go of God: “What’s going to stop me from rushing out and murdering people?”

For me, accepting evolution was liberating. For years, I agonized over the struggle between my “earthly” desires and my supposed divine purpose on Earth. The news that I’m an animal, with the same origins and subject to the same needs and forces as other creature on this planet, was a relief. It meant there’s nothing wrong with me, the opposite of what Christianity taught.

It’s futile to argue with Creationists. Their arguments are based on emotion, and apparently fear of death and spontaneously becoming murderers or kleptomaniacs. Or gay. Thus, they can easily dismiss threatening, rational evidence in favor of the Bible.

Darwin wrote: “Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity, more humble and I believe truer to consider him created from animals.”

198. Le Jugement

This was a card that came up yesterday, reversed, in the ninth position on the Celtic cross spread. It reminds me just how steeped the Rider-Waite-Smith deck is in Judeo-Christian mythology.

The imagery evokes the Resurrection before the Last Judgement from 1 Corinthians: “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”

In Pamela Coleman Smith’s artwork, the archangel Gabriel awakens the dead with a trumpet blast, who gesture reverently and welcomingly with open arms. The figures below are grey and ashen, while everything above bursts with color.

The banner on the trumpet is likely the Saint George’s Cross, which could be a reference to overcoming the dragon (Revelation 12:8). There’s also a connection in the red and white to the Magician’s clothing. The ocean swelling in the background could be a reference to the sea giving up its dead (Revelation 20:13), but there’s also the connection to the river that seems to flow throughout the Major Arcana cards, starting with the Empress. It mirrors the swelling waves in the foreground of the Fool, the river flowing through Death, and the water in Temperance, The Star, and The Moon. One could say that there’s also a connection to the High Priestess, with her blue robes flowing like water.

Grey is a masculine color in Tarot. The Emperor’s throne, the Hierophant’s church and Justice’s temple; the Chariot, the Hermit, the overcast sky in Death; the Devil’s wings, and the towers in The Tower card and The Moon are all grey (and, dare I say, phallic). The pillars in the High Priestess are black and grey.

The trumpet here has particular meaning for me, as my father is a professional trumpeter.

Some keywords that Waite associated with this card in its upright position are Judgement, Rebirth, Inner Calling, and Absolution. Reversed, it can suggest self-doubt and self-judgement.

Reversed, the Judgement card suggests that you may be indulging yourself in doubt and self-judgement. Your deliberation is causing you to miss the new opportunities that await. A certain amount of momentum has accumulated behind what you have achieved, which could propel you further. If actions are taken now, such momentum will not be lost. Therefore now is not the time for being cautious or introverted, rather it is time to move onwards with confidence and pride.

Additionally, this card suggests that you may be overly hard or critical of yourself and not allowing yourself to truly learn from your mistakes. You may have made some mistakes in the past but see these as learning experiences rather than failures or faults. (BiddyTarot.com)

When I laid out this card, it was in the ninth position in the Celtic cross spread, which indicates any hopes and/or fears of the Querent. One of the major reasons I really haven’t gone out or made any progress with the workshop of my one-act opera is this sea of self-doubt that I’ve been awash in the last couple of weeks. So many things life recently haven’t been working. Job interviews I’ve gone on have proven to be disappointments (the last one didn’t even give a reason: just “applicant was not chosen”); the guys I’ve seen on dates haven’t panned out; my grad school applications… well, that whole thing was rushed and poorly done to begin with.

Tarot scholar Tara Miller writes that “Judgment represents the House of Gabriel, the knowing that Judgment Day can come at any moment; live your life to the fullest, as the trumpet of Gabriel is at hand.” (Wikipedia)

It wasn’t until I renounced my Christian faith that I realized how truly precious and rare life is. As a Christian, I was taught from day one that life is a gift from God. To squander it by pursuing our own wants, desires, and pleasure is arrogance, and a sin. “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36)

What I was most angry about after becoming an atheist was not that I’d been fooled or that I’d believed lies my whole life. It was that I’d lost so much time and experience. Instead of learning about Creationism, I could’ve been discovering the wonders of science and our world. I could’ve been discovering who I am, what I care about, what my values as a human being are. I could’ve been exploring my sexuality as a gay man, making mistakes early in life (when you’re supposed to make them), all on the way to finding a partner—and more importantly, a groundedness in who I am as a person. My parents and teachers were wrong: our rock is not Christ. We have to become our own rocks that can weather the storms and arrows of life.

So if life is so short, why do I keep allowing these petty, negative scripts to dominate mine?

Why do I superimpose an inner monologue on everyone, assuming they’re thinking how unattractive, unoriginal, neurotic, unfit, unsuitable, incomplete, and poorly trained I am?

This is why I often stay at home—because, no matter how irrational I know it is, my lizard brain interprets every stray glance or comment as betraying what people really think of me. And the thoughts cascade into self-doubt, self-hate, and self-judgement.

Of course they rejected your grad school applications. You’re a poor excuse for a competent adult and musician.

Of course no one wants to date you. You’re complicated, selfish, difficult to live with, and you don’t enjoy going out to gay bars.

Why bother going anywhere when you’ll just feel like an outsider? No one understands you. Other people know instinctively how to interact with other humans. You? You’re broken, damaged, and worthless.

And so I shut down, retreat and hide myself away. I let my potential stagnate rather than risk having to confront these messages.

The inherent meaning in the Judgement card is transition, one of awakening from death to “new life.” But I need to face the illumination my subconscious is shining on these issues.

193. jigger

Now that Christmas 2013 is here and finally gone, I feel that I can finally rant to you, dear reader, about what particularly bothers me so much about the entire bloody month of December. And it’s not just because of my tempestuous history with Christianity.

Well, okay, it does have some to do with my history with Christianity.

This year, I dunno, I felt crankier than in previous years, particularly with the seeming predominance of Christmas music in places like shopping malls and on the radio. And perhaps it was because Thanksgiving came so late this year, it seemed like the Christmas music started earlier. But it also seemed so… aggressively Christian in tone. Perhaps I’m just noticing more.

I was grocery shopping a few weeks ago and heard Go Tell It On the Mountain over the PA system, and the line “that Jesus Christ is Lord.” I was at World Market two weeks ago and heard Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas with the line “if the Lord allows.” If there’d been a line in a song about how “Allah is One” or “All hail the Mother Goddess,” a bevy of angry Christians would be storming the manager’s office.

Now, I’m not trying to single out Christians here. And I’m really not trying to be one of those atheists (or, according to Sarah Palin, Joe McScrooge) who is trying to destroy people’s favorite holiday. For all intents and purposes, I enjoy this holiday season. I like the lights, the greenery, the sense of community and gathering. What I object to the blatant promotion of Christianity during the entire month of December, as if the Church didn’t already get Easter and the forty days before of Lent.

I probably wouldn’t get so cranky if we just included other religions in the cultural melange that is Christmas: if we included Pagan carols and rituals for Yule; Buddhist traditions for Bodhi day; the sharing of Jewish food and music for Chanukah; Yalda, from Persian culture, celebrating the passing of the winter solstice; and Pancha Ganapati, a 5-day festival in honor of Lord Ganesha.

Point is, why couldn’t we make Christmas a human festival, wherein we celebrate the different ways we have developed over the centuries to get through the long winter months by gathering together around fires to tell each other stories and sing songs?

… well, for the same reason that many Christians drum on about freedom of religion, but fly into a rage the moment someone else attempts to freely practice (or not practice) theirs. I don’t believe in the Goddess, or the Buddha, or any other deity we’ve invented over the millennia, but I can’t deny that belief in those things has given people hope and comfort in dark times.

On Tuesday evening, I listened to the rebroadcasting of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College in Cambridge, London. After the opening carol, Once in Royal David’s City, the dean of the college read this:

Beloved in Christ, be it this Christmas Eve our care and delight to prepare ourselves to hear again the message of the angels; in heart and mind to go even unto Bethlehem and see this thing which is come to pass, and the Babe lying in a manger.

Let us read and mark in Holy Scripture the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our disobedience unto the glorious Redemption brought us by this Holy Child; and let us make this Chapel, dedicated to Mary, his most blessèd Mother, glad with our carols of praise…

… because this of all things would rejoice his heart, let us at this time remember in his name the poor and the helpless, the cold, the hungry and the oppressed; the sick in body and in mind and them that mourn; the lonely and the unloved; the aged and the little children; all who know not the Lord Jesus, or who love him not, or who by sin have grieved his heart of love.

When I first heard this service a number of years ago, this sort of statement wouldn’t have phased me at all. But now it smacks of the most supreme in of arrogance: the assumption that because you belong to a dominant world religion that everyone agrees with your narrative and interpretation of events.

There are people who believe in, as Bill Maher quotes more liberal defenders of Christianity, the “central story” of Christmas—that is, that an all-powerful God impregnated a very young girl without the aid of intercourse in order to set right events that he himself put in motion after he had a temper tantrum after two humans he created and imbued with curiosity and intelligence went and behaved exactly how he’d expected them to. That “central story”?

So how is this a positive story, exactly? Because you can’t accept the Christmas story without accepting everything that goes along with it. Jesus shed his godhood to become human because of what went down in the (mythical) Garden of Eden? And just so he could grow up to be tortured and killed in order to atone for a crime that was an arbitrary offense in the first place. Forget the shepherds and the wise men—that’s the real meaning of Christmas, Charlie Brown.

It’s a story that was the beginning of religious wars, inquisitions, genocide, mass murder, torture, witch burnings, child sexual abuse (covered up and allowed to continue as the Church and its leaders, including the rapist priest, are infallible and above reproach because religion), the abuse and subjugation of women and minorities, including the LGBT community, and a host of other crimes against humanity.

This is what comes to mind when I hear a line in a song like, “let’s give thanks to the Lord above.” I hear a huge part of human experience being whitewashed to preserve monotheism.

And damn—passing a horn of mead around a circle of friends sounds like a helluva lot of fun.

189. bordereau

There was a time, not too long ago, when I could never picture myself moving away from Minnesota, from my family, and from my friends who in some ways became more like family than the one I inherited.

Before coming to Minnesota, my family lived in a small college town in central Kansas from about 1986 until 1993, when we moved to Minnesota (20 years ago this past August) after my dad accepted a teaching post at a Christian liberal arts college in Saint Paul.

It’s amazing how quickly a place can become your home. I was never too crazy about living in Kansas as a kid, although in retrospect, summers of running through wheat fields, exploring creeks, and discovering “secret” places that seem forbidden and mysterious to a child’s eyes were pretty idyllic. It was in Kansas, with few other distractions or entertainments, that I first learned to employ my imagination and creativity.

Once in Minnesota, though, all of that was swept from my mind. I’d found my home in the big city. I loved both how big and how small it was. It was an hour and fifteen minute drive to the nearest big city from where we lived in Kansas, so visits there were rare. In Minneapolis, most everything was within a twenty minute distance. (It is curious how Minnesotans measure distance in minutes or hours. We all do it.)

More than that, we found a church in Roseville that was a great fit for our family. My dad quickly got involved with both the music and teaching ministries, my mom was drawn to the children’s ministry (she’d taught third grade at our church in Kansas), and my sisters and I finally found friends in our Sunday school classes. We didn’t have many friends prior to Minnesota, and we enjoyed the community and the camaraderie.

I too got involved with the music ministry at church, first singing in the children’s choir, playing piano in the youth orchestra and later with the adult orchestra, joining the adult choir at age fifteen or so, and later playing percussion with the orchestra. I was also heavily involved in the youth group, so the church was essentially my home for most of my teenage years.

When I started college, my involvement at church lessened as my community focus shifted to a new group of friends and responsibilities. My connection there lessened even more once the senior pastor left and a new cadre took over to “grow” the church, so my reliance on the friends I’d made at college for community deepened. And for a while we formed a very tight-knit group that felt more like family than anything I’d ever known.

As often happens with twentysomethings, people started getting married, having children, and moving away. Our close little family broke up, and it felt as if I’d been set adrift. During this time I’d also left the church I’d grown up in, moved to a different church, but was beginning to really question my beliefs—and my sexuality. That was in 2008, the year that I also came out gay.

It was around this time that I found myself amongst a group of friends from my old church who I’d got to know in a new context. We were “spiritual refugees,” of sorts, dissatisfied with the Evangelical fundamentalism we’d been raised with. I was still trying to get a handle on my new identity as a gay man, and they were planning to start a church geared towards gay Christians and others who’d been rejected by mainstream Christianity.

And, of course, there was Seth. That’s a story I shan’t rehash again. If you want, you can go read about it here, if you don’t already know the story.

Basically, after the events of my birthday on 2011, I felt abandoned by most everyone in my life. Many of my Christian friends stopped talking to me after I came out gay and made it clear that I saw nothing wrong with that. Virtually all of them stopped talking to me after I came out atheist and proceeded to declare war on religion. To be fair, I didn’t make it easy for anyone who had a belief in anything to stay friends with me.

After I was outed to my entire family on 16 November 2009, my relationship with them changed dramatically. I’d never been close to them to begin with, but knowing that they thought of me as broken and mentally ill (which is the general consensus of the Christian community concerning homosexuality—it’s either demonic, rebellion, or a “gender disorder”) put even more of a wedge between us.

I was driving up towards Minneapolis one afternoon when a thought popped into my head: This isn’t my home anymore. It was the same thought I’d had one Sunday while listening to the new senior pastor give a glib sermon with flashy PowerPoint slides: I don’t belong here. For years, I couldn’t imagine leaving my family and the people and places that had meant so much to me. After the Seth fiasco and being thrown out of orbit in my own world, I realized that there wasn’t much of anything holding me there anymore.

The reason this has been in my thoughts is that I’m contemplating starting my Master’s in music composition. To do so, I’ll have to move somewhere—hopefully the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. The last time I contemplated this was in 2006, and the thought of moving away was terrifying. Now it excites me.

I’m tired of working dead-end office temp jobs, answering phones, doing filing and data entry, and watching everyone around me have a life, or at least what looks like a life. My passion, what truly drives and ignites me, is music. The only times I felt truly alive was college, and when I was working on music for shows.

One of my professors once said to me: “You need to go away.” For school, she meant. And I think I’m finally ready to do that.

180. genethliac

This weekend was my nephew’s third birthday party. I’m still unsure how to feel about being an uncle since I’m not really that excited about kids. Even as a child, I had no idea what to do with other kids, especially other boys, whose interest in intellectual pursuits was about as pronounced as their desire to have teeth pulled.

(Granted, this was in central Kansas in the 1990s, where my family was until we moved to Minnesota when I was 10 years old.)

At the recommendation of a friend, I paid a visit to Creative Kidstuff in Saint Paul. At age three, most kids have an attention span limited to anything colorful or dynamic. My nephew likes running around, being active, and doing things with his hands, and my sister informed me that he does like crafts, but also likes books.

After being pointed in the direction where I’d likely find presents for active, creative three-year-olds, I spoke with an adorable young guy who gave me several ideas for things that would be age-appropriate, aid in tactile development and hand-eye coordination, and fun. (I tried not to think about all the fun things I wanted to do with him, but that’s another story.) One was a paper bag hand puppet craft kit that I thought both my nephew and his mom would have fun with.

Crafty, fun present – check!

Then it was over to the book section where I saw a collection of the Beatrix Potter Peter Rabbit stories. These were stories that my sisters and I grew up reading and hearing, and I especially remember the vivid illustrations. It was one of the first books I can remember reading out loud by sounding out the syllables, much like the scene in the play Wit where a young Vivian makes the association between the word “soporific” and the picture of the sleepy bunny.

Then I saw another book that also occupied many happy hours of my childhood – Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. My parents had a copy from what must’ve been the 1950s that looked very much like this one. As I leafed through the book, memories came flooding back, of poems like “The Land of Counterpane” and “Foreign Lands.”

“Up into the cherry tree
Who should climb but little me?
I held the trunk with both my hands
And looked abroad on foreign lands.”

I had the thought that even if he didn’t appreciate books as presents now, he might someday find himself in search of a present for his own nephew, and nearly break down in tears while remembering the stories he read as a child. And those books will be around long after I’m gone, which is more than can be said for the flashy toy cars and games other people gave him. Toys are played with and forgotten. Books endure.

So I may not be the “fun” uncle who plays jokes and steals noses, but I can be the uncle who takes an interest in my nephew’s intellectual development. And for whatever the reason, my sister tells me that he was asking if I was going to come to the party. So apparently I’ve done enough to warrant being memorable!

I was surprised to see that a classmate of mine from college who had roomed with my sister years ago was also there. We’d fallen out of touch over the years as we graduated, and even before as we went our separate educational ways – me on the music performance track, she on music education. We were close our first three years of college, having most of our core music classes together, but she and the other music education majors had an extra year of courses to complete so I didn’t see much of her or them after junior year.

We chatted for a little bit, and of course one of the first questions she asked was whether I was doing much composition! I always feel guilty when saying no, that I’m squandering the talent that I invested so many years in developing, or that I’m not living up to my potential or expectations that everyone had for me.

In an unexpected turn, she disclosed that the previous year she and her (smoking hot) husband (who was swimming just outside the party room and walking around shirtless and in swim trunks, showing off his washboard abs and sexy pecs) had lost a child due to a rare genetic disorder. They’d been advised that the child likely wouldn’t survive, and that if he did it would be with significant disability, but they brought him to full term anyway, like the Evangelicals they are.

Even though the baby lived for only five minutes after being born, she talked about the peace she was able to find in God, in her church, and “in the Word.”

Given how long it’s been since we last spoke, I’m not sure if she knew that she was talking to an atheist, but in a moment where a mother was describing her experience of losing a child, it didn’t seem appropriate to bring up the fact I don’t believe in God anymore. I’m glad that she as able to find comfort and solace in her religious beliefs, but it’s one of those moments as an atheist when you realize how much privilege Christians still enjoy in this society.

Of course, my atheism isn’t really that big of a deal in my own life. Frankly, I don’t identify as an atheist except when dealing with fundamentalists pushing their Christofascist agenda on the rest of the population. I don’t hide the fact that I don’t believe in God, but there are more important things to care about – guys, music, literature, philanthropy, current events, friends, science, etc.

I do wish, however, that I could bring up my non-belief with old friends without being interrogated and politely judged. It is a significant life event, after all…

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176. aleatory

So after my friends’ wedding in Stillwater this past weekend, several wonderful chats with friends, and being around more gay couples, I’ve been thinking more about what it is that I want in a future partner.

This has been something on my mind ever since I came out gay in August of 2008, and since I accepted the notion that a romantic relationship with a man was indeed possible – and that I could have one. Back then my list of must-haves was probably a mile long, as was my list of things to avoid. Somewhere on that list was faith in God, and we can safely say that’s not on the list anymore. (If anything, it’s something for me to avoid!)

My recently expired relationship with Jason also taught me a lot of things about what it is that I want in a partner, and things that I want to be for a partner.

At the top of that list is being active – socially and otherwise. Jason had the disadvantage of suffering from fibromyalgia, so being physically active wasn’t as easy for him. But it did make me realize how much I missed being with people, and just doing things – going to plays, concerts, fundraising events, and so on. And I like doing those things with a person who means a lot to me. Currently I’m leaning on close friends to fill that role, but that’s not quite a substitute for being at a concert and your boyfriend holding you while you listen to a band you both love. I was at a Cloud Cult concert on Sunday night, and a boy standing next to me was holding his girlfriend for most of it. And as much as I balk at public displays of affection, I’m secretly jealous because I’m a closeted über-romantic who really loves that shit.

I’ve also been volunteering a lot more as of late. Last Thursday I participated in an event called Dining Out for Life in which various restaurants donated a certain percentage of their proceeds towards helping people living with HIV/AIDS. My friend Adam and I were on site for lunch and dinner and two local participating restaurants, going from table to table handing out donation envelopes and telling people about the event. It felt amazing to be part of, and to be doing good, and I want to do more of that. And I want to do more of that with a special guy who also enjoys doing good, so that we can do good together.

I also want to be with a fellow gay atheist. This is one area that I’ve waffled on a little over the past two years, but the more I think about it and the more dates I’ve been on with gay guys who believe in God, the less likely it seems that we’d be able to sustain a meaningful, long-term relationship with that as a difference. Because how you view the world as an atheist is vastly different from how you view it as a theist. I should know – I used to be one.

A couple years ago my sister went into the hospital with some serious health problems. My mom called to tell me about it, and she asked if I’d pray. I said, “Mom, you know that I don’t believe in prayer.” And I don’t. I don’t believe that anyone is looking out for us, that things will necessarily work out for the best, or that there’s some grand purpose for life on this planet. She seemed flummoxed that I wouldn’t pray, so I explained that I believed my sister was in good hands with doctors who have years of medical training, and that they’d figure out what was wrong. And they did. And, of course, my parents gave all the credit to God.

I don’t want to have that argument with my husband when one of our parents gets sick or dies – or when one of us gets sick or hurt. Because it inevitably will.

I also want to be with someone who’s as big of a geek, and as deeply curious about the world as I am. Last night I got to hang out with two guys who’ve been married for eighteen years. Our conversation ranged from classic Doctor Who episodes, to music history, to politics, to confusion over pop culture references. They balanced each other in many ways, but there’s a mutual passion and love for learning in both of them that I realized I desperately want in a husband – someone whose initial reaction to something new isn’t “That’s weird” but rather, “Oooh!” I committed myself a long time ago to living my life with my eyes wide open, and I want to be with someone who has the same love for knowledge – a fellow philomath.

Another thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not monogamous. I’m all for getting married and committing myself to a guy I’m madly in love with, but the idea of sexual exclusivity for both of us is one that I think is unnecessary. There are many gay couples who want to be monogamous, and good for them; but I personally enjoy sexual freedom and being able to get to know other guys intellectually as well as physically.

Maybe it’s just that men view sex differently than women, but if anything I’ve found that many of my friendships have been enhanced for having a sexual element, probably because it’s not some unspoken, forbidden thing between us. Because there’s a major difference in having sex with someone you care deeply for, and sex with someone you enjoy being with.

As Dan Savage has said on his show, cheating is only cheating if you’re sneaking around on your partner. The couples I know who aren’t monogamous communicate more, are more attuned to being safe and staying healthy, and have deeply committed relationships.

And more than anything, that’s what I want.

172. leeward

Several weeks ago I discovered that a friend of mine had never seen the 1964 film version of Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady, with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. It was rather shocking because A) I grew up with it and can’t imagine anyone else not having seen it; and B) he’s gay… and, well, musicals seem the particular purview of the gays. Hell, it’s one of the qualities that all but gave me away back in the day. (My friend Emily said, “You got way too excited about Sondheim to be straight.”)

My friend and I were talking about the moment that language goes from being merely parroting to true acquisition, when words go from sounds to meaning, and I brought up this iconic scene:

He had a percipient observation about the show: namely, that it’s a picture of imperialism. Eliza Doolittle is taken from the gutter by the chauvinistic Henry Higgins, dressed in the garb of the upper class, and taught how to speak and behave “properly.” In the same way, Native American children were taken from their homes by Christian missionaries and taught how to speak, behave and dress like proper Christians (i.e., Western Caucasian culture).

The reason we were talking about this scene, and this song in particular, is that it illustrates that “light bulb” moment. My college French teacher told my class that her’s took place one semester while studying abroad. She was reading in a tree one day, she said, and all of a sudden everything just snapped into place. She didn’t have to translate from French into English anymore. The words carries meaning.

Writer David Sedaris describes a similar moment in Me Talk Pretty One Day, from the essay collection of the same name:

It was mid-October when the teacher singled me out, saying, “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying.

Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult. . .

The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, “I know the thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus.”

These moments came to mind because several weeks ago I finally stopped believing in God. That’s not to say that I haven’t been an atheist these past two years. I still see no evidence or reason now to continue believing in God. The difference is that, a couple of weeks ago, I finally stopped missing God. It’s like that moment when you finally get over someone you’ve held a torch for, and one day, for whatever reason, those feelings stop. The memory of the love and the feeling is still there, but the gravitational pull doesn’t yank you out of your own orbit every time it wheels around.

Walking to work one morning a couple of weeks ago, the part of me that missed having a God to believe in went away. I’m not sure why it happened just then, but it was as if a balloon had popped, or a string were, and I wasn’t tethered to those feelings anymore. I didn’t feel the need to get angry or mean when someone talked about God or faith. I still get upset when hearing about someone being hurt by Christians, but then I get upset when anyone is hurt by anybody, for any reason.

I’m still passionate about the separation of church and state, about promoting secular and humanist values in society and throughout the world, and encouraging people to think for themselves instead of letting their thinking be done for them by those who want to fetter everyone in the world to a 2,000-year-old book. But I’m not doing it out of some revenge fixation, like a jilted lover railing against an ex.

None of us had a choice about being born in the proverbial Christian missionary school and taught the clean, holy Christian ways of the White Man. Neither did any of us have a choice about being attracted to members of the same sex. Eliza Doolittle chose to become the pupil of Henry Higgins, and accept his narrative of being a “proper lady.” But in the process she maintained her sense of self, and at the end of George Bernard Shaw’s original play, Pygmalion, she does indeed go off to marry Freddy and become a teacher of phonetics. Her final words to Higgins in the play show her to be a truly emancipated woman, unlike the chauvinistic ending of Lerner and Lowe’s musical: “Buy them yourself.”

I didn’t have a choice about being raised a Christian and saddled with all the negativity. But I’ll be damned if my parents’ choices are going to steer the course of the rest of my life.

You dear friend who talk so well: you can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire.

168. shattered

Apologies for the delay, all five of you who actually read this. I’ve been working a lot and writing for other sites lately, but really haven’t much felt like talking about myself.

I’ve meant to write about the holidays and the experience of getting through Thanksgiving and Christmas with a boyfriend and his family for the first time. Because while it’s certainly been an experience, it wasn’t as crazy or stressful as I expected it would be. Perhaps it was other people’s descriptions of their family holidays that put me off to the whole thing, or had my hackles raised, but there were no big meltdowns, no plate throwing, no huge blowups or fights, or anything else that ends up in movies about the holidays.

Basically, it wasn’t National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Or Home Alone. No neighbors were harmed during the month of December.

It was curious though to see how both Jay and I dealt with holiday stress. He tends to externalize more and withdraw, like most guys. If things get to be too much, he retreats to a quiet place to read or hide out. When he was forced to sit through gift opening on Christmas Eve, he sat in the corner with a book, mostly reading while people opened presents.

I sometimes deal with stress the same way, especially if I’m going through a bout of depression or am tired. But mostly I deal with stress by simply becoming someone else — or rather, I become a version of myself that can deal with that particular stressor. It’s an automatic defense mechanism, like being a personality chameleon.

This is something I’ve been exploring some in therapy the past few months. For a long time I’ve known that there are multiple versions of “me,” personas that I employ to cope with different social situations and people. My mom was one of the first people to point this out when I was a teenager, and she accused me of essentially being a hypocrite; of showing different faces to people instead of just “being myself.”

Of course, what she didn’t know then was that I was already in deep cover as a gay man; that I was desperately trying to hide who I really was from everyone for fear of being found out and things going very bad for me. In case you haven’t heard, gay teens don’t fare very well in fundamentalist Christian circles.

So during the time when most people are forming their adult identities and selves, and figuring out who they are as individuals, I was developing different masks to hide who I really was.

In one of his stories, David Sedaris recounts how his sister Amy had a penchant from an early age for adopting different characters and imitating the adults around her. She would come in for breakfast and her mother would ask, “And who are we today?” To which Amy would respond: “Who don’t you want me to be?”

Sharing that story with my therapist was rather a light bulb moment for both of us, as it brought to light the reality that this is how most of my relationships have operated for most of my life. I figure out who not to be for someone, and then become that person. The majority of my teen and adult life has been spent playing different characters, different versions of myself, for others. Like the sci-fi show Sliders, they’re slight variations of “me,” with different tastes, likes, dislikes, ways of speaking, acting, extroversion and introversion, and so forth.

So the reality is that I’ve never really developed a personality of my own. I’ve invested so much time and energy into developing characters that are socially acceptable, but haven’t put any of that into personal development. Consequently, it’s difficult to share genuine pieces of myself with others. There is a lot here on this blog that I divulge — stuff from my past, painful memories, frustrations. But doing that in writing, on the page, removed from other people is much easier. I don’t have to risk personal rejection necessarily in writing things down.

Everything really fell apart two years ago when I lost Seth and finally owned up to my total lack of belief in God, two huge things that formed the gravitational mass of the comfortable illusion that everything was okay. I’d come out gay two and a half months earlier, and was still adjusting to the notion of being out to my very conservative family. But God, my Christian faith and the church was still grounding me to the identity I’d been carefully cultivating and maintaining over the years. And I’d been painfully and pathetically pining for Seth for over a year, which provided another neat distraction from the fact that the air was quickly escaping from my spiritual life.

I didn’t realize then how deeply my world shattered the night of my birthday. I’d been running a carefully organized circus for 20 years, and all of a sudden the neat solar system I’d built to manage everything quite literally imploded. To cope with the pain I divvied up all the feelings into the different shards of my personality — parts of me that were already managing those different areas of thought and emotion. It was as though I truly became a different person after that night.

Apparently this is common amongst people who grew up in highly stressful and repressive environments as children. In order to survive we break apart to manage the stress and “pass” for acceptable to authority figures. For our child selves, it was life or death. We don’t have a choice.

So now I’m left as an almost-30-year-old with the personality equivalent of a broken mirror. I still revert to my chameleon state when things get stressful. And I still feel removed from various feelings and emotions. Memories are there, but the feelings are strangely absent. It’s an interesting place to be, going into my third decade.

More to come.

 

160. pidgeonhole

A few days ago in the New York Times there was a 5,700-word piece about Ashlyn Blocker, a.k.a. “the girl who feels no pain.” She was born with a rare condition called congenital analgesia, better known as “congenital insensitivity to pain.” It never occurred to me how important pain really is to social animals like ourselves, who are in almost constant danger from even the moment we are conceived.

These kids walk barefoot over broken glass, touch hot stoves, break bones, chew off parts of their tongues, all without feeling pain. When Ashlyn was very young, her parents brought her to bed with them, with her mother holding her hands “so [Ashlyn] wouldn’t chew on her skin or rub her eyes during the night.” The article begins with a story of her reaching into boiling water to retrieve a spoon. These children can lose limbs but only experience the fear of seeing that part of their body gone — but not feel a thing.

Last night I had a heated argument with my boyfriend, Jason. As most fights go, it was over something relatively minor. While cleaning his room he’d found a necklace that his grandmother had given him. This necklace has a cross dangling from it. When I saw that he had hung it up in his bedroom, I asked him if he had to have it there. He said that he did, as it carries importance to him as an artifact of his grandmother’s, who is still alive and very close to him. He’s had close calls with death, having survived a brain tumor and related medical complications, so I understand its significance to him.

However, I objected to the cross since for me it’s a symbol of oppression and torture, both in the historical and personal sense. Virtually since it was adopted by the Church as its emblem about 600 years after Jesus was supposedly nailed to it, it has gone before Crusader armies and presided over Inquisitions, both Catholic and Protestant. Ignoring the fact that the common form of the crux romanus was in the shape of a letter T, with a cross-piece attached to a stake, countless saviors have been crucified in myths throughout history: Krishna, Wittoba, the Celtic god Hesus, the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl, and the Persian god Mithras — to name a few.

Moreover, it’s a hideous torture and execution device. For those who say that it represents the love of God (John 3:16), it’s curious to me that it was so necessary for God to have himself murdered by the imperfect people he created as a sacrifice to himself to make up for how imperfect the people he made were — and are. Why not just forgive sins instead of literally making a martyr of yourself?

Of course, that presumes a major assumption that there are any sins to forgive. The so-called “original sin” committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden never took place because the Garden of Eden is fictional, just as Adam and Eve are mythical. According to Christian teachings, that first sin was imputed to the entire human race, therefore precipitating the need for Jesus’ supposed sacrifice. However, if there was no original sin to forgive, what was the need, exactly?

The real reason I find the cross so offensive though is that it represents for me 25 years of agonizing over my sexuality, and 28 years of desperately trying to believe what I believed the Bible, my church and my family told me I needed to believe. There were so many nights I was kept awake by the anguish I felt over my doubts and my perceived lack of belief, and as I got older the abhorrent sexual feelings for other men that were stirring within me. For Jason that cross represents his loved ones and his connection to his family. For me, it represents everything I’ve lost, and all of the time that I wasted trying to be a good Christian — time I’ll never get back.

I had a long talk last night at home with my friend Emily about the fight, and what it was really over. She asked a question that both Jason and my therapist Sarah have asked: do you blame yourself for not leaving sooner? Yes, I do blame myself for lacking the courage to come out earlier. But this is how Richard Dawkins opens The God Delusion, with a story about his wife:

As a child, my wife hated her school and wished she could leave. Years later, when she was in her twenties, she disclosed this unhappy fact to her parents, and her mother was aghast: ‘But darling, why didn’t you come to us and tell us?’ Lalla’s reply is my text for today: ‘But I didn’t know I could.’

Here’s the crux: I didn’t know that I could have left Christianity, or come out as a gay man. Yes, I had doubts and there were numerous red flags raised over the years that I learned to think my way around or ignore; but it was either follow the Bible, or go to Hell. More than eternal damnation, I was terrified of my parents’ rejection and the reprisal of my church community. It wasn’t until I’d drifted away from those relationships and the fear of losing them and God had faded sufficiently that I was able to speak my mind and admit that I didn’t believe in God.

Yes, religion is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Trouble is, there’s no one to be angry at. My parents were brainwashed, just as were the other adults in my life growing up were. Their only concern is for my soul, not my feelings.

Just as Ashlyn Blocker has no idea what pain feels like, those who haven’t suffered abuse at the hands of religious people can’t understand what the cross looks like to those who have. It’s beautiful to them, but a putrid symbol of hatred to me.

159. disbosom

First of all, the eight-year-old in me finds the word “disbosom” so snortingly hilarious, but it’s precisely the reason why I love the Dictionary.com Word of the Day. It’s an eighteenth century word meaning to reveal, to confess, as in “baring your soul” or “the naked truth.” Words are a window into the sensibilities of another age, when they actually meant something to the people who used them. Today words seem little more than candy bar wrapping paper — disposable, cheap, trivial. I find particular awe in the opening words of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word.” While I no longer believe in the literal factualness of this idea, that God created everything, it’s still a beautiful image of creating through speech. It’s the dream of every writer to give his or her words life so that they may convey everything that can’t be expressed on paper.

Today I received a response to a comment I left on a blog several weeks ago during the national gay marriage debate that sprang up over the recent (and it turns out, successful) marriage equality initiatives. It was clear that this woman meant well and wanted me to know that God loves me, even though I don’t believe in him and am living a lifestyle that this God apparently thinks is an abomination.

She also pointed me to a blog entry written by a young man named Matt Moore who has been sharing his story of apparently finding Jesus on the floor of a gay club. (Or so she says. I’m skeptical about that claim.) One of his recent blog entries is entitled HIV/AIDS & The Hope Of The Gospel, in which he recounts a close call he had with contracting the virus. This apparently led him to conclude that being gay is a sin, and he claims to have “left the homosexual lifestyle,” which as we all know is code for going “ex-gay.” Whether that means attempting to change his orientation through therapy or “praying away” the gay, or turning to a celibate lifestyle is uncertain.

What I am certain of is that my heart is absolutely breaking for this young (and, if I may say so, very attractive) man. He’s had a hell of a time, and his story is rife with abuse and sadness. And this is precisely the kind of person that the Church preys on, exploiting the feelings of self-loathing programmed into them by society and promising deliverance, if not here then in the hereafter.

As an atheist, I don’t believe that there is anybody minding the store with a broom and dustpan at the ready to sweep up the mess and set everything right at the end of the day. I believe that, if we’re lucky, we have 70-80 years of existence on this planet, and then that’s it. There is no great reckoning. No big reward. No eternal punishment. We have one go at this life, so why waste it strapping yourself into a straight jacket to please the jackals who preach their toxic hatred from the pulpit?

I can understand how someone who fell into a lifestyle of promiscuous sex and drugs for a while would want to run from all of that. Many alcoholics pick up their entire lives to start over, leaving behind the environment and the people who enabled their addiction. But homosexuality is not an addiction. It’s an orientation, something deep in the wiring of the brain that leads some of us to seek out members of the same sex as mates. Unlike most animals, we’re capable of much more than just breeding. As primates, we’re highly complex social animals. We can form pair bonds, and build emotional and romantic connections with our partners. What conservatives like to describe as “homosexual behavior” is behavior we find among heterosexuals as well. But just because many homosexuals have engaged in that kind of party lifestyle doesn’t mean that all homosexuals do.

Most of the gay men I know are in committed relationships of some kind. The single gays I know are looking for committed relationships. With the introduction of more LGBT characters in movies and television, our community is moving from the fringes of an underground lifestyle to the mainstream. We don’t want a sling in the bedroom, or a dungeon in the basement. We want the house in the suburbs with the dog, the neighbors, the couch and the mortgage. That is to say, everything we associate with heterosexual marriage. Is this the gays trying to emulate the “straights”? I don’t think so.

Those things don’t just symbolize heterosexual marriage. They symbolize adult commitment, setting down roots with the person you love and care deeply for. Of course, those symbols are going to be different for each person. For example, I could never see myself as a suburban couple, with the Subaru jeep, picket fence and 2.8 kids. Maybe a dog. Jason and I don’t really see ourselves as a “planted” couple. We want to travel, live in foreign countries, study abroad, and see and learn as much as we can. But we want to do it together.

A few weeks ago I attended a wedding of a friend of mine. I know for a fact her now-husband has struggled with same-sex attraction. Another friend of mine there confirmed that many of the other guys there also struggle. It breaks my heart because I know what they believe their God is demanding of them, and I also know they have been conditioned to not see it as a burden. The author of the first epistle of Peter writes:

“But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:13)

They honestly believe overcoming their homosexual feelings is suffering for Christ. This is the evil humans do with religion.

As the character of Auntie Mame says in the stage play, “Life’s a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving to death.”