Hi. I've always known there was something different about me but being from a traditional catholic Hispanic family my behavior (I was a tomboy) was criticized a lot by my mother. I'm the oldest of 4 and the only girl. Back in the day and being from where I am there was not a lot of information and being "odd" was frowned upon and the cause of a lot of self rejection from and others. It was on my early teens that I first developed feelings for a friend. I grew up with guilt, all I knew was that it was a sin feeling what I felt. In college I had my first experience and then guilt crept its ugly face again and I found peace when I accepted Christ. I was fine but there was still something that didnt click. I believe deeply in God and His goodness and love but unfortunately it is man that is judgemental and unforgiving. I alienated myself from anything that would cause me to slip but I took it a step further after I did slip big time by becoming involved with a married woman. That was entirely wrong of me. I had no right but I was so alone and felt like no one noticed me, when she did I threw caution to the wind and went through the hardest time of my life. It was then that I went back to church and alienated myself even more. After a few years I felt disillusioned because I felt pushed to become something that did not feel natural for me and I started to feel strongly that I needed to truly become me and not a version that society or the church expected. Several months later i came out to myself and it was hard because I am someone who has strongly spoken against homosexuality and who vowed never to fall again because I believed it would mean certain death for me... and now what do I do? I decided to find a therapist and it is been good because it is helping me deal with a lot of other issues and insecurities. I am struggling with not escaping from reality but these past few days I have failed miserably and it is now affecting my job. My friends that I did come out to are far away, I dont have any friends close by to talk to. I dont hang out with anybody at all and for me it is not that easy to just become friends with someone. Breaking the ice is a challenge for me. I know I'm feeling down right now so when I found this outlet I felt I should give it a go and see if anyone else is able to relate. So please, my only request is for someone to listen without going on a tirade if you dont believe in God. I just want to know if anyone else can relate. Forgive me if at the end this whole thing went a little weird. Thank you
Hello Nedzie, Welcome to Empty Closets! First of all, congratulations in posting this. This is a huge thing, for someone who has been closeted for a long time, and especially considering that it isn't easy to talk about feelings. Feel proud that you did it! It is also good that you understand that getting involved with a married woman wasn't a good thing. As you noticed, cheating deos more harm than good, and it is never a good option. But, again, it is really nice of you to understand that it wasn't correct, and noticing that is also an important step to go on the right path. As for religion and being LGBT, it is perfectly ok (and not uncommon at all) to be LGBT and to believe in God. We have many people here in the forum (including members of the staff) who are people of faith. Being LGBT is completely normal and natural, and there's nothing wrong in loving another man or woman. We have a resource text about religion and homosexuality. It is a little outdated, but I think you can still find it useful. Here: http://emptyclosets.com/home/pages/resources/coming-out/religion-and-homosexuality.php Again, welcome to the forum, and let us know if you need anything!
I hope it's not a downer to single out this line from your post, but it is very mature and insightful. I don't even know if I believe in God, but I believe in being like Jesus, as best I can. And maybe we are more like Jesus than we even realize, i.e. being a part of God in some sense. I think you have given a lot of thought to reconciling spirituality and daily life, and it shows in your writing. Getting off my high horse now, and just saying Welcome!
Nedzie.....First of all...hello and a very big welcome to empty closets! I am a gay Christian. Reconciling my faith with the fact that I am gay was very difficult for me...as it appears to be for you too. It took time and a lot of study before I was able to say with confidence that the BIBLE.DOES.NOT.CONDEMN. same-sex relationships as we know them today. I usually make that statement and then offer to provide the back-up information if someone asks for it. However, tonight I just feel like I should send the whole thing to you now! It's pretty long and I may have to break it into more than one post. The most important thing to take away from this is that we are NOT BROKEN...THEREFORE WE DO NOT NEED TO BE FIXED! WE ARE AS GOD INTENDED FOR US TO BE...BECAUSE HE DOES NOT MAKE MISTAKES!! OK, here we go... ....Ah yes....the religious guilt trip...I know it well! Before I start sounding too anti-religion I should say that I am a Christian and I have kept my faith as well as being gay. That sounds like a contradiction, but it can happen. So many people have a lot of trouble trying to shake off the indoctrination that said that being LGBTQ was a terrible sin, that taught that we are broken and must be fixed. Even when I accepted that I was and always had been gay, I still had a serious conflict between my faith and what I knew to be absolute truth...that I was gay. It so happens that my faith was a choice of my own...I was not raised to go to church and all that entails. So turning my back on what I believed was not easy...and I refused to go completely back into the closet. I spent a little over a year in very serious study of what the Bible...not church dogma, not church leaders...says about homosexuality. I read a number of books and studied the significant passages in the Bible in the original Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. What I found set me free and also angered me. It seems that a number of passages in the Bible have been mistranslated, misinterpreted, and sometimes even twisted to justify a predetermined, prejudiced point of view. A view that supports the belief that any non-heterosexual relationship is evil, sinful and immoral. At best this is unforgivingly poor scholarship. At worst this is an outright lie. I can state that nowhere does the Bible condemn same-sex relationships as we know them...why? The most basic answer is because same-sex relationships as we know them did not exist at the time the Old and New Testament were written. There is a lot more to that answer which I will get to. Most of us have heard the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. Two cites so filled with evil that God destroyed them with only Lot and his family escaping. We are told that the sin of Sodom was that the men of the city wanted to have homosexual relations with the two men (angels) that God sent to warn Lot to leave. We even have the word "Sodomy" in our dictionaries that means anal sex. I find it interesting that the scripture states that God had ALREADY decided to destroy these cites due to their evil. This is BEFORE the angels were sent to Lot! BEFORE the men of the city ever approached them for…NOT GAY SEX…but gang-rape. Plus Lot himself states the reason not to attack the angels…”Don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof” (Genesis19:8). The tradition of hospitality was almost a sacred concept. In addition Ezekiel 16:49-50 actually tells us what the “Sin of Sodom” really was: 49 "Behold this was the iniquity (sin) of thy sister Sodom, pride, fullness of bread and abundance of idleness was in her and her daughters (Gomorrah & other cities), neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy" 50 "And they were haughty, and committed abomination before me: therefore I took them away as I saw good" As you can see it had absolutely NOTHING to do with homosexuality...not even mentioned. Just in case someone tries to say that the "abomination" means gay sex...it doesn't. The Hebrew words "towbah or toebah" are what have been translated as "abomination". Those words refer to idol worship, which was rampant in Sodom and Gomorrah. So it becomes obvious that people who tell us that S & G where destroyed because of Homosexuality either do not know the truth or are twisting, even changing the meaning of the story to fit their preconceived agenda. I don't like saying things that bluntly...it sort of sounds like I’m a "conspiracy nut”! But I see no other options. This was the first of the "Clobber Passages" that I found out about. I was actually angry for a while that I had been told a lie for so long...and I was irritated with myself for taking so long to figure it out on my own. There are several other passages in the Bible that are used to condemn homosexuality. Every one of them (sorry I sound like the conspiracy nut again…I can’t help it!) have been mistranslated. Whether due to poor scholarship or intentionally, the result is the same. THE BIBLE DOES NOT CONDEM HOMOSEXUALITY! It does condemn Sex used for idol worship - both with men and women - which was common in those societies and at that time. It does condemn sex between men and young, beardless boys…also a very common practice at the time. The Romans & the Greeks even had gods that represented this practice…Ganymede for the Romans and Catamus for the Greeks. This is not meant to be an entire novel dedicated to why the Bible does not condemn homosexuality…however, it’s tough to know where to stop! Before I stop we need to examine the word homosexuality itself. I’ll do that next and then at the bottom of this “treatise” the will be a few internet addresses to websites, etc., that will help anyone fighting with this issue a great deal…check them out! Homosexuality In a letter, in German, to Karl Heinrich Ulrichs on May 6, 1868, an early sex-law reformer, the writer Karl Maria Kertbeny, is first known to have privately used four new terms he had coined: "Monosexual; Homosexual; Heterosexual; und Heterogenit" -- the debut of the homosexual and heterosexual categories, and two now forgotten terms. "The word "homosexual" did not appear in any translation of the Christian Bible until 1946. There are words in Greek for same-sex sexual activities, yet they never appear in the original text of the New Testament." (http://www.pflagupstatesc.org/statistics.htm) So the word itself is relatively new…and…if Paul who wrote much of the of the New Testament wanted to use a Greek word that meant “same-sex sexual activities he could have used: arrenomanes - meaning mad after men or boy crazy dihetaristriai - a synonym referencing lesbian sexuality, meaning essentially the same thing as hetairistriai, tribad, tribades, from: Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, Brooton, Bernadette, p. 23. erastes - a sometimes older man who loves a sometimes younger male eromenos - a sometimes younger male who loves an older male euryproktoi – men who dress as women, also a vulgar reference to anal penetration frictrix - Latin word referring to a lewd woman and sometimes used to refer to a lesbian. Tertullian, 160-220 AD, translated tribas (a masculine woman) as frictrix. hetairistriai - women who are attracted to other women, used by Plato’s character Aristophanes, in The Symposium. May also refer to hyper-masculine women, from Lucian’s Dialogue of the Courtesans,cited by Brooten, p. 52. kinaidos – a word for effeminate, κίναιδος or kínaidoi (cinaedus in its Latinized form), a man "whose most salient feature was a supposedly feminine love of being sexually penetrated by other men." Winkler, John J., 1990, The Constraints of Desire: The Anthropology of Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece, New York: Routledge. Although some scholars, like Dr. Robert Gagnon, understand kinaidoi to mean the passive partner in a male couple, Davidson argues that kinaidoi refers to a man insatiable and unrestrained in his sexual appetites instead of merely effeminate or passive. Davidson, J. 1997. Courtesans & Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, New York, p. 167-182. lakkoproktoi - a lewd and vulgar reference to anal penetration lesbiai - a synonym referencing lesbian sexuality, meaning essentially the same thing as dihetaristriai, hetairistriai, tribad, tribades, from: Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism, Brooton, Bernadette, p. 23. paiderasste – sexual behavior between males paiderastes or paiderastïs - παιδεραστής derived from the Greek word pais, παῖς a boy, meaning lover of boys paidomanes - a male mad for boys or boy crazy paidophthoros - a Greek word meaning corrupter of boys pathikos – the passive penetrated partner in a male couple tribades - an ancient Latin word indicating the active female partner of a lesbian pair, sometimes interpreted to mean a pseudo-male, referencing genital contact between women. Rashi defines it as “rubbing in a sexual manner.” tribas - the active partner in a lesbian relationship, who takes the male role If Paul had used one of these words in Romans 1:26-27 or 1 Corinthians 6:9 or 1 Timothy 1:10, we could be reasonably certain of his meaning. However, Paul did not use any of these words, suggesting he had some- thing else in mind, like rape, interspecies sex or shrine prostitution, when he coined his interesting new Greek word, arsenokoitai. Paul intended to remind his readers of the real meaning of arsenokoitai, based on the way first century Jews understood Leviticus 20:13. Therefore modern readers need to remind themselves that in the first century, Jewish religious leaders understood arsenos-koiten as used in Leviticus 20:13, as condemning shrine prostitutes and the sex rituals which accompanied their worship of false gods. There is not a shred of objective historical evidence that anyone in the first century AD understood arsenokoitai to refer to male and female homosexuality in general or used arsenokoitai with that meaning. Websites, etc… gaychurch.org Click on “Homosexuality and the Bible” link at the top of the page Click on “The Bible, homosexuality and Christianity” in the drop-down menu. This will give you a very thorough explanation of what I have only just touched in my comments above. It will really explain everything! Youtube Videos Dr. John Corvino He has really great videos on the bad logic that is often used to condemn LGBTQ folks. His videos are entertaining, but very informative and impossible to refute! John Corvino, Ph.D. is Professor of Philosophy at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He is the author or co-author of three books with Oxford University Press: “Debating Religious Liberty and Discrimination” (with counterpoint by Ryan T. Anderson and Sherif Girgis, 2017); “What's Wrong with Homosexuality?” (2013) and “Debating Same-Sex Marriage” (with counterpoint by Maggie Gallagher, 2012). He has spoken at over 250 university campuses on ethics, sexuality, and marriage. Read more at www.johncorvino.com. Christian and Gay: Religious leader Troy Perry reflects about the founding of The Metropolitan Community Church, which supports members of the LGBTQ Family in their Christian Walk. Gay Evangelicals argue that Bible does not condemn homosexuality BOOKS: “GOD AND THE GAY CHRISTIAN” by Matthew Vines “TORN” by Justin Lee “STRANGER AT THE GATE” by Mel White I so hope that what I have said here will help! .....David
@quebec, I love your response and the references you used to support your argument. Dr. John Corvino is definitely an eloquent scholar. @Nedzie You're not alone. I follow a different faith and I am facing the same dilemmas. It is always hard to re-wire our brains to a different set of mindsets and believes other than the ones we were raised upon. We made to believe a certain set of rules and cultural "norms" that do not fit who we are. Read read read. There are many sources, some of which @quebec has pointed out, that would help you in your journey, it is the beginning, be patient and follow your heart and brain. Think and analyze what you read, make sense of it and question everything, and debate all ideologies. It is not an overnight journey, it will take you a while to be in peace and harmony with who you are and what you believe in. Welcome to EC, big hugs.
@quebec thanks a ton for these references, it shows your serious dedication and research. Thank you for taking the time to study and sharing your findings with us. @Nedzie you are not the only one who is looking for answers that actually make sense and are according to the Divine Law. I am a mystically inclined pagan, yet my heart is filled with warmth as I read all these posts, so many souls searching, aching for answers and hoping for love, both divine and human. I cannot add anything more, since my path is different, but I sincerely wish you find what you seek. Welcome to Empty Closets.