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National Coming Out Day: Telling the World 'I'm Gay'
I’m gay. These two little words are perhaps the most life-changing that anyone in our society can utter, and the impact they have on an individual’s life is immeasurable. Today is National Coming Out Day, and as someone who has “come out”—albeit for a social experiment—I can tell you firsthand how much they changed my life.
The simple truth is that as much as we may think our society is tolerant, try believing that after speaking with anyone that has come out as Gay or Lesbian. Ask them how it felt to declare their orientation knowing that a label would instantly relegate them to second-class citizenship. Ask them how many friends tried to convert them, said they would “pray for them”, or just ignored them altogether. Dr. King once said, “In the end, we won’t remember the words of our enemies,
but we will remember the silence from our friends.” I’ve experienced that silence, and it was deafening.
For those on the fence, or those on the conservative side of the fence, I would like to offer two quick thoughts about those coming out as Gay or Lesbian today.
First, the words “sexual orientation” are misleading. One’s orientation has less to do with sex and more to do with love and relationship. I’ve been told many times that gay is synonymous with promiscuity and has less to do with love. But there is a very clear difference between sex and sexuality. While sex is an important part of life and relationships, is not the true desire of the average man and woman for their life. Everyone I have ever met, gay or straight, shares one common trait. We all desire to love and be loved, so as your friends or family make this transition out of the closet, I ask you to keep this in mind. Your child, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle, or friend desires an honest opportunity that so many heterosexuals take for granted, and that is the opportunity to walk down a produce aisle at the grocery store and know that we might just accidentally bump into the love of our life. Those in the closet have had this possibility stripped from them all of their lives, and until I lived in the closet I never understood how profoundly important these simple possibilities are.
Second, this issue is divisive for those on both sides of the argument. While many hold their interpretations of religion and religious books very seriously, we are not dealing with labels; we are interacting with flesh and blood people. Individuals with hearts. Beautiful men and women that are every bit as “fearfully and wonderfully made” as the pastors or saints you look up to. The Christian philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard said, “Once you label me, you negate me.” It is imperative that we see labels for what they are and treat people with the respect and dignity that they are inherently owed. Friendship, community, and respect are all possible regardless of our differences of belief or opinion, so while it is your right to stand by your belief passionately, our involvement in the lives of others is a privilege, not a right.
Today is a monumental day for many. Thousands will choose to be true to themselves and will, in the process, risk everything they know and love. They will choose honesty over the closet, and will begin a new phase of their life. I admire their courage, truly, and will be praying for
each and every one of them as they navigate these new and turbulent cultural waters. This is an important time in our country’s history, and the choice that lies before us as individuals and as a nation has never been more distinct. We can choose to move forward and embrace equality as a nation, or to remain stagnant, the danger being that remaining stagnant will affect tens of thousands of people. And for those that believe in a more theologically conservative interpretation of the Bible, I encourage us all to remember Christ’s example and commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves because that above all else is what it means to follow the example of Jesus.
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Comments
Interesting that
Interesting that pro-perversion people wanna rant against God as an excuse for doing evil things. THEN, they want people to think THEY have superior thinking on moral issues.
Hmmm, what did I miss? People eject all morality, then want to teach morality? Fuzzy logic, methinks. Aw, I get it, they reject all that Christians say is good to give an alternative? Hmm, if they reject morality & honesty, then why should we believe them?
@Holy, are you an isolated
@Holy, are you an isolated shut-in? How is it that you do not know or understand anything about Atheists & Agnostics? millions of people are living kind, generous, healthy, happy, law-abiding lives with no belief in any Supreme Being. There are still some people who need a threat of some kind to live honest, altruistic lives, but some people just live that way because they enjoy being that way. You might WANT to believe they will go to Hell no matter how good or generous they are if they do not believe in Jesus, but according to your faith that should NOT arouse your anger, only your love & sympathy. Your comments often reveal your lack of faith & doubts about the teachings you claim you believe. If you cannot or will not live by Jesus's instructions ( love your fellow man, judge not, etc..) what makes you even think you are a Christian?
@gem -- please sharpen your
@gem -- please sharpen your reading & comprehension skills. You are pulling things out of thin air to complain about, and you making a dig at people who believe in God just proves what I DID say. lol. Then, you make further insinuations & pretend evil on my part just to make your views seem better? Wow -- just,...wow.
Surely there are some who don't believe in God & who do try to live a good life, generally speaking: I can understand that & never said differently. BTW, who said anything about me being angry? -- Only you, assuming, casting blame, doing the very things you accuse me of. lol. Then, you lie and make more false statements about what my comments have been like. Wow, you are really messed up.
Hmm, on the flipside, what if you saw kids playing in the street with a car racing toward them from behind with the drivers not paying much attention? Then, maybe you rush over to try to talk the kids into not playing out in the street lest they get hit by a car or something. In response, maybe the kids (in your mindset) turn on you, start saying you are a bigot, hater, should mind your own business, & should quit trying to push your opinions on everyone else.....right before you jump out of the way & they get run over. Same difference, yet you assume hate rather than love...only because you WANT to "play in the street" & not listen to what you don't want to hear. That's all. You don't know the motive, and you assume the worst, while you yourself have the bad attitude you claim that I have. Wake up, and quit being such a God-hating bigot.
Finally, you have no room to berate a person for what you don't believe when you have no idea what the motives are, really. You also are ignorant of what the bible teaches & simply pick out what you want. You apparently think that love is a mere feeling or emotion, but love can be really hard to do sometimes. The old testament prophets were some of the people who were closest to God, and God is love the bible say; so, how could they be total haters rather than loving, caring people. Yet, they gave some of the seemingly toughest statements in the bible. How? -- Because emotionalism isn't the same as real love, and you have a warped, false sense of Who God is & what God is like. That's how. Many parents will know what I'm talking about...after they have had to discipline their kids in love even though it hurts to do so and the kids dislike them for it at times.
Also, Jesus drove the money-changers out of the temple with whip, made some hard statements about the religious leaders of his time, etc. Paul also later told one church they should have judged a certain person who was immorally having sex with his own mother. Then, Paul handed the man over to Satan for awhile. Why? He loved him. He didn't want the person to perish forever due to sin, so he enacted discipline as a parent would. It worked, & the man seems to have repented. BTW, Jesus preached a gospel of "repentance fot the forgiveness of sins", not a message of do as you please & you all get saved, anyway. Sure, I can be intense...because I believe & care, just as you are intense, for whatever reason. Who knows, maybe due to having been "beaten" by false religion in the guise of Christianity by people who never really tried to live like the bible really teaches or had no idea they could try to do so, (as so many make up reasons why things should not be the same). Hmm, they don't have much of the same results, either, do they?
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Thank you for clearly
Thank you for clearly explaining the facts of life to those who avoid learning anything that conflicts with their bigotry. Homosexuality exists within all species to nearly the same percentage as it occurs in Humans. It's a fact, therefore homosexuality is natural, even if we cannot yet pinpoint why it occurs. No amount of peer pressure or religious coercion could make me, or any other heterosexual, be attracted to my own sex. That alone should convince heterosexuals that sexual orientation was never your choice or a choice for homosexuals either. Gay people aren't trying to piss off anyone. They are simply asking to have the same rights as every other US citizen.
Well said, Gem, thank you! :)
Well said, Gem, thank you! :)
AKA I sin against God and go
AKA I sin against God and go against his plan for man-kind day...
Did Jesus ever even mention
Did Jesus ever even mention homosexuality??? Nope!
You're right. And He didn't
You're right. And He didn't mention pedophilia, wife beating, or leaving cow poop on your neighbor's doorstep. So I guess it's open season on those thing, too.
LMAO -- nice answer.
LMAO -- nice answer.
Using your phony religion to
Using your phony religion to bash people for conducting their personal relationships with other consenting adults in accordance with their sensibilities and beliefs is bad enough.
Talk to me about churches knowing anything about right and wrong when your god's priests stop raping the children of his devout followers against their wills within the walls of churches devoted to worshiping him, who are then hidden and protected from legal prosecution by that same church. This same god who created the entire universe and took an active hand in wiping out entire armies, yet can't protect a few dozen innocent children a day from something he wiped an entire city off the map for.
Why should the rest of our society be forced to follow the rules of your made-up religion when other parts of that same chapter in your book are disregarded on an hourly basis by its most devout followers? No shaving, hair cutting, no tattoos, no eating shrimp, no associating with women on their period, no wearing clothes made from mixed fibers.
You hit the nail on the head.
You hit the nail on the head. The bible is not our guide to what is right and wrong in society. Quoting Leviticus and Paul should not be the basis on which we decide as a society what is right and wrong. Unlike pedophilia, wife beating, and vandalism, two men or two women in homosexual relationship create no victims.
IF people would just mind their own business, this problem would go away because it would become a non-issue. No matter how badly bigots like you treat homosexuals you will never make them straight.
You mean, national LIE
You mean, national LIE day? Yeah, the day some people lie and pretend it is normal to do what is abnormal. The day some LIE & say it is good, okay, & such...to stick their weenie in someone's B-hole, get stinky dukie on it, and pretend nothing's wrong at all...when even children know that natural combos are like boy-girl, male-female, rooster-hen, bull-cow, etc.
Even drunks & drug-addicts can confess they have a problem. Why lie about this stuff & perpetuate harm to themselves & impressionable kids? Why? Because, like with crackheads & meth-addicts, the desire for the "drug" is overpowering & blinding. The result of telling the truth, however, is just like in Jesus Christ's time on earth. He told some Jews they were slaves to sinand that He could set them free, but they couldn't deal with it & hated him, their true hope.
Ah yes... a word from one of
Ah yes... a word from one of our hate filled bigots. Great! Thanks for the insightful and well thought out comments. I am sure using words like "dukie" is just going to make some gays go straight and beg for forgiveness.
Right.. if "god" had meant for two men to have sex he would have put a hole in the middle of their butts... oh wait. If "god" had meant for two women to have sex he would have given them ways to achieve mutual orgasm without a penis... oh wait...That doesn't work either.
Look at the bible. Homosexuality is only condemned in two places. The first is Leviticus, and Jesus said he gave christians "a new law," releasing them from the old testament. The second is in Paul, who never met Jesus and was never a disciple. The biblical case against homosexuality is pretty thin.... Jesus never mentions homosexuality, nor is it written into the tend commandments.
Homosexuality occurs in almost all mammals and advanced animals. Many studies have shown that hormonal imbalances and genetic propensities lead to a homosexual orientation. This idea that homosexuality is "unnatural" is a moral state from hateful people. The same hateful people who used to say is was "unnatural" for people of different races to marry.
Here is a simple statement of truth: NO ONE has control who they find attractive. Being straight, I will never find a man sexually attractive, and as much as I try to deny it I can't help but feel a brief flash of attraction when a cute young thing in revealing clothes walks by. These are hard wired responses. Gay men will never find women attractive, and lesbians will never find men attractive. Why should they be denied the right to a loving and lasting relationship just because some idiot like you can't mind your own business?
When a gay person can scream "I'm gay" on a crowded street and no one cares, gays will have achieved equality. For now, they have to deal with hate mongers and bigots like you.
Fortunately, there is hope. Polling shows that attitudes toward the LGBT community are shifting toward acceptance. The group that polls with the highest level of acceptance is the young. This means that when older haters like you die off, the people who replace you will make the world a better place.
Hate is not a family value.
CRW, you are REALLY ignorant.
CRW, you are REALLY ignorant. FOA, you are assuming that my telling the truth is somehow hateful rather than caring. Newsflash: unlike liberals, some people can distinguish between sentimental pretenses of love...and actually caring enough to say what's right. By your definition or viewpoint, maybe you also give a shot of whiskey to stone-drunk people, shove them in their car late at night with kids, and say how much you care that you are helping them get home after partying & too drunk to drive. (sigh)
As for how many times homosexuality is mentioned in the bible & saying that it is only twice,....you just proved you have so much ignorance you are likely not a Christian and have too little knowledge to be talking on that topic. LMAO. Also, there's no way you can rationally argue that human physiology indicates any normalcy in same-sex sexuality: rather, the contrary is true.
You really go to great lengths to declare your own whims as facts, and the whimsies of left-leaning pervertotypes who do "studies" with real intentions of trying to reinforce what nature shows is abnormal, unnatural behavior. Yes, "unnatural" is a correct term. Let's see some definitions. They include such as these:
"1. contrary to the laws or course of nature. 2. at variance with the character or nature of a person, animal, or plant. 3. at variance with what is normal or to be expected: the unnatural atmosphere of the place. "
and
"1. In violation of a natural law. 2. Inconsistent with an individual pattern or custom. 3. Deviating from a behavioral or social norm: an unnatural attachment. 4. Contrived or constrained; artificial: smiled in an unnatural manner. 5. In violation of natural feelings; inhuman."
Yup, it sure seems to fit the definition alright!
You say you are straight, but if you got butt-raped & abused for several years as a kid by a shrewd child-molester, I think you might tend toward the gay side, and that happens. (No, it didn't happen to me, FYI.) Well, if such things go that way, then how can it not be any matter of environment? Chemicals in the body also have a lot to do with it, and it is known that nutrients play a role in the production of biochemicals, including hormones..including in-vitro. Even crack, alcohol, etc. have affects on biochemicals. Why else is it so hard to give up crack? Why? It affects biochemicals in the body. Also, have you heard about the perfumes that attract one gender or the other using pheromones? Well, those are chemicals, too. Things affect stuff like that, too. For example, when killer bees sting, they emit a pheromone that smells like bananas that induces more of them to sting & attack, so they attack en masse. I suppose that, someday, they will find that there is a gay sex hormone that is emitted when gays start lusting after other guys or get stimulated by a guy. I think they will discover it is like a self-perpetuating chemical reaction, but it is not normal for a man, just as men have both M & F sex hormones, but develop into men. This isn't too deep for you, is it? I know it takes actually thinking instead of being a sheeple, but maybe you will understand someday.
Well, for now, it is the REAL bigots who falsely malign the true free thinkers who are not afraid fo the PC-police and who TRULY care. I do not cower & pretend perversion is okay any more than I pretend it is okay to be a crackhead, an alcoholic, a severe diabetic who refuses treatment, or for someone to walk around with a 2-pound cancerous tumor inside. To do otherwise is nuts. It is not helping them, and it is not being nice to pretend the problems don't exist & smile and not care. Giving them the right to be gay or to marry & inflame their perversion is like helping someone get cancer or to become an alcoholic because they are depressed.
The young...are becoming increasingly stupid, not wise. Sure, some are intellectual, but that is not the same as wisdom. Biblically, the son of the famous king Solomon was young...& foolish. He listened to the counsel of his young peers while rejecting the counsel of the elders. The result? Almost all of his people rejected him, rebelled, and he lost the vast majority of his kingdom. Sure, he got to do his own thing, for whatever that was worth, lol.
Holysmokes, you are a well
Holysmokes, you are a well known homophobe. Do us all a favor, keep your homophobic thoughts to yourself. Nothing you say is true, and not one word of your rheteric is appreciated here or anyhwere else. Comparing crackheads and drug addicts with children and gays is just sick! And, learn how to spell and write a complete sentence that makes sense..that's what spell check is for! LOL
Homophobia is the stupidest
Homophobia is the stupidest word EVER! No one is afraid of homosexuals... Disgusted? Yes! Afraid? No!
It's a word that liberals
It's a word that liberals simply made up & rammed into usage via the PC-police. They also like to MISuse the word "bigot", not realizing that they themselves better fit the definition than most of those they use it against.
From the
From the dictionary:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/homophobia
Definition of HOMOPHOBIA
: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
definition of BIGOT: "One who
definition of BIGOT: "One who is strongly partial to one's own group, religion, race, or politics and is intolerant of those who differ."
Sounds like you haters on the left are more likely to fit the definition than the people you rail against. We care enough to tell the truth. I have even given scientific evidence that homosexuality is unnatural, abnormal behavior. You, however, are absolute bigots as per definition.
I disagree. Haters like you &
I disagree. Haters like you & Holysmokes are terrified of Lesbians, Gays, Atheists, Muslims, and anyone who doesn't think or believe exactly like you do. If you believe in Christianity you must believe God gave human beings free will. That means, each human being has the right to discover his/her own spirituality or not to seek any belief at all. Your Bible also says that God is your judge & the judge of all things. Not you, your pastor, your wife or your friends, only God can judge another human being. By God's order you are commanded to love your neighbor as yourself. By your comments it seems you need to be working on your own soul & ability to obey God instead of trying to usurp God's right as the judge of all things. You are in NO position to be throwing stones. All of you Homophobes need to seriously deal with your own sins & failures if you expect to ever be one with the Lord. Jesus would never accept anyone with a heart filled with hatred, though he would pray for you. So, may God forgive you.
ROLF! My, you really should
ROLF! My, you really should stick to something you know instead of simply talking about what you don't know & trying to make it all support perverion. For one thing, you falsely accuse us as haters, so that is evil. You don't consider that we could be caring about others. Jesus cared about others so much that he told the truth and was hated for it, too. BTW, Jesus also cared so much....he made a whip & drove the money-changers out of the gentile section of the temple when they had been taking up that space which was supposed to be a place for non-Jews to go to for prayer, etc. You might say that he righted a perversion, then, too. Jesus also preached a gospel of "repentance for the forgiveness of sins". That doesn't sound like a do-as-you-please & it's all fine with God type of deal. lol.
You say only God can judge another man? Not so. Jesus taught to forgive, but he also told someone close to him that whomever he forgave, would be forgiven, and whomever's sins he retained...would be retained. Paul later told a church they ought to have judged someone among them who was having sex with his own mother (but they had sort of looked the other way, it seems). Paul judged him: he "handed him over to Satan". Why? Because he cared for his soul. It was so the man would be disciplined awhile, repent, and not lose his soul forever. BTW, it seems to work, as he later told the church to accept the man again (as he had repented). Eternity is a long time, BTW. BTW, "homophobia" does not mean every person that disagrees with the lifestyle, so you are misusing the term, just like race-baters do in politics when they rant that it is discrimination & racism whenever someone disagrees with something they want that affects a lot of people of some minority. They willfully ignore the fact that sometimes people have actual reasons for things. In the latter case, sometimes it is a philosphical reason that is part of the political party's ideology that is involved, what the Constitution says, etc. rather than anything racial. Same with this sort of thing, and science is impartial.
When human creation or evolution -- whichever you wish to consider -- has determined through thousands of years that human bodies are male & female and have certain functions (which cannot be denied as fact), then to go against that is rather illogical, scientifically even. Therefore, to rant & call it "homophobia" is outright wrong, hateful, & even an injustice against science. If the only reason for doing that is a fear of not being able to help oneself out of the errant & harmful condition, that is not good enough. Should a medical scientist refuse to acknowledge cancer as a problem if they don't yet have a cure for that type of cancer? No. That would be both wrong and a disservice to others. How would they ever find a needed cure if they fearfully refuse to acknowldge the problem?