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“The first thing you have to do is recognize how you’ve become dependent on sex, on things that are not from God,”
the usual religious propaganda to make natural people feel unnatural
church petitions that had to be signed in order to keep our country safe from “perverts.”
still going on with radical right trump fanatics who are unchristian as their cult leader. anyone with a brain should be able to see through it but unfortunately fundamentalist christian nationalists and trumpaholics drink the trump koolaid and end up lobotomizing themselves...
We had all met with ultimatums that didn’t exist for many other people, conditions often absent from the love between parents and children. At some point, a “change this or else” had come to each of us: Otherwise we would be homeless, penniless, excommunicated, exiled. We had all been too afraid to fall through the cracks; all of us had been told cautionary tales of drug addicts, of sex addicts, of people who ended up dying in the throes of AIDS
all parents use these bs threats against their children, but the fundamentalist christians will claim (the hypocritically loving) god told them to threaten their kids
Mount Vesuvius trapped them in its ashen tombs. Was this why people filled their frames with family photos? One sudden flash and the people you cared for would be preserved in their innocence, their happiness, before one could do harm to the other?
i like the anology, yes we can all go in a flash of light, so photographs help the memory process, and should enable the process of thinking how arbitrary god is that he kills or maims anyone of any religion, color, creed, political affinity etc
If I didn’t say too much, if people didn’t notice me, then I might also escape God’s roving Sauron eye.
love the association of god with the evil sauron :)
the shame and rage settling in my chest, filling up spaces I had previously reserved for love, spreading beneath my skin like invisible bruises.
that is what all fundamentalist religious fanatics do - fill themselves up with hatred based on fear of others, and has absolutely nothing to do with the so-called love that these gods are said to be all about
Yet in this town it seemed every path led back to the same dilapidated strip mall. In this town, it seemed the Minotaur would always find you.
the small town rural mindset is perfect fodder for the maniacal religious right and this means you have nowhere to hide so increasing fear of retribution for just being a natural loving human
One moment I was terrified that my ancestors were all sitting up in Heaven and judging my same-sex attractions, and the next I would judge them for what I assumed they’d done to black bodies.
well said, all the hatreds of the radical right christian nationalists just stack one on top of the other - though everyone is 'supposed' to be created by god...huypocrisy is never ending
“Yeah, a Pentecostal church,” I said, remembering the old post office with its rusted metal beams and its brightly lit stage, its motor oil. “It’s not the same.” The words came out of my mouth without my permission. Blaming, self-righteous in nature, they felt natural, marching into place somewhere between a truth and a lie, powered almost exclusively by rage.
humans have an innate ability to hate and kill - regardless of what the human created religions try and teach...religion is just a place to justify hatred, wars, prejudice, bigotry etc
there seemed to be no idea I’d encountered that didn’t complicate my understanding of Christianity, that didn’t call into question my parents’ God-given right to dictate my beliefs.
and that is just the simple picture of 1 family...multiply that around the world and to governments and it is complete idiocy and hypocrisy
What was Jesus’s compassion anyway but some well-crafted graffiti on the corridors of history, an invitation to follow Him into the most unlikely places? Love could come to you even in a room that seemed drained of it. The
he was a great dude that had the right ideas, but humans turned it into a tool for the powerful in order to control the masses, and in so doing reversing all the good that jesus spoke about over 2000 years ago
Part of a family history that took pride in the men who inherited the name, passed down from great-great-grandfather to great-grandfather to grandfather and finally to me. My mother and Dr. Julie and I were aware that, should I fail the test of manhood, I might never add another namesake to our family line. Instead, my name might come to be associated with the moment our family fell apart, a big empty space beneath my entry on the family tree.
the patriarchy that religions embody is pathetically irrelevant to living a loving and caring life
In the process of purification, you risked erasing every minor detail you’d ever cared about. You became all telling with no showing: not the extraordinary extra, but the stock player in a harp-and-halo bit. I came to therapy thinking that my sexuality didn’t matter, but it turned out that every part of my personality was intimately connected. Cutting one piece damaged the rest.
great way of expressing the 'unreal' and impossible relationship between humanity and religion
How could I love someone who acted so broken all the time, who demanded my sympathy with each scar, each confession, who I didn’t really know? It seemed pathetic, and a little selfish, to mark oneself out for love. To think that God and the people around you would suddenly recognize your worth if you were seen as damaged and admitted it. This was LIA’s currency, the trading of literal and proverbial scars, and I hated
forced indoctrination into the ridiculous realm of religion
On some days, it’s hard to believe that I ever lived in a world that operated on such extreme notions of self-annihilation. But then I turn on the news, read a few articles, and realize that what I have experienced may have been unique, but in no way was it disconnected from history. Minorities continue to be abused and manipulated by both nefarious and well-intentioned groups of people, and harmful ideas continue to develop new political strains all over the world. What I can’t quite understand—and what I may never be capable of understanding—is how we all came to be mixed up in the ex-gay
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nobody was 'drawn' to LIA - they were 'forced' by the perpetrators of these extreme notions of self-annihilation
American Life, Ira Glass’s voice a haven of liberal thinking in a deeply conservative state, when suddenly—as if some cold hand has reached out of the past to clench my throat—Smid’s voice draws me back to Love in Action.
the fear of thinking differently, or even just thinking for oneself, is the cornerstone of fundamentalist religions and the fascist trump politics that derive from that
This American Life interview is winking, with knowing phrases that betray a liberal audience accustomed to joking about “one of those Christian places that claims they can cure homosexuality.” It’s the tone of so many of my professors, people so far removed from the conservative Christian perspective that they can’t help but sound flippant, many of their lives padded by families who’ve supported them since they were toddlers.
so true, the families that truly love and support are not the fundamentalist nationalists...if one wants to believe in a god, at least let it be a god that supports all kinds of love and caring and allowing humans to think for themselves...no religion can do that
“You two have to deal with this directly,” my mother will say, pointing first to my father then to me. “I refuse to be in the middle anymore.” But I will refuse her request. I will refuse to even look at my father, the man with whom, post-LIA, I’ve primarily communicated through brief e-mails and one-sentence answers.
agree, how can one love someone who condemns you in every thought? oxymoron with moron being the word to describe the limited brain power and compassion of these religions...
Every time I’ve read a book or ingested a new historical fact that my Baptist upbringing taught me to reject, I’ve had to fight against the sneaking suspicion that I am being lead astray by Satan. In the message boards and hidden ex–ex-gay Facebook groups I will join, I’ll see others talking about their own attempted suicides, and I’ll glimpse in these confessions elements so remarkably similar to my own that they will seem, for a moment, to issue directly from my mind. I will see people talk about losing their families, about the yearly trials they’ve faced as winter holidays approached and
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well stated, and a very sad commentary on the power of religious lies, even when there is zero basis for believing the lie. trumpaholics are in a quasi religious cult where trumps lies are irrefutable....a very sad state of the human mind indeed
“I don’t even talk to my family anymore,” one woman will write. “They still think I need more therapy. I think they’d rather see me dead.”
yes, as mentioned, how can you love someone who condemns you in every thought? do they all fake love and caring for each other? that is such a toxic environment for any real human to be forced to exist in. family is not family unless they love you unconditionally. if they don't then find people who will, and call them family. the term family is just a term we're born into but toxic families should not bind us to any unnatural situation. leave, build your confidence, attract like-minded people to you, live and love without the constant stone of hatred around your neck
stood up in protest during the middle of a church meeting, claiming that my father’s “openly homosexual” son signified a spiritual lapse in my father’s ministry. My parents will tell me that if I write this book, my father will risk losing his job as a pastor. The sins of the father. Every step in my success will become a reminder of ex-gay ideology. Every step in my success will become an immediate threat to my father’s.
well put and a great ending - stand up and be the decent human being you want to be, and F*ck the small minded bigotted and prejudiced little people in their toxic wasted lives.
