"It was a few weeks into the program when [James] Stabile [Pictured} began to question whether he could change his sexual orientation. He said he decided to pray for the answer.
“'I said, "God, am I going to be gay when I come out of here?"'
"And he said, "Yes,"' Stabile said. 'I don’t want to be gay, but I am gay, and because I’m gay, I’m going to have to accept it.'”
[For the full article, see here.]
I pray that one day the James Stabiles of the world will no longer grudgingly "have to accept" their God-given sexuality, but will embrace their sexuality, as all healthy adults should embrace theirs, as one of God's most precious gifts to us.
The self-loathing that infuses so much of the Gay community, that is born of numerous negative, hateful, ignorant, and erroneous messages spewed from assorted pulpits throughout the world, and capitalized on by "religious" and secular haters for material and/or psychological and/or social and/or political gain, is the major culprit in the dearth of meaningful activism that will help move the cause of the acquisition of full and equal civil rights for LGBT people forward.
Moreover, that self-loathing is also responsible for numerous and untold suicides of LGBT people, as well as for countless lives lived as merely incomplete existences; lives lived in quiet and sometimes not so quiet desperation.
And those relatively barren lives, and that lack of the dignity necessary to have a fire in the belly to meaningfully fight for the dignity and rights that accrue to other citizens in the U.S. and elsewhere, are lived by people who are shouldering often unspoken, often unacknowledged, deeply held guilt in their false belief that ignorant and/or mendacious homophobes have really been promulgating the truth about their very lives and sexuality. Hence, the frequent glorification of being "the other," with the commensurate frivolity and use of derogatory self-identifiers that all too often masks this self-loathing as "liberation."
Hear this, and hear it loudly and clearly: There is not only nothing wrong about being Gay, but being Gay is a wonderful gift from God! And to let anyone tell you any differently is to reject God's precious gift to you, to have you throw His precious gift back in His face, and to thwart God's will for your life and ministry that He has ordained for you from the foundation of the world. (See, for example, Jeremiah 1:5; Romans 8:29-30; Ephesians 1:4)
And read Romans 8:31: "What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?"
Once the great number of James Stabiles of the world, and the great number of LGBT people of the world, come to recognize that their very lives, their gifts, their talents, their sexuality, and their capacity to love another human being are precious God-given gifts, they will finally come to embrace themselves as children of God who will insist on being treated accordingly by others, whether those others like it or not!
We will never find common ground with the haters in our midst! But we will achieve full and equal civil and sacramental rights when we finally realize that God made us with all of our many facets and complexities, and that He takes delight in His children.
And with that realization, when that spiritual fact finally hits home, LGBT people will no longer settle for the crumbs of incrementalism; will no longer cooperate with, or accommodate themselves to, the homophobes by believing their lies; will no longer go through the hell of so many who have suffered the distortions and pains of the "ex-gay" industry; will no longer have any self-loathing; will no longer allow themselves to be treated as second class citizens.
Remember: "If God be for us, who can be against us?"
2 comments:
@Jerry: I agree jerry. I wish they would accept their God-given sexual orientation ln a positive way.
It always gays that are tied to today's big three religions that have issues with their sexuality.
The thing I don't get is before Judaism, christianity, and Islam, sexuality especially same-sex love was never demonized like this. Many foreign lands like Africa, europe etc had positive outlooks until some in Christianity start to interpret bible verses to make being same-sex orientated wrong.
When I hear ex-gay groups say homosexuality has always been wrong is a big error. They obviously don't know history, or how certain bibile verses strated to receive narrow bible interpertations.
This post was good. It makes me sad when some gays are convince they have to pray for their sexuality to reverse to a hetero one. Why would God pray away innocent love, and desire toward a human being? Love is always proper to me.
But Jerry why is it that religions for example: Christianity makes people ignorant of difference or diversity like gay sexuality, different religions, different races, and etc???
Hi Justice MH: Unfortunately, a lot of people who gravitate toward "religion" seek and need black and white answers in a very gray world. You ask, But Jerry why is it that religions for example: Christianity makes people ignorant of difference or diversity like gay sexuality, different religions, different races, and etc?"
For many people, there can't be an "us" without a "them," and they choose what they consider to be the "safest" minority group to demonize, so that their in-group solidarity can be enhanced, and so that they can affirm their "righteousness" to themselves and to others, even if that fiction of "righteousness" both contravenes the Bible (e.g. Romans 3:23), and shows so many to be hypocrites when their true selves are exposed (e.g. James Haggard).
"Religion" is institutional and bureaucratic, requiring such features as hierarchy and careerism. "Christianity" is far more a relationship with God through Jesus than it is a religion, and it is not the Christians who are the haters, but the "religionists" who falsely claim to be "Christians," fooling themselves and frequently fooling others, who are causing the real problems of divisiveness of people and the condemnation of others, contrary to Jesus' injunctions to all those who would follow Him.
This madness will only be abated (never stopped, I'm afraid) when Christians who are truly Christians and don't merely identify as such, speak out against the perversion of the Gospel that the homophobes and other haters exhibit, and confront those haters as not being true to the Christian calling, and throw them out of the Church if these haters don't repent of their blatant sin of condemnation of LGBT people (or other minority groups, for that matter).
However, since the institutional Church is largely comprised of homophobes, it's the Christians who must come to recognize that they comprise Christ's Church, and flee these toxic institutions and form their own worship communities if they are not members of churches that are inclusive of ALL of God's children.
"Religion" creates out-groups in order to cement in-group solidarity and perceived "righteousness" by those who preach the false gospel of "exclusion." Christians know that none of us is "righteous," but that "righteousness" has been imputed to us, Gay and Straight alike, because of Jesus' finished work on the Cross, and how dare we allow anyone who has the temerity to call him/herself a "Christian" to deny that basic fact of the Gospel message, and continue to allow them to advertise their lies to others without publicly confronting them for the wolves that they really are?
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