Ex-Gay? What do you think?

[East]

Being gay isn't a choice...

Being Christian IS a choice....and there IS a cure for it....

In order to abandon who you are..you have to embrace a virgin birth..parting of the sea and walking on water....and a nasty invisible sky daddy who wants to stone people to death for all kinds of bullshit...

The book was written by MEN..with egos. Perhaps some of it was spiritually inspired..but other parts of it are clearly insane.....

[LJay]

I have never come across one of these gay-to-straight programs that was designed to do anything but make men into their idea of what men should be. It is as though they were granted a one-size-fits-all patent. That is simply contrary to the way people are,

Be yourself, whatever complex and wondrous thing that may be and be secure in the knowledge that you do not have to follow anyone else's dictates. Remember also that there is religion and there is God. They are two quite separate things.

Whether it is a conversion program or a religion, if you are not freed, enabled and empowered by it to be yourself in healthy relationship to others, you should avoid it. Avoid molds and live your life.

[Camfer]

Handing over your personal power to someone else's ideas is something I've never understood. There is no harm in liking who you like. Be kind to others and true to yourself. The rest, for me, is suspicious.

[meridannight]

Religion isn't some kind of a trait/quality that is expressed in your physiology. Sexuality is. What does that tell you (or should tell you) about the reality of your life?

It is that simple.

[TigerLover]

The reason the judeo-christian faiths condemn homosexuality is because they originate from a time and place where battles were won purely by strength of numbers. Flatlands, amateur warriors, crude weapons and no armour. The biggest army won everytime.

So in order for a tribe to survive you had to churn out the maximum number of young men to send into battle. That's why all those holy texts from the region encourage degrading women to breeding stock, taking the girls of your enemies as sex slaves and forbids all acts of sex that don't produce kids, especially homosexuality.

So don't let some bronze age desert dwelling goat-fucking warlord use you as his puppet.

[Justaguy]

I went through a time when I wanted to be straight, I mistakenly thought if I tried hard enough then I could change. To a certain extent I think it was normal to lament the things that I would never have - a girlfriend, a wife, a 'conventional' family: all the things I grew up thinking I should have.
What's deranged was to dwell on such feelings, or worse, try to force these things on myself when instead I could have spent my energy on finding a boyfriend, a husband, an 'unconventional' but amazing family - all the things I do want now.

[meridannight]

The biggest army won everytime.

This was not true. Let's not even get into the fact that back then armies were often made up of paid mercenary soldiers, who did it for living, rather than actual citizens; but it is also not true that the biggest army won by rule.

The Judeo-origin comes from the fact that Jewish tribes were small (I don't know just how small, but I know they were less populous and less significant than their neighbors), and they simply needed their numbers to grow. Homosexuality was perceived as a threat to population. It was all also mixed up with feelings of homosexuality being something that 'defiles' the community and thus making it less pure (that was important to those Jewish tribal people).

Homosexuality was widely practiced in Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia (especially) which were all neighboring those Jewish tribes, and negative attitude toward homosexuality also grew out of Jewish aversion toward those foreign powers, their ways of life, and the hostility between them.

Early christian theologians messed it all up even further by twisting Plato's philosophy, and by sheer invention.

I have read a lot of history books on homosexuality, but one I recommend to check out, if you want to get a clear perspective on this topic is Louis Crompton's Homosexuality and Civilization. It is an amazing, wide-perspective research.

This hatred never had to do with armies and fighting. It didn't trace back to that. The opposite is true. History actually records men who loved other men being regarded better fighters than men who were into women. In ancient Greece there were several 'armies' (more like battalions on our terms, maybe) of male lovers, the most famous of which was the Sacred Band of Thebes. Greeks figured it out quite early on that men who love other men will make superior fighters on the battlefield with their lovers. And it was not untrue. Philip of Macedon was the one who destroyed the Sacred Band of Thebes in the battle of Chaeronea and he is said to have wept at the sight.

[knickerbuck]

i think what TigerLover is trying to say is that there is strength in numbers ..

[VirgoMasquerade]

Why be like everyone else when you can be yourself? Its a choice to be happy and its a choice to spend the only life you have miserable. Your born with your likes and dislikes, Just like your born with your race and build. You cant wake up and say im gonna fuck girls today ( unless your bisexual) and the next day choose to fuck a dude. Dont work that way

[meridannight]

i think what TigerLover is trying to say is that there is strength in numbers ..

Goes against every perceptive observation of the world. I will take one man of the caliber of Philip of Macedon, Julius Caesar, or Napoleon or Alexander the Great, instead of 10,000 men.