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Did religion ever mess with you when you realised you were gay/lesbian?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by ChloeKiss, Jun 23, 2014.

  1. ChloeKiss

    ChloeKiss Guest

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    For the past few years i've dealt with alot and I mean ALOT of self hatred to do with my sexuality and the fact that I like women.. Most of this comes from the fact that I believed what religion said and what the bible said (Now I think it is complete bullshit and just an excuse for homophobia) The verse where it said something about man shall not lay with man it is an abomination use to always freak me out.. and then when I found out people BELIEVED in hell and that gays and lesbians will go there I was gullible enough to believe it and lived in fear for years.. I even believed something was wrong with me. I thought I was sick and all of what I felt for women was a trap and my gateway to burning in a lake of fire. I thought what I was feeling was self destructive.. I even sometimes still worry because what if it is true? you know? Even though i've convinced myself it's complete rubbish I still worry?

    So some of you may think i'm being ridiculous but I personally don't believe we just die. I believe there is more to life than this. If I go to hell like people say I will then i've basically wasted my life. Like why did I trick myself into believing I liked women? Why did I act on my lust. But then I say to myself ''There is no hell! People are assholes and they're trying to scare you'' So I get all worked up and upset over it.. I don't think I just lust over women because I genuinely want to get to know them better and care for them. I also want to marry a woman and live happily ever after. So how is that a sin?

    I never liked being confused.. I hate that I can't have children naturally with a woman but I also hate the thought of being with a man? Even though they make great friends I just don't desire them in a physical/romantic way. I guess I am just venting here.. But I really would appreciate some other peoples advice or even views on this particular topic.

    Thanks heaps!
     
    #1 ChloeKiss, Jun 23, 2014
    Last edited: Jun 23, 2014
  2. Jay47

    Jay47 Guest

    I had already been a skeptic since religion was introduced to me at a very young age. When. Realized I was gay(10 years old), I became an agnostic. The bible made even less sense than before.
     
  3. Minyman1527

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    I've been brought the same thing and I'm actually still going through it now. I'm Christian and I too believe that some parts in the bible are wrong. Just remember, you are who you are and should never change because of someone else. Also what helps me is when ever I feel that way I tell me self over and over that I'm exactly what god wants me to be because why would he send us to hell for being who he made us. Anyway good luck and enjoy a long and prosperous life!!!!
     
  4. joshy the queen

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    i asked someone and they said i have to die
    and i did try it many times i really respect and love my religion but i hate who spoil it for their own opinions and make people hate it and fear it all those religious men want to show is fear and hell -.-
     
  5. Paradoxiolitic

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    Ever since I can remember, my immediate family was pretty much pseudo-catholic. My dad has never shown any interest towards religion, but my mother somewhat, less than her side of the family though. I was baptized and all, but really, religion only had a weak influence on me and it didn't last long... I didn't conciously tell myself "know what? Fu** religion", I just had no connection to it. So pretty much no :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
     
  6. the prince

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    I love my religion and it hurts but I think there's a painful balance between my sexuality and religion which I am ready to take :slight_smile:.
     
  7. Wuggums47

    Wuggums47 Guest

    It used to bother me before I got even more religious. That might sound confusing to some people. I started to actually read the bible and look in to the passages used against homosexuality. The sin of Sodom was the wickedness of the people, and when God sent Angels to them, they tried to rape them. It's cited later in the bible that this inhospitality was the reason for Sodom's destruction. Also the passage in the bible that says lying with another man is an abomination also says to put gay men to death. It's right next to the passages that tell you wearing mixed textiles and eating shellfish is a detestable sin. Leviticus also says that if a woman defends her husband by grasping a man's testicles, her hand is to be cut off. When the Apostles formed the Church, they decided that to welcome the gentiles in, these laws would no longer be followed.

    In addition I became more spiritual. Instead of just listening to the Catholic Church's opinions on homosexuality, I asked Jesus about it. And what I heard is that there is nothing wrong, because homosexuality is love, and God is all about love. Have you ever read the New Testament, Jesus is almost always talking about God's love, forgiveness and righteousness. He also says that the commandment to love thy neighbor is tied for the most important commandment of all. Your not supposed to be cruel to others, and Jesus often called out religious hypocrisy when he saw it. Being a Christian who uses religion to justify hatred is religious hypocrisy.

    A lot of people don't understand how a gay person could still want to be a Christian, but I hope I've explained why I am. I think some day the Church will apologize for their actions, just like we apologized for our role in the crusades.
     
  8. Religion definitely has and still does affect me since I found out I was bi!

    I remember cutting myself because I was a "dirty old f--". The arguments and yelling that I've gotten from my dad only trying to change his mind a bit about what it really means to be attracted to same sex has hurt me so much. Every time there would just be a sweet, gay couple on TV - The ones that have helped me a bit - He would always tell me to cut it off. Being forced to go to church every Sunday and always being worried if the pastor is going to say something about same sex marriage was also horrible. Then, to see all the people worshiping God and being so happy, but yet despite their welcome smiles and "hellos", if they knew my secret, they'd be looking at me funny. The pastor always says to "come as you are" and that God "made you to be yourself" while at the same time saying that he's "not going to apologize for what the word of God says [about gays]". I believe in God and I'm a Christian - I've always felt Him when we would talk and I knew He was always there with me. However, every since I questioned myself 10 months ago, I felt so apart from Him - I always felt left out and even to this day, I still am a little fearful of burning in Hell. However, when I remember the reason why I believe in God and who is the God I believe in, the God I believe in is a God of Love, He's just, and He's forgiving and merciful and I believe in Him for that reason - I don't serve the religious extremist God and I don't serve God because of my parents or the Bible, but for Him only. When I start to forget about the religion around me and just focus on my relationship with God, that's when I find out that God could careless about who I'm attracted to, but just wants me to praise Him and put Him first and be a Christ-like person who is good to others.

    I believe in an afterlife too, but again, if you just focus on God, you'll start to realize that if He's truly the God He says He is, He will accept you just because you honored Him. That's all that matters. God wouldn't just punish someone forever because of love - That's not like the God I know and I don't think He's the God you know either, so no, it isn't wrong.

    Like I said before, I'm still fearful about Hell and everything, but if you just focus on that relationship aspect with God, as long as you put Him first, you will realize He won't care about who you love.

    I hoped I helped a little and I hope you realized you are not alone! If you need to talk about this more, let me know!
     
  9. Browncoat

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    I had the happy coincidence of having extremely irreligious parents. While other religious individuals were a problem, I had no internal issues amongst myself.
     
  10. ChloeKiss

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    Thank you so much :slight_smile: This answer was lovely.. I agree with you.. I believe in god. I believe that if I just focus on my relationship with him that he would still love me regardless of what gender i'm attracted to.. There are times where I believe we are all one and that there is no god but then I just feel.. Blank because i've always believed he could be very real. Noone knows for sure though. I just think we live this life to learn.. and then when we die we review what we've learned.

    Thanks everyone else for your answers! More would be appreciated. x
     
    #10 ChloeKiss, Jun 23, 2014
    Last edited: Jun 23, 2014
  11. BelleFromHell

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    Nope. I became agnostic when I was 14 and I admited that I was gay at age 16. My internalized homophobia has been getting worse and worse since I've come out to more people, but it has nothing to do with religion.
     
  12. Tightrope

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    I read your whole post and you make good points. I was raised in a religion and still identify with it. I don't feel like abandoning that belief system, for the most part. However, I can't bring myself to go because of the hypocrisies, inconsistencies, insecurities, hostility, and negativity. I've even talked to some people around my parents' age who said that they don't feel like going to church for various reasons, such as the overly social aspect, the grapevine, pastors who rotate who they like and then dislike, mobility issues, and just having done it for so long, that they feel their faith is not at all diminished and they don't seem to experience much if any guilt. It is meant to be a positive experience and if being there feels negative, for whatever reason, then I won't be going. So I stopped going.
     
  13. Radioactive Bi

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    Nope. Ancient fairy tales have no bearing on my personal life. It doesn't make sense to me to believe in nonsense that was made up by primitive humans thousands of years ago when they had no real understanding of the natural world, let alone let it have an influence on me.

    The only time it may have an effect, is when you get religious people out there, trying to legislate based on "their" beliefs or version of their religion which has the potential to deny myself and others rights.

    Personally, I've struggled to understand how LGBT+ people can reconcile religion with being LGBT+. If you read the religious books and subscribe to the mainstream institutions, they are quite clear on their position on anything not heterosexual. One can say, "I believe god loves me anyway", or say "Jesus was all about love" (which is arguably false) but the holy books on which the religions are actually based off don't say this. It's like you have to invent your own version of your religion to make it fit your personal circumstance. If you can pick and choose and decide for yourself what is right, I think that demonstrates that you don't need your religion at al and that it's clearly not the ultimate truth. Plus if you have to do that, it's pretty obvious your religion is toxic.

    I'm not going to sit here though and just say give up your religion. Instead I just encourage people to truly investigate their religion without fear and guilt and face reality on how it really is without letting these unproven ancient beliefs rule your life. That way we could all lead better lives without being held back or persecuted by religions.

    Happy days :slight_smile:
     
  14. AlamoCity

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    In a way, religion did have an effect on me. From an early age, I knew that I was both gay and not religious; I consider myself agnostic. I did not believe in prayer at an early age and also did not believe that praying for others helped because either:

    A) God didn't exist,
    B) If God were to exist, he wouldn't give respite through miracles based on how many "Likes" (i.e. prayers) that person got.
    B i.)Or, if God really did perform miracles and ease suffering based on how many prayers you got from friends and family, I would not want worship him and would rather take damnation than worship a petty, jealous and narcissistic being.

    I center on the prayer aspect for a reason. You see, I was raised that God didn't listen to your prayers if you were "unclean" and I was raised to equate homosexuality as something that would make you essentially "ritualistically unclean." There were instances where certain situations were out of my control and I couldn't do anything, like when my grandmother suffered a very bad medical episode many years ago. In those instances, I felt bad for praying to a God I never truly believed in, but also felt that praying to God was better than nothing, if only for the placebo effect. That said, praying made me feel very bad because I knew I was gay and didn't really feel like I could change, but I "knew" God wouldn't hear my prayer if I was gay. So, during those early episodes where I did pray, I would essentially recant my homosexuality in exchange for him helping with my request.

    It got very bad because I didn't really see the point of prayer, but also did see it as having an infinitesimally small probability of actually helping (which is greater than zero), and I was willing at that moment to wager my entire being and identity for a simple request that would probably not be honored (and if the "miracle" did happen, it would most certainly have been due to human rather than divine intervention).

    Let's just say that there were many nights I spent crying trying to decide if God hated me for recanting on all the promises I had made to give up my homosexuality, even though I pretty much knew that I actually didn't believe in God.
     
  15. QueerTransEnby

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    As my signature says, I am still dealing with this. I don't have all the answers and struggle to find where I fit into the church anymore despite having lifelong strong faith. I can give you my perspective.

    Even my pastor friend who has gay friends and believes in loving all gays, he doesn't get fully what I go through. I admire him though because he put on a play alerting those in the church about the awful bullying gays go through and also the rampant suicide which continues in LGBT youth. He has basically said that in order for the church to be more relevant, they must love EVERYONE. Despite this, he was trying to get me to date a woman when I told him I was bi. He told me he would help me setup a profile and everything. I told him I would think about it, but I cannot do so after exploring my own thoughts; I like guys more right now.

    The bottomline is your relationship with Christ as far as eternity with Him. Do you talk to him? When you read the Bible, are you looking for what man has to say about it or how it really reads?

    As Wuggums inferred, are you reading the verses that talk about homosexuality in context and in relation to the culture? When a lot of these pastors talk, they seem to ignore the Greek and Hebrew. Pedophilia was quite prevalent. There were a glut of homosexual prostitutes in the Roman times, and I believe this what Paul and other verses were talking about in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, I believe that the verses were legalistic in order to keep the population of the Israelites up so as to keep the lineage to Christ intact.

    I went to a Christian college, studied this stuff, and even did exegetical papers on the Major Prophets(Isaiah and Jeremiah). At the time, I thought my professors liberal interpretations were way off base being I was raised in a strict home that had most of my years in a Pentecostal and Baptist church. Thinking about it more recently, there are always items lost in translation and different shades of meaning. In the Gospels, we see Jesus speaking in parables many times. As has been mentioned, we also see Jesus being hardest on the Pharisees(aka the old school Dobsons etc) rather than the prostitutes and drunkards who did not believe in Him.

    Is the Bible about love? Yes. Is it about tough love sometimes? Yes. Is it possible for man to twist the Scriptures to propagate his own agenda? Yes.

    Hypothetically, even if homosexuality was a sin, the Bible states all sins are equal in God's eyes. How many times does the Bible talk about telling the truth and the consequences of lying(I'm looking at you Ted Haggard)? How many times does the Bible talk about gluttony(looking at you deacon board)? Adultery against your wife? Divorce(looking at you Newt)? When Jesus was on the cross, he simply asked the man next to Him if he had faith in him and the Father. He didn't ask: you ever have sex with a man?

    Can you lose your faith? Yes, but it's not because of homosexuality. It is through doubting God and making an active choice to ignore the Holy Spirit inside of you. Go to an affirming church or at least when that focuses on what the CHURCH needs to correct rather than judgement. You can't shame people to a relationship with God. Your relationship should be rooted in love and trust just like any human relationship.
     
  16. Gaysibling

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    Although my mother was nominally religious she never really tried that hard to indoctrinate us. There was a token effort to get me to go to sunday school, but when, around the age of 6 or 7 , I asked her why I had to go she asked me if I didn't like it. I told her it was silly.... and that was the end of my "participation" in religion ( I think the poor woman running it was quite relieved... I asked far too many questions and laughed far too loudly at her answers). I am very grateful.... I struggled enough with my sexuality as it was....if I'd had the added burden of faith it would probably have killed me as it has killed so many others.
     
  17. mickey1101

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    Actually i never realized just how bigoted my family is until i realized i might not be straight...and before i was right there with them,which is something i'm not exactly proud of. The whole ordeal just made me turn all that hate inward and proved to be toxic, which is why I started to question my faith (among other reasons). Sometimes I still feel horrible generally because of the upbringing I had.
     
  18. Melanie

    Melanie Guest

    I still consider myself to be a Christian.

    I'm probably more along the lines of being a "Red Letter" Christian (Tony Campolo et. al.). I've found the Gay Christian Network to be a good resource. I adore Justin Lee.

    Idk. I'm sure I'm no help... its just that I think that everyone needs to come to their own conclusions about it, so maybe that accounts for my apathy.

    ---------- Post added 24th Jun 2014 at 04:06 AM ----------

    This is the root of my position. I feel that salvation is a work of the holy spirit (I'm a cessationist otherwise) and all of my words wont convince anyone.
     
  19. adrianislander

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    hello! my name is adrian and i am new to the emptyclosets and i saw your query about the religious aspect of our situation and i hope you get to read my response. if not i guess that's okay too. i just recently came out and i was blessed to have overwhelming acceptance here and recently, not even a week ago, i had an experience that i hope will help calm your nerves a little. a friend of mine, a young woman who will remain anonymous for obvious reasons, came back for a break from her extensive studies of becoming a doctor. we were very close, i mean more than close. we flirted on and off but nothing really came out of it, mostly due to my part being a closeted gay man at the time. when she came back it was like she never left. we laughed and laughed about all the things we missed on each others lives and yes there was flirting too. at one point i thought to myself that this girl who has been there for me for so many occasions has earned the right to know and in the middle of our conversation i blurted it out. now let me tell, during the whole time i was scared because she was a devout seventh day adventist and i was afraid that she would turn away from me. to my surprise she became excited and started asking all this questions just deepening my love for her. the coming days i started to relay to her my worries of telling her and my fear of her rejecting me. i a told her it was because of her whole religious background and then she said to me the most profound yet simple statement that i will hold dear for the rest of my life.

    "adrian, who am i to judge you? from what i learned from the bible, the most important thing is to treat others the way i wish to be treated. i love you and i just want you to love me back and i believe that it is this that is the most important lesson that we can take from the bible."

    those words in their simplicity just lit something up in me and gave me hope. i am an agnostic man and so much of the universe i question with steadfast curiosity. but through her words i saw something more, something beyond myself and the world and the universe and it was love. and it is there and it exists. i know that there is something bigger because of her words, whether it is God of Buddha or any other deity, i don't know. but what i do know is that this being is so much more than what others say about it and i believe he or she or whatever will weigh us more on how we treat people rather than our love for another. i hope you read this, i really do. and i hope it instills in you the faith i have received from one of my dearest friends.
     
  20. ChloeKiss

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    I am so mesmerized! What a beautiful friendship! That is definitely a friend to treasure. Thank you so much for this reply! I read all of it :slight_smile: I am so happy you got a positive response when you came out! I agree.. there definitely is something more.. I can feel it in me.. as soon as I feel sad or alone it's almost as if this sort of thing inside me just tells me things will get better and to get over it. I know most people will probably say that's just my subconscious speaking but i'm almost certain it's not. When we die I think we just depart from our emotions and go somewhere where we only feel love/stress-free. Kind of like a hippy land I guess.

    Thank you so much again! This post is beautiful! (*hug*)

    And thank you to everyone else! All great responses too! (*hug*)