Just turned 23 and still painfully closeted to everyone except one close friend

Hi there, and welcome to EC.

Congratulations on coming out to your first person. That's awesome, and something to be proud of.

Next - stop beating yourself up for time lost or wasted. We all need to take a different and unique path through life. You're on yours, I'm on mine, your online friend is on his. Your own personal situation had you do what you thought at the time was best. And now that time has passed, you're ready to approach things differently. I didn't come to terms with the fact the I was gay until I was in my mid 30s. And I felt like I had left a trail of wreckage in my wake as a result - ex wife, 2 kids, etc. But I came to accept the past for what it was - the past. I couldn't change it even if I wanted to. And so I made the most of today. Now, at age 40, I've met the man of my dreams and we recently got married. I don't regret a single thing from my past, because the path I took lead me to him.

People don't get angry about us not telling them soon enough. They understand that it's a difficult thing for us to come to terms with. I expect your parents and your brother will be fine with you being gay.

With respect to the religious aspect, I'm not the best to comment. I don't know much about the Jewish faith, or how it looks upon homosexuality. What I do know is that my God is OK with me being gay, because this is the way he intended for me to be. Those who suggest that homosexuality isn't acceptable because God says so don't have a very good understanding of what God really says. And I don't let them bother me (too much).

Glad you've found EC though. It's a great place. It helped me come to terms with being gay - and I'm sure it will help you too.

 

Wow. It's as if you just explained MY life.
I'm in the exact same boat! Basically every sentence could have just as easily came out of my mouth.
When/if I figure things out, I'll be sure to let you know, cause we're on the same path!
Good luck

 

Hi Jsmurf. Nice name by the way

What your going through is completely normal.. I watched a great movie on spirituality and sexuality called Saved recently (might be worth a watch). Rest assured that it is a common issue amongst the community. Particularly amongst those, like you and I who were raised in a conservative environment.

Time really is on your side, and I think its a natural order for things to start overwhelming us as we enter adulthood. I'm sure there are a lot of straight guys out there wanting to do the 'correct thing' by their standards also like marrying having kids or what have you.

But for people with same sex attractions, there is often no correct thing or path, especially if we face it on our own. We can't be superman, we are valuable human beings who deserve happiness.

Just knowing that there is no correct way should help ease your anxieties. Your journey is different from every one else. Its not always a matter of being loud and proud, and I am more an advocate of a slower approach to coming out. To me, it sounds like your brother may be a good point of call when it comes to telling your family? He seems to have his suspicions already

You are not and have not been a hippocrate (or how ever its spelled). You've just been doing your thing as best you can.. which to me sounds like finishing your uni. I was in exactly the same boat.. kinda like focusing on that end date as a milestone to getting my life in order. Its said a lot on this forum, sometimes there is never a good time to do these things, but once you start accepting yourself and get a little support from others the road will get easier

 

I don't have a huge amount of time now, as my life is super crazy, but I read your post, and I really identify with what you are going through, as a gay guy who is 22 and also strongly identifies with my Jewish Heritage.

I want to address particularly how I reconcile my Jewish faith with being gay. I have studied the Talmud a bit and done some reading and I think the foundation is the idea that “revelation is ongoing.” This is a principal that was layed out in the Talmud as is the foundation for all modern Jewish movements. While the Torah is the word of God or was at least divinely inspired, it is now to us, mere humans, to interpret it. All well reasoned interpretations are valid. This is how the rabbis of the Talmud can disagree fastidiously and still consider each other holy. So for instance Reform and Conservative Judaism are not watered down versions of orthodoxy but rather new interpretations.

Through this we can find new understandings about how homosexuality should be viewed. Take for instance the line, “Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman.” Here lie means sexual intercourse, so the second half is redundant because the first is an interdiction against having sex with a man. However if we apply the principal that all words are important, then this clearly there is something else. One interpretation relates that what is specifically banned is ritual anal sex.

A second aspect to think about is that as you say, the idea of pretending to be heterosexual disturbs you in terms of getting married. Thus, you need to ask yourself if you are going to lead a better more Godly life in or out of the closet. My answer was that I would lead a better life if I were open about my sexuality. I could devote more of my energies to making the world a better place than if I devoted them to covering up my sexual orientation. As you posted, it is incredibly preoccupying, and is taking you away from your focus on your work and studies. I also felt that there would be more love in the world, and that I could be closer to my family.

I think it is also important to recognize that the Talmud is rather sex positive. Jews have long recognized that humans have sexual needs, as evidenced by the fact that masturbation is permitted if you are not married. Or that a man must have sex with his wife a certain number of times a year, etc. They did not however recognize that sexual orientation was fixed and rather thought homosexuality was a choice, and was thus an immoral one. I think that looking at the initial stance and understanding that being gay is not a choice. Then similarly sexual release is necessary and perhaps the rabbis might have interpreted the passage differently.

I hope this helps or at least gives you some food for thought. I would be glad to continue this conversation. Let me know if you have any questions.

 

Hi JSMURF, your story is such a coincidence to me because some of these things have happened to me, especially the portion where my brother who is 34 years old asked me if I was gay and like you, I told him that I wasn't because I was terrified. What you're going through is completely normal and I'm having a hard time coming out as we speak.

As far as your religious beliefs are concerned about the sinful nature of homosexuality, I think it would serve you better if you try to dig deeper into the contextual meanings of the scripture and try to come up with your own interpretation. You very well may know and feel that being gay is not something that you chose or something that arose in you out of a willful or even unintentional disdain or contempt against GOD.

All of the negative rhetoric towards homosexuality is based on the assumption that people who acted this way did so out of insatiable lust, of their own choice and against their natural inclinations for the opposite sex. As a gay man, you know that this is not true.

Old Testment references help us understand the destruction of Sodom. Ezekial 16:49 says very succinctly Sodom's guilt was that it had "pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy." Isaiah 1:10-17 and 3:9 invoke Sodom in connection with rebelliousness and injustice, and Jeremiah 23:14 uses the words adultery, lies, evildoers and wickedness as being like Sodom. In the Bible, Sodom is used as a synonym for all kinds of wickedness and evil. Even the most traditional interpreters agree that the story of Sodom is irrelevant to the topic of homosexuality.

So how did "sodomy" become a synonym for homosexual intercourse? It didn't start out that way. In early writings it was used to mean all sexual immoralities, such as incest, adultery, and promiscuity. In the middle ages it began to take on the meaning of same gender sex, both in theological and legal writings, because of the attempted same gender gang rape in the Sodom story. Once in use, it stayed in use, inaccurate as it was and is.

Even though some translations of the Bible use the word "sodomite," they do so incorrectly. There is no such word in Greek or Hebrew, even to describe the residents of the city of Sodom. In Hebrew, the word translated as "sodomite" in the King James Version actually means "male temple prostitute."

Leviticus 18:22 says, "You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination." Leviticus 20:13 says, "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them." Both of these verses are clear in what they say: Same sex intercourse between males is prohibited.

This section of Leviticus, chapters 17 - 26, is often called the "Holiness Code." It also prohibits intercourse with a woman during her period, cross breeding of animals, sowing fields with two kinds of seed, wearing garments made of two different materials, marrying a divorced woman, tattoos, cursing your father or mother, eating meat with blood still in it, stealing, lying, adultery, witchcraft, and prostitution (to name a few).

What do these things have in common and why were they prohibited? The Holiness Code is about purity. "Purity," first, because God required his people to be separate from the pagan culture they left behind (Egypt) and the pagan culture in which they lived (Canaan). Their food laws, festivals, sacrifices, agricultural practices, rituals and social rules were to be distinctly different from those of the pagans. And "purity," second, because it was required to be pure and undefiled when approaching the Holy God in ceremonies of worship.

In the same chapter of Leviticus as "you shall not lie with a male as with a woman," verses 3, 24, and 30 of chapter 18 say that the reason for ritual purity is to avoid the defilement and abominations of pagan nations. A major component of these pagan religions was temple prostitution, both male and female, heterosexual and homosexual. Many have suggested that the explicit same-sex prohibitions of chapters 18 and 20 are specifically intended to prohibit male prostitution as practiced in the Canaanite cults and do not relate at all to same sex male relationships outside of these purity rituals for worship.

A similar outcome of understanding these verses in the context of separateness is that since chapters 18 and 20 are all about ceremonial law and rituals of worship to protect the people of Israel from the defilement of pagan religions, they are difficult (if not impossible) to transpose to other social and historical settings and cannot be read as ethical or moral law having anything to do with us today.

A second aspect of purity in the Holiness Code is the requirement to be pure and undefiled when approaching the Holy God in ceremonies of worship. In this sense, purity means clean and whole, an unblemished specimen of one's kind, unmixed with any other kind (no cross-breeding of cattle, no multi-cloth clothing, etc.). Here defilement is literal and physical rather than moral. Sex between two males is therefore condemned because one partner is required to "lie the lyings of a woman," (the literal translation of the Hebrew), thereby defiling the purity of his maleness. Because he is then defiled, the act is unclean and his partner, too. If we understand this condemnation as a ritualistic rather than moral prohibition, it has no application to Jews, Christians (or anyone else) today.

So farm this is all about men. What about sexual intimacy between women? If this is about same gender sex, shouldn't they be included? Some would say that leaving out the women is further proof that this is not a moral issue, because women are indeed included when it comes to things like prostitution and adultery. While there is truth in this, remember also that in this culture women are truly "left out." They weren't welcome at the worship rituals. In this mother of all patriarchal societies (sorry!) a woman's purpose, as property, was to be a receptacle for "the seed," the lineage for purity and separateness. So another possible interpretation, is that what was really at stake here was assuring male domination over (and control of) man's seed. Thus, if two men lie together, their impurity is that they are renouncing this dominion over women and the privileged control over male seed.

So far, all of these interpretations conclude that the two verses in question have no moral application for today. Other interpretations simply say that if some no longer apply (such as eating rare meat), then none need apply. But some interpreters, who admittedly would like to dismiss these verses as having no moral foundation, find themselves looking for more certainty. And the best place to look for the answers, they say, is in the rest of the Bible. (which I don't know if the New Testament applies to your religion?)

Genesis 1 is about humankind in general. (Here the Hebrew word Adam means humankind.) It's about being set apart from the rest of creation by being created in God's likeness.

Our distinctiveness is not in being male and female and able to procreate, for in this we are like all other species, and unlike God. Heterosexuality is not part of what it means to bear the image of God. Our distinctiveness from the rest of creation is our special relationship to God. Some people are born unable to procreate. Heterosexuality and our ability to procreate should not be held as essential to our being fully human. Other possibilities are also good!

In Genesis 2 we read that it is not good for humankind to be alone, and woman is made from man so that he will have a fit companion. "Therefore a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife and they become one flesh." The shift in Genesis 2 is now to companionship, attraction and loving intimacy (which sounds very much to me like a reason for sex beyond procreation) . The assumption in Genesis is that heterosexual desire is universal, because this story is not about naming the exceptions or telling individuals how to live. Just like Genesis 1, it is about explaining why things are as they are. Genesis explains that humans were made to live in relationship and that God has designed human sexuality for human communion.

If you can look at the context on the scriptures and accept these interpretations on their merit, nothing in these texts that says that homosexuality is wrong.

In fact, we have seen that there is no mention of the condition of homosexuality at all.

What the scripture does say, in the Sodom story, is that same sex gang rape is immoral.

It says in Leviticus that homosexual acts were condemned when they violated ancient Hebrew purity and holiness codes.

We know from Paul in Romans 1 that a homosexual act that springs from the ungodliness of refusing to acknowledge God as God is thereby wrong. Homosexual prostitution and pederasty are also condemned in the Bible.

All of these condemned acts are about the misuse of sexuality. Just as misuse of heterosexuality does not make it wrong to be a heterosexual, misuse of homosexuality does not make it wrong to be a homosexual.

Be strong for yourself in your faith. God could not have created you to be nothing but a mistake or an innately sinful being with regards to your sexuality. You are loved regardless and I believe that who you are is not a sin. Sorry for writing so much! lol