Why the Bible matters to me

A few years ago, as I was slowly recovering from my life as an evangelical, it came to me that the bible cannot possibly be the infallible word of god. This quickened my recovery and opened up a whole new world of freedom from dogma, shame, and fear. Possibly the most significant effect of this transition was that I finally felt free to ask myself the really hard questions about my sexual orientation and give myself the freedom to chase what I really wanted.

I am now deeply happy, living a whole new life with Astasia, pursuing a future I had never thought possible. Yet I keep returning to the bible and what it says, investigating its meanings, and reading what others have to say on the matter. Astasia would probably describe my preoccupation with the intersection of christianity and homosexuality to be borderline obsessive. I am thoroughly convinced that there is nothing in the bible condemning homosexual orientation, and I am deeply interested in how others might discover this perspective.

Why, you may ask (others have asked), if you don't believe in god or the authority of scripture, do you care whether it addresses the issue of homosexual orientation? It's a valid question. What the bible has to say about me will not affect my behavior or inform the way I think about myself, at least not anymore. Do the words in the bible really affect my life at all?

Yes, they do.

Which is to say, the words in the bible affect people who affect my life. My family, for example. But parental disapproval aside, you can't tell me that the resistance we've had to gay marriage in this country is not related to religion. Even those who don't consider themselves religious will cite the bible as evidence that homosexuality is wrong. Hate crimes committed against gay victims are done in the name christianity's moral authority.

Conversations I've had with christians on the subject usually end with the christian saying that we should assume the most obvious interpretation. The problem I have with this is not surprising - it's completely selective. I remember discussions in my family's church regarding the role of women in the church. The plain language of Paul in the New Testament is that women should not be permitted to speak in church, however, there was much made of original language and cultural context, so that those teaching the matter to me concluded that while Paul's plain language implied that he didn't think women ought to be permitted to speak in church, the true meaning of the text was not an attempt to subjugate women.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I suggest that original language and cultural context ought to play a part in biblical interpretation of supposedly anti-gay texts, and am told to just accept the plain language of scripture and stop trying to rationalize and justify my immoral lifestyle.

I was thrilled when I finally came across an exhaustive scholarly treatment of the history of homosexuality as it relates to christianity that is highly regarded in academic circles. The book is "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century" by John Boswell. While it is primarily a historical study, Boswell does delve into the realm of Greek language and biblical text as it relates to the culture of the time. It was, overall, a dense and difficult but immensely rewarding read.

Thus, I've decided to read it again, and respond to it here on this blog. As I have loads of homework for the next two weeks, I can't promise much immediately, but that doesn't really matter, as I can't possibly post less frequently than I have been, and I'm mostly just talking to myself here anyway.

I'd like to be better at posting regularly, so I'll probably post about other things too. But that's my intention for now.

Purple

Time flies when you're working your ass off on an unreasonable deadline, thus my absence. Last week I posted on Coming Out day, and now I am posting on "Wear Purple" day.... is this an actual day? I hadn't heard of it before, but then I didn't pay much attention to issues of gay rights when I was still focused on being straight. Is this a newly instituted day to call attention to the teen suicides? Or is it a coincidence that the two things are close, chronologically?

Either way, it's a day when I'm supposed to wear purple, but I'm trapped in Boston without a change of clothes and even if I wasn't, I don't own anything purple. Maybe that makes me a bad gay. I don't know. I'm wearing my pride bracelet.

It is Wednesday which means my project ought to be done and is officially off limits to me, though I don't present till Friday, which means I have nothing to do. Hence the post. Hence hence, I am sitting in Starbucks clicking around on Uno's wireless wifi (because starbucks hates the internets) investigating symbols of gay pride/power/identification. I am doing this because a) I can, and b)I thought I should change my facebook avatar at least, since I can't change my clothes.

I have settled on the purple hand.

I like the story behind it, and it appeals to my fascination with turning tables. If you don't know about the purple hand, here is the story. In 1969 a bunch of gay rights activists held a protest in front of the San Francisco Examiner in response to a series of anti-gay articles being published. Employees of the Examiner dumped purple ink on the protesters from the third story, and the protesters proceeded to use the ink to stamp purple handprints on the building and other places in the city. The protesters were subsequently set upon by police.

Gay rights have really come a long way since 1969. At times like this, when gay teens (or perceived to be gay teens) are killing themselves, it's hard to really know where we stand. For some people, death seems like a better alternative to life as a gay person. I can't even imagine what life must be like for those people, and I know that there are all kinds of factors that play into that. For others, life as a gay person is happy, something we almost take for granted. Living in the northeast, there are almost no circumstances where I experience difficulty due to being gay. I know that it's far different in the midwest, or the south.

It's easy to forget, living here, how hard it is for others, living elsewhere. It's easy to forget how hard it used to be to hear my family uttering ignorant statements about gays, hearing my condemnation from the pulpit, keeping my secret and feeling separated from everyone I loved because of it. There are people right now contemplating suicide and I don't know who they are. If I did, I'd do my damnedest to tell them that they can live a happy healthy life surrounded by people they love. I'd do everything I could to convince them that god doesn't hate them. Since I don't know who they are, I hope they can get a glimpse of the "It gets better" campaign, and that it'll seep into their consciousness and keep them alive long enough for them to find whatever they need to be happy.

It's also easy to forget the people who fought so hard so that I can walk down the street hand in hand with my girlfriend. The people who got ink dumped on them, their teeth knocked out by police officers, people who've been arrested and beaten because they weren't content to keep their secret and toe the line. I owe my freedom to those who have suffered and sometimes died in an attempt to change the world into one where it is safe for everyone to love who they love.

So I guess today is bittersweet for me. My project is done, but not done. And gay rights are good, but not good. And I am happy for my freedom and sad for the pain of those who haven't found it yet.

Coming Out

I suppose the appropriate thing to do on Coming Out Day is write a blog post about how you came out.... yes? Either that, or actually come out to someone who doesn't already know, but I don't want to do that.

My story is not spectacular, but that one moment continues to affect me and my relationships with my family in ways that are sometimes painful. I haven't lived near my family for a very long time. At the time I came out, I was living in a different province and only saw my family maybe twice a year, generally Christmas and some time in summer, possibly an additional visit if circumstances allowed. So I had a hard time figuring out what would be the right thing to do. I couldn't "ruin christmas," but really I visited so seldom that I didn't want to "ruin" any visit. I say ruin because my family are evangelical christians. That's not entirely true. My parents are divorced and both remarried. So my father and his wife are not evangelical christians, but my mom, her husband, my three sisters and all their husbands are.

What I didn't want was to find myself in a room with eight adults jumping down my throat and making demands that I somehow explain, repent, and change my ways. I didn't want to be put on the defensive, I didn't want to fight, and I didn't want to be exorcised. Some people say it's the sort of thing you need to say in person, out of consideration for the people you're telling. I decided to try to be considerate of them, but to protect myself first, and so I wrote them a letter. I wrote the gentlest letter I could write, and I tried to explain that I had always known or suspected that I might be gay. I tried not to apologize for being gay. I wrote a little about what it had been like to be so afraid of what they would think, and how lonely it had been growing up.

They respected my wishes and waited a week or so after receiving the letter to call me. Initially, things seemed to have turned out okay. My mom cried, of course, they wanted to know about the boys I'd dated. They wanted me to know that they still loved me. It seemed like a best case scenario.

Until they started suggesting reparative therapy. They wanted me to talk to someone who was ex-gay. They wanted to know.... do I WANT to be gay? They sent me CD's about how I'm gay because of my home life, and if my psyche was only healed, I could move towards a healthy hetero life again.

This began to drive a wedge between us. Their doctrine tells them that our relationship has to have a disclaimer. "We love you..... even though you're gay." Love the sinner, hate the sin. It's an incredibly condescending and divisive tagline, and they don't seem to realize it.

When I finally told my stepmother the Christmas after I'd moved in with Astasia, she stated that she knew, her and my dad had discussed their suspicions about me, and it wasn't a big deal. She said she wanted me to be happy and she was glad I found someone, and that she'd tell my dad. He and I haven't discussed it since then, but then we haven't been speaking at all. That's a different story.

These days I enjoy being a part of Astasia's family. They include and accept me without disclaimers. Being with my own family feels strained and exhausting, but luckily I'm far away enough now that I only see them once a year.

So that's my story. I hope that one day my family can let go of their prejudice, accept that Astasia's an integral part of my life. I hope that when we get married they can be happy for me. I hope it gets better, with them.

Since then I've been trying to tell people as though it was no big deal. I've mentioned it to a few cousins, in the hopes that the gossip would spread. I've decided not to tell my grandparents at all. Partially because they're not my actually grandparents, but my stepsister's grandparents, but also because they're on the brink of death and I was thinking of waiting them out.

It shouldn't be a big deal. I shouldn't have to worry about how anyone's going to react. I should have to plan how I'm going to tell them. I shouldn't worry that they'll cry when I tell them I'm engaged. It's completely unfair, but I try not to dwell on it. Their religious prejudice may make them miserable, but it doesn't have to make me miserable. After all, gay means happy.

Weekend De-brief

Sometimes, it helps to write things out. Sometimes if I write something on a blog, I can finally stop thinking about it and move on to other, more cheerful things.

So I'm gonna try to write about this. I'm not sure yet if it'll work, as I'm not really in a writing frame of mind, but I'm gonna try anyway, because architorture school doesn't give you time to stay in a funk.

On Saturday morning I took the dogs for a walk in the woods. My two dogs, Abu and Puja, and Astasia's family's dog, Forest. It was a beautiful morning and a pleasant walk. We walked along the river bank and everyone was behaving themselves, and I was feeling upbeat and happy. I gave Forest a stick, and he excitedly ran through the woods with it. As I was watching him run, he yelped suddenly and limped back to the trail.

I assumed he'd landed funny on his paw, or tripped, and that he'd just need a couple minutes to favor it and then he'd be fine. He is old, and sometimes he hurts himself a little but recovers. When I arrived to check his paw however, I saw that it was bleeding. Profusely.

As I have done in the past when Puja sprung a leak, I grabbed some large leaves and tried to apply pressure until the bleeding stopped. For a minor wound, this would have worked. Instead, blood continued to flow. Blood was all over my hands. It was dripping off of them. I tried to wipe them off on the grass, but there was little grass and it was no longer wet with dew. I took off my sweater and then my tank top, then replaced my sweater. I wrapped my tank top around his paw as tightly as I could, to no avail. It was soaked with blood and continued to drip within minutes.

Holding the fabric to his paw, I somehow managed to get my phone and one-handedly dialed Astasia's sister, asking her to come with first aid supplies. I pulled the string out of my hood and used it to tie the tank top around his paw, then demanded he lay down so we could wait.

When the first aid supplies arrived, I tried to dress him. I would no sooner get him wrapped up than the dressing was soaked through. I wrapped him again, and again it was soaked through. I decided that the only thing to do was get him out of the woods as quickly as possible, and hoped he could limp his way out, but this only exacerbated the bleeding.

With no options left, I lifted him on my shoulders to carry him out. It wasn't long before his 70-ish pounds had me ready to collapse. Astasia's sister helped me by propping up his front end. Together we marched as quickly as we could, with Forest dripping blood all the way to the road. It was probably between a quarter and half mile.

In the end, we got him to a vet, and he is now bandaged and miserable with a plastic cone around his head, but he will be fine.

I, on the other hand, am getting frequent flashes of bright red dripping blood. I can see it pooling in my tank top, black drops of it on the grass, smeared and dark all over my hands, and finally, pale and diluted as it runs into the drain at the vet's bathroom. I am not a queasy person, I don't get ill at the sight of blood, but the memory of having so much of it on me, being scared for Forest, not knowing how I was gonna get him safe. Being alone and helpless, being angry with Abu and Puja for being playful and impatient.....

People go through worse trauma. I feel guilty for being as affected as I am by this. As though dog blood is somehow less scary than people blood. I feel sometimes that bad luck follows me, that freak accidents always happen when I'm around. My rational mind knows that I don't cause these things to happen. Still. My feelings are all over the place. I'm cranky and my muscles hurt and every time I think I've put it behind me I see blood.

So that was my weekend. How was yours?

Doppelganger

I just realized that there is another Shinobi-Wan Kenobi who writes fanfiction based on Final Fantasy. That's super nerdy. I'm annoyed that they have the same name as me, but probably at some point I'll sneak over to fanfiction.net and see if it's anything worth reading. Some good Tifa Lockhart erotica would really make my day.

........ Nope, nothing worth reading. As you were.

Choosing

Ugh. I miss my girl. School has kept me so busy I had to crash at a friend's place on campus. To borrow my hostess's word, Architecture has swallowed me. After going to sleep at 2, I'll be heading back to studio by 8. These are the details of my life by which I prompt myself to begin writing, so that I may promptly launch into my actual post, which may or may not take all day to complete.

Intro to Sociology is taught by an adorable, witty, and slightly befuddled old lady with the appropriate and delightful appellation of Professor Tuck. Professor Tuck does everything she can to make the material interesting and keep us entertained, and one of those ways is to prompt discussion on a range of topics. The other day homosexuality popped up, and she asked if we thought people were born that way, or if they choose to be.

A couple of guys near the back piped up that they thought it was a choice, and it's worth mentioning that one of them was Connecticut Redneck. For the record, I hated that kid before this class.

Professor Tuck asks him why he thinks the way he does and he replies that he thinks homosexuality is something people choose because lots of gay people have been with people of the opposite gender, which leads to him thinking that since they're perfectly capable of acting straight, they must be actively choosing to be gay.

Now, while I hate this kid, I can see where he's coming from. He doesn't understand how a person can apparently swing both ways, and then claim they have no choice when they "pick" one gender over the other. He's probably one of the millions of people who've been tricked into thinking that homosexuality is only defined by how and with whom you have sex. And since I've been wanting to talk about this issue of choice, I am using him as a springboard to do so.

Homosexuality, as a word, like heterosexuality, is defined by which gender you prefer to have sex with, but it is an incomplete and, in my opinion, slightly irresponsible definition. Being gay may, at some point, involve having sex with someone of the same gender. But a heterosexual person does not become heterosexual upon becoming sexually active. Prior to the popping of that cherry, they will have crushes on, obsess about, pursue relationships with certain members of the opposite gender, not necessarily (though, sometimes) with the intention of having sex with that individual. They are attracted to, desire the company of, develop emotional bonds with opposite gendered people. Everyone understands this about heterosexual people. I am stating the obvious and you are wondering why.

The reason why is that it is the same way with gay kids. We do not wake up one morning and say to ourselves "By what method can I ostracize myself from society, disappoint my parents, and deprive myself of constitutional rights taken for granted by most people today? Shall I fail at my school work? Get arrested for vandalism, perhaps? I know, I'll have dirty gay sex! That'll work!" and then proceed to engage in purely sexual encounters just for the dirty fun of it.

The argument that gay people choose to be gay has a bunch of problems but there are two that are glaringly obvious. The first is that the people who say we choose do not believe that they could choose themselves. They cannot choose to be gay, which is to say that they could not make themselves suddenly want to be in a relationship with someone of the same gender. But they think you can. There is something about them that makes them not choose to be gay, but there is something about you that makes you choose to be gay. Something intrinsic, perhaps? Like actually being gay prior to and irrespective of the choice you make? Hmmm?

There's also the issue of why on god's green earth someone would choose to identify as a stigmatized and sometimes violently hated demographic if they had the choice. Yes, some people are masochists. And yes, the situation in North America is a lot better than it used to be. However, not long ago you put your life on the line in order to engage in hot gay sex, and in some countries you still do. So why does someone need that so badly that they will risk all manner of horrible death or mutilation in order to acquire it? They put that need in their own heart? Because it seemed like a good idea?

All that aside, there remains the fact that I did not choose. You can tell me I did, but I didn't. On the contrary, there was a time when I "chose" to be straight, and I did my very best to follow through, but the choice was not whether to be straight or gay, the choice was whether to behave straight or gay. It seems like a small distinction, but it is a huge one. An enormous motherfucker of a distinction.

Which leads me to the role of choice in sexual orientation.

Gay people are really not different from straight people. We want what we want, but we choose whether we will pursue it. Straight people want happy fulfilling relationships with people of the opposite gender, and they make decisions about how best to make that happen. Some of them get drunk in bars and have sex with people until they find one they like more than all the others. Some of them spot someone they like and pursue a relationship that may or may not include sex. They choose if they will be promiscuous or not, and they decide how to treat the people they're interested in. They make all kinds of decisions about their behavior in the pursuit of romantic or sexual interests.

But they don't choose who they're attracted to. It just happens. A girl doesn't look at a guy and decide "I'm going to find that guy attractive." He's hot or he isn't, and she reacts to her attraction to his hotness or lack thereof.

The girl who has seldom, if ever, looked at a guy and thought he was hot finds her eyes drifting to another girl. She wants to know her name, she wants to get to know her. She hasn't even noticed the hot guy. She did not decide to not notice him, she just didn't. She is not deciding to be curious about the girl, she just can't stop wondering.

You can tell a person they chose to be gay till you're blue in the face. They know better than you do whether they've make a decision or not, and odds are pretty good that the only decisions they've made are in regards to their behavior, not who to be attracted to.

We can always choose our behavior. It's really the only thing we have control of. We can choose to suppress our most basic needs and submit them to some other goal. We can even subject ourselves to sex with people we don't want to have sex with in order to hide a part of ourselves we are afraid to confront or expose. But we can't choose to have that need any more than we can choose to breathe.

So. There is, apparently, scientific data regarding the inherent nature of homosexual attraction, but I'm not a science nerd. If you are a science nerd, please direct me to some good, readable material on the subject, because I like to have plenty of weapons in my arsenal, in case I need to make the argument while choosing to conceal my identity as a dirty dirty lesbian ho.

I'm done now. Goodbye.

Needs

Everyone has needs, and they're all different.

I am an introvert. I need a certain number of hours in my day when I am alone, or very nearly so. Under normal circumstances, I spend my evenings with Astasia, which is like being alone because she feels like a part of me, and she doesn't suck out my life force like some kind of vampire. If anything, she contributes to my energy levels.

Left to my own devices I am a solitary, stoic, sarcastic individual who has a hard time expressing things like affection, and being nice to people on a regular basis is the sort of thing I can do provided I have enough time in my day to take care of myself. I am not a social butterfly, I am not gregarious.

Astasia, on the other hand, is soft, and warm, and expresses her feelings, and when I'm around her, I become more like that. I experience joy and excitement, or maybe peace, perhaps an overwhelming sense of any emotion at all. Her influence on me is to put me in touch with how I feel, and make me comfortable to allow those feelings to be apparent.

Lately, I leave the house before Astasia wakes up and arrive home after she's gone to bed. This is necessary due to a combination of my course load and hellish commute. The immediate consequence is that I am cranky, have a headache, have lost productivity, and I don't feel like being nice to people. I feel like being an asshole.

Did I used to be an asshole, before I met Astasia? Maybe I did. I never thought of myself that way, but I guess assholes generally don't.

The longer I'm away from my girl, the more I feel like smirking at all the kids I have to be in school with, blowing off my homework, and ignoring my professors. I feel like sitting in the back of class and carving my name in the desk. I feel like telling the connecticut redneck just what an irritating fuck he really is.

Tonight I go home a little bit early. My soul needs some patching up, and there's only one person who can do it.

My studio will have to wait.