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12:13 am EDT 62°F (17°C) in Marietta, GA
Calendar of Updates | Yes, there is something far more important to talk about here. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now if you know anything at all about so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’,” they are putting out numerous statements to the effect of “this is what happens when you put homosexuals in power.” They are repeating their thoroughly debunked and disproven lie that all gay people are pedophiles, and that this whole incident with Mark Foley just “proves” it. This, obviously, is part of their campaign to get everybody to fear gay men (in particular) enough to ignore God’s Commandment “thou shalt not kill.” However, this extremely un-Godly, anti-Christian lie from the so-called “fundamentalists” is intended to conceal an even more shocking truth: that it is, in fact, their extreme “fundamentalist” form of “Christianity” that causes men to become pedophiles! So-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’” have proven by their actions that one of their primary aims is to get gay people to hate their God-given homosexuality so much that they seek to “change” it in “fundamentalist” “ex-gay” programs. Regardless of the means to that end, that is the end — to convince us by any means necessary that the way God made us is the worst kind of evil, and that we must hate this most fundamental truth about ourselves. In short, we are asked to deny our very existence as gay people created as gay by God in His image. I touched on the topic of intimacy a bit in my essay “How to ‘Live Happily Ever After’ … The Gay Way”, and I must explain it further here. As I said in that essay, “intimacy” doesn’t just mean sex; sex is only one kind of intimacy, namely the physical kind. The best definition of “intimacy” is a closeness in which you share everything and completely open yourself up, even to the point of being vulnerable, to the person with whom you are intimate. Intimacy need not be restricted to only your lover or partner; there are somewhat lower intensities of intimacy that exist in strong platonic bonds, such as those with friends or family members. This kind of emotional and psychological intimacy is a basic human need that manifests itself in our desire for romantic relationships, close friendships, and strong family bonds. Before one can truly be intimate with one’s family or peers, one must be able to be intimate with oneself. A person must be able to completely open his/her innermost, unconscious being to examination by his/her conscious. Ultimately, one needs to be totally and completely truthful with oneself, even about the unfavorable aspects of one’s personality, in order to experience this intimacy with the self that is a prerequisite to intimacy with others — which is itself a prerequisite to the development of a healthy emotional adulthood. Most everybody first becomes aware of their sexuality, whether gay or straight, at about 13 or 14 years of age. Since heterosexuality is the accepted “norm” and is, in fact, universally assumed, straight youth often have no problems at all learning how to be intimate with others during their teenage years — their emotional development into adulthood carries on at a normal pace. On the other hand, many gay youth, quite rightly fearing severe consequences from parents and peers if their sexuality is revealed, must learn to do the exact opposite — how to hide and deflect, how to be anti-intimate. Gay youths in “fundamentalist ‘Christian’” environments are at particular risk of falling victim to this view, because of the basic assumption of “fundamentalists” that one’s God-given homosexuality is evil and must be suppressed at all cost. The ultimate result is a halt to these victims’ proper emotional and psychological development into healthy, normal adults. Regardless of their physical age, the vast majority of these victims never get much beyond an “emotional age” of the early to middle teenage years. During their teenage years, they are convinced by “fundamentalists” that they cannot even be truthful with themselves about their innate God-given homosexuality — doing so, they are told, is tantamount to condemning oneself to eternity in hell. Since they can’t be truthful with themselves, they can’t be intimate with themselves — and by extension, with anybody else — and they end up with severely stunted, if not entirely arrested, emotional and psychological development at some point in the teenage years. These men go on into physical adulthood, never learning to relate with the world or the people in it beyond the level of a 13-year-old. Frequently, they seek out careers that have them working extensively with youth (the people with whom they can best relate); this is, in many ways, an unconscious “pining away” for one’s own lost youth. Even more frequently, they are among the first and the loudest to condemn openly gay people for even the slightest transgressions; for example, they might react to openly gay 1980s pop-music idol George Michael’s recent arrest by saying, “he’s just another one of those perverted, filthy homosexuals!” This defense mechanism often leads them to associate themselves with groups and/or causes that either are, or are perceived to be, anti-gay in nature. As I said in “How to ‘Live Happily Ever After’ … The Gay Way”, our basic need for intimacy doesn’t just go away when we suppress it as many of these people do — it’s going to come to the surface one way or another. The easiest way to get intimacy, as I said in that essay, is the physical way — having sex — but merely having sex does not fulfill the basic need for emotional and psychological intimacy. As a closeted gay man continues to starve himself of emotional and psychological intimacy by repressing his innate homosexuality, he feels he needs to have more sex, often promiscuously, to satiate his need — but it doesn’t work; the whole cycle becomes self-perpetuating. Men who get caught up in this self-perpetuating cycle must get their sex in the most discreet way possible. Sometimes, as in the case of outed former Rep. Ed Schrock (R-Virginia), they leave messages for other adults on 1-900 phone sex lines, mentioning something to the effect of, “this has to be extremely secret, extremely discreet.” Often times, though, these men take advantage of people over whom they have a position of power, and all too frequently these victims are children who are known to the man. While I do not discount the fact that girls can be, and often are, the victims of pedophiles, more frequently the victims are pre-teen and early-teen boys. I discussed this at length in another one of my essays, “How to Out-Argue a Fundamentalist”, but I will summarize here. Often, girls are raised with sex-negative messages and told that if somebody tries to molest them, they need to scream, run away, and tell somebody; meanwhile, boys are told that having sex is what makes them “manly men,” and the messages from society are much more positive toward sex. This results in a much greater curiosity about sex in boys from about the age of 9 on; however, until a boy reaches 15 or 16 or so, he simply doesn’t have the maturity (or perhaps the physical strength either) to set and enforce boundaries for himself. The boy’s curiosity makes him vulnerable to the older man, who then takes advantage of him. The older man often uses his position of power and/or authority over the boy to threaten him into silence about the abuse, satisfying the older man’s need to keep his activity discreet. (What I just said was pretty much proven to be the case in the Catholic Church’s recent pedophile priest scandal. In November 2003, USA Today ran a lead article analyzing all of the then-known cases of pedophile priests; some 75% of the victims were boys between 9 and 14, and most of the rest were older boys. The change that occurred in many parishes’ rules in the 1990s to allow girls to be altar servers had no noticeable impact on the gender of the molestation victims.) You may be starting to put two and two together, but if not, I’ll be more than happy to perform the calculus for you. These people are so obsessed with sex that it practically becomes a pathology — they need to get it wherever and whenever they can, but they need to deflect even the merest suspicion that they might be gay. The closet, and the “fundamentalist ‘Christianity’” which enforces it upon these people, are the true root cause of their pathological sexual behavior — which all too often includes having sex with the minors with whom they surround themselves. Truly, it is “fundamentalist ‘Christianity’” that is at the root of pedophilia! This is very much the case with the disgraced Mark Foley. Clearly, to be elected in a highly conservative district like Florida’s 16th Congressional District, a gay man really must closet himself. (Otherwise, the Reich-wing “fundamentalist ‘Christian’” voters in the district will want nothing to do with him.) Being forced into the closet, and in all likelihood having closeted himself since his teenage years, led Mark Foley into sexually pathological behavior. He proceeded to seek out the 16-to-19-year-old boys who served as House pages for, at the very least, some very racy conversations about the lengths of the boys’ penises and their favorite ways to masturbate. In the last couple of days, reports have surfaced that Foley has checked himself into an alcohol rehab clinic, saying that substance abuse problems caused him to do what he did with boys, and also that Foley was allegedly molested by a Catholic priest as a teenager. (Convenient excuse, huh?) These are both made-up smoke screens, nothing more than PR campaigns to deflect attention from the undeniable fact that Foley’s status in the closet is what led him to pathological sexual behavior with underage boys. Further, the explanations Foley gave for his behavior, trying to pass what he did off as totally innocent, don’t pass the smell test either. For example, Foley claims he asked one Monroe, LA boy for a picture in the days after Hurricane Katrina because he wanted to know if the boy was OK. Anybody with half a brain knows that the real devastation of Katrina didn’t even come close to Monroe, which is located on Interstate 20 in north-central Louisiana — clearly, Foley wanted the boy’s picture for more devious purposes, probably as masturbation material! Don’t believe me? Fine, I’m going to prove it to you with another example. This past April 6, I related the story of Ken Gourlay in this space. He now stands accused of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, having been arrested in late May but not yet having gone to trial. I have to admit to having made one major factual error in that April 6 entry, one that only came to light when the story hit Detroit’s newspapers after his arrest: Ken Gourlay apparently was gay, although as I said on April 6, I never would have guessed that in a million years from the contact I had with him. One thing I did not mention on April 6, because I believed it to be irrelevant, was Ken’s rather significant involvement with Ann Arbor’s branch of New Life Church; as this recent DailyKos diary shows, New Life Church is a particularly extreme “fundamentalist ‘Christian’” outfit based in Colorado Springs, CO. I now realize that Ken’s affiliation with New Life Church is extremely relevant. Obviously, Ken had to realize in his heart of hearts that he was gay, and was made that way by God, but because of the peer group he kept (an extremist bunch of so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’”), Ken couldn’t even admit that to himself, much less anybody else. To do so would have been tantamount to denying himself “salvation” and condemning himself to hell, in the world view that his peer group had shoved down his throat. He was repeatedly told that one of the most fundamental core components of his being was evil and satanic. Even if he had never admitted being gay to them or anybody else, that message was still out there, for sure. This extreme pressure from outside caused Ken to have to lie to himself — to have to be anti-intimate with himself — and brought his emotional and psychological growth into a normal adulthood to a stop. Despite being in his early 20s at the time that Kurt Eichenwald’s New York Times article indicated he first molested Justin Berry, Ken probably was no more emotionally mature than the then-13-year-old Justin. Ken’s basic human need for intimacy didn’t go away just because he was suppressing it as a result of all the outside pressure. Obviously, Ken was building to a boiling point inside, and his need for intimacy eventually surfaced — even in spite of his attempts to suppress it — in his getting to know Justin, luring Justin to the “computer camp” in Ann Arbor, and eventually molesting Justin. This didn’t satisfy Ken’s need for intimacy, though, as sex alone never does, and he eventually lured Justin back to Ann Arbor to molest him again. All this time, because of the extreme influence of “fundamentalist ‘Christianity’” in his life, Ken continued to starve himself of the emotional and psychological intimacy he so desperately needed. You can’t really blame him for doing that, because if he had, the threats of being called “backslider” and “apostate,” and being entirely cut off from his peer group, scared the living shit out of him. Not knowing what else to do, he turned to sexual intimacy with Justin in a (doomed from the start) attempt to get his fill of intimacy. Of course, that didn’t work, and Ken was really left pretty fucked up in the head. Don’t get me wrong here: Ken Gourlay’s actions were unconscionable and inexcusable. There is still a boundary between right and wrong, even if Ken was blinded to it by the almost-literal war being carried on in his soul. That being said, there are certainly a lot of ways in which you have to almost feel sorry for Ken. If it weren’t for an extreme, virulent form of so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christianity’” and all the Satan-inspired lies it force-fed ad nauseam to Ken, he could have had a perfectly normal, happy, and free adulthood with a loving partner of his choosing. Instead, Ken finds himself in a jail cell, awaiting trial for having violated the law in a desperate attempt to get the intimacy that “fundamentalist ‘Christianity’” so cruelly denied him. Parents, there is a lesson here. If God’s intent is for your child to be gay, any attempts on your part to fight that are truly going to unleash Satan’s power ten times over. Forcing your child into so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christian’” beliefs, world views, or programs, or so-called “ex-gay” shams, is going to start them down a dangerous, evil path toward becoming pedophiles as adults. Do you want to be responsible for unleashing a pedophile upon your community and the world? If not, you must accept God’s divine plan — He made your child gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender for a reason, and you obey Satan if you make any attempts to fight that. You are truly going against God if you condemn, harass, badger, or even disown your child simply because he/she is GLBT. As for so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’,” their contributions to pedophilia as I have described them above represent just another one of the millions of mortal sins that condemn them to hell. Going against God — actively telling God “fuck you” — by leading people away from the truth, and into pathological sexual behaviors like pedophilia, is the most heinous of crimes against God and nature. When one person becomes convinced that repeated “fundamentalist” lies are true, it can often destroy tens or even hundreds of other lives. For these reasons, anti-gay “fundamentalist ‘Christians’” will be condemned not only to eternity in Hell, but eternity in the lowest and hottest levels of Hell — they are truly beneath contempt. I will end this update by thanking God for revealing His Truth to me, and for inspiring me to share it with you. Unlike so-called “fundamentalist ‘Christians’,” I will always tell you, beloved straight and gay children of God alike, this Truth, unvarnished, unadulterated, and complete. For now, good night and God bless. |
