[Blindtlk] Off Topic - Accessible places on the net for LGBTQ individuals?

[Ari Damoulakis]

Hi Dianne, Peter, Mark and Carley
You're probably absolutely right I think about maybe the fact that
attraction probably just happens, although for me the gay and lesbian
thing just seems so brave to be able to come out like that.
I am hetero, but I think telling you the story of my life here might
explain some things.
To my shame I must admit that in the past I think I was one of those
people who was incredibly intollerant and awful. It is not really a
nice story I'm going to tell, and I probably don't come out of it well
at all, but since I like chatting and knowing about other blind people
here it is. I'm also hoping that if they are any young blind people
out there who are in a similar position to me this story will be
interesting to them and can help them, that's why I'm telling it here.
I think the reason could have been the school I was at.
In South Africa they have now started a little mainstreaming, but
before when I was at school there were mainly two good blind schools
in the whole country.
  The one I went to was run by a very right-wing, conservative
Afrikaans church.
This meant that religion and Christianity played a huge part in the
school. Since it also was a bording school and many blind people
borded there, I think we were often moulded to think in certain ways.
We were never expressly told to hate gay people, but I mean we were
taught that the Bible was amazing and that all truth was to be found
in it. Therefore, when I used to read it and it said that gay people
should be put to death I thought that LGBT people were disgusting. At
school also, I don't think anyone could afford to be gay because of
the conservatism of the school and the way many of the kids thought I
think they would have been really hated at worst, and at best people
might have tried to reprogram them. Some Christians believe that being
gay is wrong, but that gay people must be loved, but their supposed
sin must be hated.
It wasn't just gay, it was even music. Some of us would sit for hours
wondering whether it was ok to listen to this music or whether it had
evil lyrics or whether the artist was from the devil etc.
It also didn't help that at home my mom loves the Charismatic
evangelical church which said all the same things, and on top of it
all used to invite so-called healers and prophets who used to go on
and on about supposed miracles they'd done. I was prayed for millions
of times, wondering why God didn't speak to me when he was supposedly
speaking to everyone else, wondering why I didn't fall over or say
random words like others did, always had hopes and then afterwards
questions why nothing was happening, was it my fault nothing was
happening? So I tried even harder to live what would be called a
Christian life.
At school we were never even taught important things such as evolution
or anything, I left school thinking it was totally evil and not even
knowing what it was.
Obviously you could ask why I never read about any of these. The
problems were two-fold, one was that, up until a few years ago the
library for the blind here as far as I know had Atheist books, or, as
far as I know books on Evolution, but even if they did have I wouldn't
dare look at them.
These churches and people are great at manipulating other people. I
was really taught never to question, and the thing is, the way it was
done was by using the idea of hell very strongly. It is incredibly
easy to scare a child with fear of hell. There used to be this
manipulating play called Heaven's Gates and Hell's Flames which
totally scared me to death.
            There were then a few factors after school that slowly
changed my mind and my life.
First, I started reading on the internet athat these supposed healers
and prophets and televangelists were not what they seemed. Even other
Christians thought they were dodgey.
Ironically another chapter was when I went to university to do
Theology. I wanted to be a better Christian, or understand the secrets
of religion that I didn't get.
I was lucky that it was a Theology class that wasn't at a
fundamentalist place or had a fundamentalist point of view. All sorts
of people started there, from fundamentalist believers like I was at
the time to liberal people.
I thought there was something wrong with a guy there who even couldn't
stand Catholics and wanted to go to Northern Ireland to preach and
help the Protestants in their struggle against the evil wrong
Catholics. On the other side, there was a Catholic person, and they
argued all the time and I thought this was awful.
Then I started learning about all the contradictions of the Bible, but
at that time I still believed it and sort of tried to ignore them,
although there were some things that were just impossible to ignore
and sounded even awful.
I left Theology because I saw the arguments and that nothing could be
proved. I think I got tired of the philosophy and the philosophical
differences, and the fact that I saw people taking different parts out
of the Bible to justify their opinions.
At that time, after seeing the contradictions and how awful some of
the old testament actually is I started accepting gay people, but I'm
not really sure whether I still feared hell and all that, so I might
have been living two lives. I knew the Bible had problems but I was
worried that it might still be true and totally scared of hell. So I
was living two lives. One part of me wanted to accept people in all
their differences, I think the God or Bible part of me though was
still using fear to control me, so I'd be thinking something like:
"Suppose you're wrong? You'd still better believe the Bible and you
can believe that God loves gays, but believe that he hates the sin of
gayness or Atheism."
My mindset started to change again when I went to a new university and
started meeting and actually becoming friends with gay and atheist
people.
I never wanted to admit it to myself, but even when I had Christian
friends I got the feeling that the friendships were very much on the
surface. What I mean is, they loved it that I'd come and worship with
them, they'd sort of talk to me, but I had a sort of feeling that they
were my friends and talking to me more out of a sense that they had
to, you know, they were commanded to love other people, not because
they really actually wanted to socialise with me, and outside worship
many of them didn't take the trouble to actually get to know me.
I then contrasted this to the behaviour of people who I'd met who were
gay or Atheist. I started asking myself why did many of them actually
like being with me, talking to me, and being interested in my life and
me as an actual person. Why was it that gay and atheist people seemed
to becoming my best friends compared to the Christian people I'd known
before?
I then stopped fearing hell by this reasoning. I became really amazing
friends with a girl who is an Atheist. I then started thinking that if
she's such a kind girl and is going to hehll when so many of these
Christians who are weird are going to heaven this is just awful and
that they were just going to hell for something that couldnt be
proved. I started thinking that if God really cared about my friends
who I'd started to really love, surely he would try more and make an
effort to prove to them that he exists, or that better believe in
Jesus to get to heaven.
I then started thinking. From Theology I really started hating the
behaviour of at least the stories I'd heard about the God of the Old
Testament. Before we were taught at school that Elisha, Moses, Joshua
and David were these great heroes, but I really started thinking that
these people are just barbarians and savages in the way the Bible said
they behaved, i.e causing bears to eat little children just for
teasing a prophet for being bald. I know I should have noticed it
beforehand, but beforehand even if I thought some of what they did was
cruel, I kept on trying to justify their actions. Its terrible to say,
but since I'd never really met any, before I'd never even considered
that gay people were actual people with feelings and nice people just
like I had. I really did think there was something wrong with them.
Anyway I started reading Atheist books such as Dawkins and Hitchens.
They have not convinced me there isn't a God, I just believe that we
just don't know.
I then started looking at liberal Christianity such as the
Episcopalians in your country (Anglicans), and I thought this is
actually great. They believe so much of the Bible is myth, and they
also accepts gays, love atheists, don't believe in hell as this place
of eternal pain, so this is great.
I started reading Biblical scholar books I managed to get hold of from
Audible and I thought that, even though the evidence is absolutely
that Jesus did exist, we can interpret him in our own way. The problem
I am still struggling with though is that Jesus did believe in the Old
Testament, but I rationalise it this way. I say to myself, he had to
tell the Jews that he believed in all those things because he couldn't
explain to ancient people the whole concept of myth and maybe it was
just not the right time for them to know otherwise.
But I'm starting to doubt much of this as well because I'm at the
moment reading a man called Robert Ingersol.
>From what I am reading, Robert Ingersol must be one of the greatest
thinkers and people that you guys in America have ever had, even one
of the best in the world. He, his arguments, and all that he seems to
stand for is really inspiring me at the moment, and I think you guys
should really read him, especially his book About the Holy Bible, and
the other one, the Thoughts on the Warm and comforting doctrine of
Hell.
You ask where I'm spiritually at the moment and I must say I'm not
really sure. I think I'm a liberal, Episcopalian Christian. I only
believe in the Gospels and the death and russerection of Jesus, since
I think I did exist.
I think the image of God was so disgustingly misrepresented in the Old
Testament that Jesus had to come to show us what God is really like,
not all these terrible stories and propaganda.
I could never again become an Evangelical, I think its so distasteful,
and the way they treat our gay brothers and sisters, as well as single
parents and people who do not fit into the norm. You get these
evangelical groups who pervert or cherry-pick scientific research to
try prove their discrimination towards others, or their differing
treatment.
For me, even their doctrine that being gay is wrong, but gay people
can't help it so they must abstain is now totally unaccpetable and
awful.
Look I know I've probably written more than what I should have and
made a very long post, but I decided to do it because I really don't
want other blind people who are struggling with what I struggled with
to think that they are alone, because I really do know the pain and
the sacrifice and the pure struggle of changing one's beliefs, or
wondering why God doesn't seem to answer.
For that, what I think is that, since we see all the suffering and
problems in the world, maybe God is just a God for the afterlife,
maybe he doesn't really interfere in the problems we have in the
world. Look , at the moment all I can say is that I just don't know,
but neither I think does anyone else. We just aren't sure how God
works or where God is, but I'm definitely sure that God cannot be the
God of the Old Testament.
Ari