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

[Peter Wolfe]

Ari!


    I have to say that was beautifully written on your inner feelings
of your spiritual acceptance of deviants such as the LGBTQ community!
Never thought these thoughts you feel nor ever will that much except a
brief stint being indoctrinated as a western rite roman catholic laye
person in a college city. I began to think that gay people had no
purpose cause they couldn't repocreate, therefore, they weren't moral
for some reason. I didn't apply my logic thoroughly enough to
encompass those who cannot repocreate or choose not to procreate that
is organized religion though cause they don't want you to think
deductively just inductively.

    Secondly, I empathize with you on your plights of being
brainwashed cause I cannot fully relate to yoru specific circumstance.
I was brought up with a pseudo southern baptist prospective of the
Texas variety. All throughout my family even my Great Uncle Thelbert
being a preacher that I saw contridictions in behavior. I beggan to
realize that these rituals of church attendence and the alike were
just means of political to social control. Then, I realized that
churches have tax exemptions that beholden themselves to the wealthy
who are the least religious adherers to their own faith for tax
breaks, military complex, corporations and the alike that I see
excessive entangement. Another thing that I saw is multi-millionaire
televeangalists with yachts and million dollar churches as wastes that
are not worth their salt because of being under utilized and held
captive by special intersts groups.

    Thirdly and lastly, I want to point out that I'm proud of you for
sharing your story with us on the list! Seriously not enough people
speak out for other minorities cause other persons in minorities stay
mute cause of denial that they won't be next. I look at civil rights
as comprehensive with inclusion as its premise that all men are
created equal not meaning outcomes but opportunities. I won't commet
on your religious opinions cause I'm not into organized religion just
think that there must be something beyond this physical realm not sure
what it is though. I don't allow this to affect me cause God or its
equivalent wouldn't want us to edwell on particulars in written
material e.g. Bible, etc. Particularly with the problem with Gana with
the anti-gay or homosexual ferver that I feel bad for the gay
population in Africa. A last thought its really cool to get a
prospective from someone from your country and nice to be of your
friendship.


hugs,
Peter A.K.A Emily Mae

On 2/22/13, Ari Damoulakis <aridamoulakis at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>
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-- 
Cordially,
Peter Q Wolfe, BA
cum laude Auburn University
e-mail: yogabare13 at gmail.com
"If you don't stand up for something your willing to fall for anything"
Peter Q Wolfe
"Stand up for your rights"
Bob Marley