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

[Diane Graves]

Hi Ari,

Thank you for sharing your story. I have to say that I am a Christian, but
I, by no means am the judge. I love all people.

I too, was raised a Christian, and ultimately took a long arduous emotional
and spiritual journey which has lead me back to Christianity. But there are
many who would judge me for the choices that I have made over the years.

I do know what you mean about the Evangelical/United Pentecostal persona.
Many years ago I was married, for the first time, to a United Pentecostal.
They wreaked havoc with my emotions, asserting that I wasn't "saved" until I
had been baptized with the Holy Ghost evidenced by speaking in tongues. I
never did this, so of course, I thought I was lost. I also thought my
mother, who had been a Christian, but had never spoken in tongues as far as
I knew, had been lost when she died. I definitely know about the emotional
scarring.

I do believe that Jesus is the one in control of what will happen at the
end, but there is no person alive who is clean enough to judge anyone. Of
course, as a Christian, I try to adhere to the teachings of Jesus, and use a
certain formula for living, but the only people that I have a hard time
loving are those who have committed horrendous violent criminal offenses who
have hurt other people, such as the man who sold the lives of the innocent
children in Newtown Keneticutt. I admit it, there is some hatred there.

Diane Graves
 -----Original Message-----
From: blindtlk [mailto:blindtlk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of Ari
Damoulakis
Sent: Friday, February 22, 2013 2:42 AM
To: Blind Talk Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Blindtlk] Off Topic - Accessible places on the net for LGBTQ
individuals?

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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