The World Beyond BetterMost > The Culture Tent
The Curious Case of Gayface: Should straight actors play gay roles?
oilgun:
--- Quote from: serious crayons on August 24, 2013, 02:33:11 am ---One big reason people join churches, though, is for the community and social support. My aunt, a single woman in her 70s, advised me to consider joining one for that reason. And I may take her advice.
tt would be Unitarian, in my case. I'm not Christian, and I'm agnostic. But Unitarians are OK with both of those.
My mom was involved in the Unitarian church, and when she started showing signs of Alzhemer's, her pastor stepped up and got ahold of me to try to help her. When she died, years on years later, having not been involved in the church for years on years (she had moved out of state), the new pastor, who had never even met her, delivered an amazing eulogy, and the church ladies helped put together a really nice memorial service for her.
That's how I realized that churches, even relatively heathen ones like the Unitarians, serve a really important social function.
Sometimes I feel like I have enough friends. But as an aging single person, I also feel like never enough friends, never enough.
--- End quote ---
I was raised as a catholic but became an atheist in my late teens. I was actually a militant anti-theist for a long time. But then a a pansexual queer friend of mine joined a fucking Baptist church which really freaked me out but it turned out that this particular Baptist Church was incredibly inclusive, there was even a transgender member in the choir. That made me much more accepting of churches.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: x-man on August 25, 2013, 09:20:40 am ---When Pope Francis says that gays should not be marginalized he means IF they give up actually having sex.
--- End quote ---
That is certainly what I understood him to mean, and I'm a practicing Protestant with one foot in the Lutheran camp and one foot in the Anglican/Episcopalian.
--- Quote ---One day I woke up and asked myself, "Why do I want to belong to an organization that believes I am sick and sinful for something that goes to the core of my being." So I just left, and I don't look back. I do shake my head to wonder why I put up with it for so long. I am bitter about so many missed opportunities for love and sex that will never come again. My advice to you younger folks is get as much love and sex as you can NOW. Don't let anyone try to stop you.
--- End quote ---
"Get as much ... sex as you can. ..." Interesting. I won't disagree with that, but at age 55 I find myself becoming increasingly bitter that I've wasted my life in the pursuit of sex. I am not saying the sex is wrong, only that I'm growing increasingly bitter because I'm feeling that spending so much time in pursuit of same was a waste of my life, that I could have been doing other, more productive, things with my time.
brianr:
I regret that as a teenager and young adult I spent so much time dating girls, dreading the farewell kiss and seeing psychaitrists to cure me. It was only after I broke an engagement to a lovely girl (the psychiatrists had told me to find one) that I had my first sexual encounter at age 27 and discovered how wonderful a kiss could be. Then I went berserk until I was terrified by AIDS in the early 80's.
I wrote on my blog in 2008 about being depressed after watching a video of 2 young men at school being open about their sexuality.
My blogpost is at
http://brianaralph.blogspot.co.nz/2008/09/personal-feelings.html
I ended my post:
The next day at church the sermon was about the labourers in the field and the preacher at one stage said we should not hold regrets about the past. I am often amazed at how God speaks to me.
I get depressed but from observation of friends who suffer from depression, I know I do not. None of them would find a cure by playing a Broadway musical CD.
And this is the reason I become so angry with the fundamentalists today who would turn us back to those times of repression.
CellarDweller:
This conversation has definitely taken a turn, and made for very interesting reading.
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: CellarDweller on August 27, 2013, 08:00:06 am ---This conversation has definitely taken a turn, and made for very interesting reading.
--- End quote ---
It sure has, hasn't it?
--- Quote from: oilgun on August 25, 2013, 11:20:23 pm ---I was raised as a catholic but became an atheist in my late teens. I was actually a militant anti-theist for a long time. But then a a pansexual queer friend of mine joined a fucking Baptist church which really freaked me out but it turned out that this particular Baptist Church was incredibly inclusive, there was even a transgender member in the choir. That made me much more accepting of churches.
--- End quote ---
Your experience with this Baptist congregation is a very good illustration of why I tend to get angry at people who want to lump all Christians together. Some are, indeed, downright horrible--Pharisees, I call 'em--and others are like this Baptist congregation.
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