World AIDS Day

I've tried to keep busy today but it hasn't helped much; my mind begins to wander to those pictures in my mind of those that I have lost from this disease. My grandmother died in 1984 before it was called AIDS. The technical term back then was GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). I've thought of Gary McClain who was the organ player at our church, we lost him in 1985. Then there was 20 year old Darrell who committed suicide because of his infection, only to find out after his autopsy that his diagnosis was wrong. I remember the young gay man a friend of mine came across at work, he had committed suicide but not before mutilating his body first. In his suicide note he mentioned that he was gay and had only had sex one time. That's all it takes.

I have also been thinking of the many people who have had to suffer above what the disease did to them because of the people around them; especially the church and Christians, or so called Christians. The countless numbers of stories of gay men whose family threw them away upon learning of their disease. The men who had never even told their family that they were gay let alone HIV+, only to have their families not even claim their body from the morgue upon learning why they died.

I have tried to understand, but I just can't seem to. I didn't understand when it happened to me 19 years ago and I don't understand it now. Maybe one day I will. A guy can be a hardened serial killer, on death row and the night of his execution total strangers will hold a candle light vigil to protest the cruelty of putting another human being to .death. His mother will hold a picture telling all who'll listen just how wonderful he was. However, let a straight A student, dedicated, loves his family, loves God and people also. Kind, warm, caring, compassionate, intelligent, well mannered, well adjusted. But let that gay kid tell people that he's gay and he is disowned by his family, rejected by his church and harassed by total strangers and politicians alike; all in the name of God, to the point of doing horrible things to his mind and body and often destroying his life or out right taking of his life, and society doesn't blink an eye, his family forgets about him, and the church decries it as a victory.

God I just don't understand!

Listening to Jesus

I’m definitely frustrated, bordering on being just plain angry.  This is been something tha I have been contemplating on and praying about for a while.  Certainly more contemplating then praying, sorry to say.  We started attending church when I was 8 years old, I am now almost 41.  I’ll let you do the math, as I hate math.  I started preaching revivals at 17 went off to bible college and after 3 1/2 years of college I dropped out before being kicked out.  I bought into all that I was told about being gay, never investigated for myself because after all, my denominational officials, my fellow students and professors, my friends wouldn’t steer me wrong would they?  I mean my brothers in Christ, who I studied with, prayed with, cried with, laughed with, counseled with wouldn’t just write me off.  Would they? 

Now on one hand I understand that most Christians don’t really study the scriptures, they may read them, if they do even that, but to really study them, the original languages, their historical context, etc. most Christians don’t do that.  They let their ministers do that for them!  So when the ministers, for whatever reasons don’t, the average congregant takes what comes from the pulpit as the “gospel truth” when it is really an interpretation.  I don’t want to sound arrogant, I don’t expect everyone to come up with the same outcome of those scriptures that I did.  I will say that I could be wrong, I don’t believe that I am, but that is where faith and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead a person comes into the equation. 

You don’t have to agree with me, you don’t have to like me, but you don’t get to tell me that I am not a Christian.  You don’t get to judge me that way, Jesus himself said so:

Don't condemn others, and God won't condemn you. God will be as hard on you as you are on others! He will treat you exactly as you treat them. You can see the speck in your friend's eye, but you don't notice the log in your own eye. How can you say, "My friend, let me take the speck out of your eye," when you don't see the log in your own eye? You're nothing but show-offs! First, take the log out of your own eye. Then you can see how to take the speck out of your friend's eye.
(Mat 7:1-5)(Contemporary English Version)

I think the Christian church, the evangelical mainly and the fundamentalist especially, needs to get back to the teachings of Jesus.

Really Discouraged Today

It seems as though there is no end in the future to all the anti gay rhetoric. Now my state, West Virginia, looks like it's going to be the next battle ground on the marriage/discrimination front. The Family Policy Council of West Virginia, which is aligned with Focus on the Family is lobbying the state to add a referendum on the ballot, Even though our governor, Joe Manchin has stated that our existing law is sufficient and no challenge has arisen. West Virginia doesn't have much of a gay community, at least that I have seen. I guess in Wheeling, Charleston, Morgantown, Parkersburg and a few other cities may have some but in the area I am located there doesn't seem to be much of anything.
Most of the "christians" in this state, at least the ones I know, blindly follow the likes of Dr. Dobson without much thought, you would think his words were as equal to Jesus'. Sometimes I just don't feel like there is much use in fighting this fight anymore. I often wonder why God allows people who I know love and follow Him and pray religiously, and are never moved to even consider this issue.

What do you do when you're the ultimate oxymoron?

I have been wrestling with this question for a long time now. I really am the ultimate oxymoron, not the only one, but definitely I am one. I am an evangelical, Reagan conservative, Republican, and oh yeah, I am gay also. Most of the time I just don't fit it and I am still trying to find my place. I don't fit in at church because I have been able to reconcile my faith and my sexuality. I don't fit in to the gay community here, what there is of it. So I guess since I don't have a place to fit in, I need to make my own. So that is what I am in the process of doing now.