A bit of my past

Those few of you who come here with any degree of regularity will have noticed that I am not writing as much as I used too. I have sort of reached a place in the process here where I feel like I am repeating myself a lot and am pretty much screaming into the void while I do it. There are a few folks who think like I do and a lot who sort of go “Oh god, not again!” when I write. It doesn’t help that it is clear to me where things are going and what the end result is going to be. Oh well.

So, I will go in an entirely different direction today.

While writing that last post I recalled an incident of my earlier life. Way back in the early 80’s when I was in my first year or so of college I had a very good friend named M who was gay. ( I actually still consider myself to have him as a friend even though we haven’t been in touch with each other for several years.) M and I met each other very early in my freshman year of college, like the first two days, and we sort of stuck. We both got in a play, chatted a lot, hung around many of the same folks and generally got along very well. It was some time later that M told me he was gay which I had figured out myself but didn’t really care. This isn’t all that big a deal except in the mind of certain folks because I was (and am) a member of a rather conservative Christian (according to us at least) denomination that had a track record for not accepting homosexuality at all. I had never really thought about it until this event occurred. It was M’s birthday and we, he, I, his boyfriend, and another friend of theirs were going to Savannah to watch a movie and eat. (if you care to know exactly which year this was we saw Something Wicked this Way Comes) while riding around in the car the friend, whose name I cannot recall at all, (who was also gay) was ranting about various issues and brought up the topic of religious intolerance towards gays and specifically mentioned my denomination and said something fairly derogatory about us. M glanced at him and said “they aren’t all like that.” and pointed out that I was one. The friend said I must not be a very good one then which led M and his boyfriend to defend my religiosity fairly strenuously. The friend then expressed amazement that he had finally found a member of that faith that accepted homosexuality at which point M again interrupted him and said that that wasn’t true. He said “Exmi doesn’t accept homosexuality, he just accepts homosexuals.” Needless to say this led to a long discussion that winded on through dinner and afterwards (at which time I got my first visit to a gay bar where I thought I handled myself quite coolly and M said I looked like I was about to jump out of my skin.) As we were winding our way home later that night the friend looked at me and said “I know you are straight, but if you ever want to try gay, please call me first.” At which point M nearly wrecked the car. I think he thought I was going to scream and leap from the car window. I didn’t of course; I just told the guy that I would keep that in mind but not to hold his breath.
I have periodically had similar conversations in my life with different people who all want me to explain why I seem so different from the image they and others have of my church. My answer is always something like this. Yes, the church teaches and I believe that homosexuality is a sin. But so is heterosexuality if acted upon prior to marriage. In fact, so is drinking alcohol and smoking. So if I locked myself away from people who sinned I would have a pretty small damn circle of friends. In point of fact, “homosexuality” per se isn’t a sin (in my mind). By that I mean being attracted to members of your own gender. Acting on it though falls into the pre-marital sex thing since the church does not (and never will I strongly suspect) accept any form of gay marriage. So one can be a homosexual, one just can’t have sex outside the bonds of recognized marriage. Which is frankly no more odious for a gay person than it is for a straight person who hasn’t gotten married.

Well, now you know a bit more about me. Conjure with it what you will…..