Vast Variety

Contrary to what some may believe, being gay doesn’t sever a person from morality. I am not out to convert anyone, recruit anyone, and I am not preying on children, but I am supposedly…

…the greatest threat to America…

Everyone that tries to tell me that being a homosexual is wrong is relying on one thing, their religious beliefs. It seems to be nearly impossible to divorce any discussion about the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality from religion, because when you do, the people against it have nothing to base their argument on, and any good debater will tell you that you don’t win a debate by bringing God into it because it’s a cop out. God is all mighty, he can do anything, so any argument against that is moot. It comes down to biblical passages written by men who were “under the influence of God” and “can’t be wrong”. Can someone name me one living human being that isn’t ever wrong about something? How about naming one human being that isn’t living that was never been wrong about something, and yes I know that the first answer to that question is going to be Jesus Christ, but then in John 10:30 Jesus says…

I and my Father are one.

Does that mean that Jesus wasn’t human after all?

Some say that being gay is a mental illness, even though the American Psychological Association removed it from their list of mental illnesses in the 1970’s

Is homosexuality a mental disorder?

No, lesbian, gay, and bisexual orientations are not disorders. Research has found no inherent association between any of these sexual orientations and psychopathology. Both heterosexual behavior and homosexual behavior are normal aspects of human sexuality. Both have been documented in many different cultures and historical eras. Despite the persistence of stereotypes that portray lesbian, gay, and bisexual people as disturbed, several decades of research and clinical experience have led all mainstream medical and mental health organizations in this country to conclude that these orientations represent normal forms of human experience. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual relationships are normal forms of human bonding. Therefore, these mainstream organizations long ago abandoned classifications of homosexuality as a mental disorder.

But as late as 2006, the Pentagon still deemed it as such.

Some believe that the “Homosexual agenda” is out to destroy the family. I have no such desire and I believe that the biggest threat to the family is poverty, infidelity, and divorce. In fact, I simply want to build my own family, to live out my life with the person I love. Yes I want all the local, state, and federal benefits that marriage brings to a family, but yet I’m supposedly not allowed to because I’m gay. Where in the constitution does it say that all men are created equal… except the gays of course.

In Act 1 Scene 3 of the Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare writes a chilling paragraph about the Jews that became even more poignant during the dark days of World War II.

Shylock:
I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands,
organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, heal’d by the same means, warm’d and cool’d by the same winter and summer, as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, do we not revenge? If we are like you in the
rest, we will resemble you in that

Those words from nearly 413 years ago could ring true today about any minority.

-David Fitzsimmons, The Arizona Star

Yes, like every other aspect of human culture, there are extremes. People who cross the line from calling for equality into violence. My sense of morality tells me that is wrong, and makes me choose to not participate in that. But it does not prevent me from speaking my mind in peaceful protest when I feel wronged by people who seem bent on turning America, the melting pot of the world, with all it’s diverseness in culture and religion, into a theocracy that preaches intolerance and hate.

The Rev Peter Mullen, chaplain to the London Stock Exchange, called for homosexuals to be tattooed with warnings about the perils of gay sex in a cigarette-packet-style health warning.

In my own personal experience, the realization that I was gay forced me to painfully examine not only my morality but my spirituality, and it all happened to me while I was in the worst place for it to occur, while serving in the United States Air Force.

For a time I abandoned both my morality and spirituality. Not to indulge in the…

…sexual perversion.

But to attempt to suppress the very nature of who I was, to fit in with my surroundings. I drowned my mind with vodka, and dated women. When my barracks roommate expressed to me that he thought I was hiding being gay and he was going to turn me in to the squadron commander, I went so far into the lie that I proposed to the girl I was seeing. In the early 90’s you could still be discharged for simply being gay, if it became known. After 11 months my marriage, and my military career came to an end, as my now ex-wife spent us into financial ruin and I drank myself into no where. Even after leaving Alaska and returning home to Iowa, I tried to deny who I really was until I ran into an old friend. We hung out together off and on and then one night he came out to me, not only about being gay, but that he had serious feelings for me. We became a couple that night, and have been together ever since (going on 11 years). He helped bring me back to my morality.

I do have moral values. I do believe in God. I believe in the value of family. I believe that war in any form is wrong, and that war in the name of any religious belief, whether it be the Jihadists of the Islamic world, the crusades of the middle ages, or the war of “regime change” in Iraq, are among the greatest sins. I believe that God would be angry at the way his name has been used over the centuries to foster hate, intolerance, and persecution. That isn’t what God is about. My morality tells me that God is about love, tolerance, and embracing the world in such a way that you leave it better than you entered it. My morality is stronger than ever and I’m proud to be who I am.