Have your views on gays changed over the years? (page 5)

not a captive

No, early on I grew up around an inter-sex person and when a JW first tried to tell me homosexuality was a choice I already knew that things can misfire before birth and so I asked them ,

"Can a person be born with a cleft palate or are there Siamese twins born?"

"Yes"

"Then you can be born with your gender I.D. mixed up." A lot of JWs didn't like the idea that some people have that problem. It kind of cuts to the core of a lot of things. It might even make you sympathetic to a gay person!

--I don't say some do not choose. And early sexual abuse can disorient some I have known. But it seems to me that most don't choose.

Someone I know well is in a same sex relationship. I think it would have made me uncomfortable if I had known ahead of time because I felt so self-conscious about every move I made--not ina healthy way either. But recently she asked, "What did you think of me while you were a JW?" I said I relied on the Bible and the teachings of Jesus to guide me even then.

It is important for me to be free to talk about Jesus not lifestyle. What a person does regarding Jesus is up to them. If we come to follow Jesus we all end up looking at ourselvef --and asking questions of our God and of ourself.

I will treat people as Jesus showed me to treat them.

TardNFeatheredJW

Wow. I don't see why people shouldn't be gay. I'm pretty happy most of the time.

OH... You meant "THAT" gay...

well, no. I never cared if 2 or more consenting adults have that life, its their life. Gay bashing always pissed me off, when I was JW and since. I have met a few gay people that I like, and I've met a few that were real assholes. Probably the same demographic cross section as straight people.

Judging someone based on whether they are more comfortable with the hole or the pole or both is just plain ignorant and stupid.

Rydor

Have your views of gay people changed over the years? Do you have or have you ever had gay friends? Did the Organization impact your views and interactions with gay people? If you are no longer a Dub, what do you think now?

I think my views are pretty much identical to Bizzybee's.

When I was a JW, I believed the Bible to be the inerrant word of God. So I did view homosexuality as a sin. My view was essentially, "Homosexuality is sinful, but I'm sure God understands the situation, and he can help people change." I never had any gay friends as a JW, so I'll never know if I might have treated them differently.

After leaving (in 2006) I got to know a gay man through an online game, and more recently I've done work for a family counselor who is gay. I've since learned that homosexuality is not a choice. Every gay person I've talked to so far has told me that they became aware of their same-sex attraction at an early age. One thing that really opened my eyes was reading Mel White's autobiography "Stranger at the Gate," in which he details the struggle between his faith and his homosexuality. Over the course of 30 years Mel tried everything to "cure" his gayness: prayer, faith healings, hundreds of thousands of dollars in therapy, isolation, drugs, electroshock therapy, exorcisms, and none of it worked. He was even driven to attempt suicide multiple times. After reading it I became convinced that sexual orientation cannot be changed. It can only be surpressed, and doing so takes a disastrous toll on one's spirit.

That's essentially the reason why my faith in the Bible is just about gone. I'm trying to reconcile three facts: 1.) Homosexuality is not a choice. 2.) Homosexuality cannot be changed. And 3.) In the Bible, homosexuality is a capital offense. Death by stoning in the Old Testament. Eternal annihilation/torment (depending on your theology) in the New Testament. No, I just can't see a God of love working that way.

I'll certainly agree with the other posters. How beautiful it is to look at those around you without making "Us/Them" distinctions. I just see people.

Snoozy

Views haven't changed..same as before , during, and after being a JW..

Tolerant but not accepting.

Snoozy

Scarred for life

I think my views have changed 100% since I was a JW many years ago. I believe that Gays are born that way. I do not condemn them. I have known many over the years. I have worked with many gay people both male and female in hospitals. I have had gay hairdressers, gay masseuses.

I completely accept them as fellow human beings who have a different sexual orientation than myself. I think all of us are on a sexual attraction continuum anyway. There are few people that are 100% hetero or homo in my opinion. I think if we look into ourselves and explore sexuality we all have some attraction on some level to the same sex.

You won't hear that at the KH.

zoiks

People are people.

I look forward to the day when we're grown-up enough as a society to not even need to have these discussions.

I also recognize that, in the meantime, discussion is an important step forward.

Deceived

I grew up a JW and my MOM was a devoted subject to the WTBTS, fanatic in fact. She pounded into my head that Homosexuality was a horrible thing. She acted like these people had some dreadful untouchable leprosy. Jehovah hates this she told me.

I did think for myself on this subject often when I observed for myself. I could not understand how she could be right. From 12 years old I dismissed this idea as a bunch of old wives tales or whatever. I could see that people don't chose to be gay they are born that way and they deserve to be treated the same as everyone else because they are "God's" creation too.

Of course My Mom also thought sex was dirty and bad, she hushed that up and acted like a person had germs if they were having sex. I remember helping her clean a motel room once (she was a special pioneer and had to clean for a living) and she shoed me out of the room when she changed the bed sheets because newlyweds had slept there the night before. heehee she acted like I would catch sex germs or something. I was 16 for heaven's sakes. She & my Elder Dad would not let me have a boyfriend, that would be so awful because I might have sexual thoughts, and that was the worst bad she said.

To me it just made me think long and hard about it at night and I thought thats just not logical what she thought. God if there is one has made me feel this way, made me desire sex and want to think on it and feel it so what could be wrong about it. Why would he make people this way and then say NO NO, its bad. I put this in the same category as being Gay, they just naturally feel the way they do except its just for the same sex. I dismissed the idea of sex being bad or gay being bad before I even left the JW religion.

Velvet

not a captive

Zoiks--

Yes, discussion. As a kid my family operated on "least said, soonest mended" which included the idea that if anyone had a problem--shutup about it. It worked for everyone who didn't have the problem but didn't really make the problem go away. Just made the person with it have to stuff it and suffer in silence.

We humans can talk but we don't often communicate effectively.

Heaven

I was unaware of homosexuality until my teenage years. By this time I was questioning a lot about what I was told and while I do see that, from a strictly physical reproduction angle homosexuality doesn't work, I don't see how anyone can tell anyone else that their brand of love is a bad thing.

I do not understand how love can be viewed as bad.

As an adult, I have worked with all different kinds of people, including gay people. I have found them to be very wonderful. I relate to them far more than I do people who bash them. I have found a sensitivity and softness in them that I find missing in a lot of religious types who are self-righteous. I'd rather have a gay friend than someone like that any day.

misguided

Back in the early 70s, in the small circle of jw friends my brother and I regularly got together with in the congregation, 8 of us - 5 girls and 3 boys, there was one boy who always wanted to play with the girls. He wanted to dress up in dresses. He wanted to play dolls. He wasn't into doing the "boy" things. He always joined in what the girls were playing. This was when he was about 5 years old.

Later, in the late 80s, he left the jws and came out "gay." Many people were shocked. I wasn't. I knew it wasn't a choice he'd made, like so many said. I knew that was who he was.

That's when my view on gays changed.

Have your views on gays changed over the years?

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