My gay xjw friend tells me this story is doing the rounds among the gay community.Its Josh Gutteridge's story:
A gay JWs experience - How he escaped his spiritual prison and built a better life
by fulltimestudent 7 Replies latest jw friends
-
-
fulltimestudent
Among the people who commented on this story, one mentioned this facebook page for gay people who want to recover their sanity after being force-fed YHWH's rubbish.
-
darkspilver
Update on the above story
Gay ex-JW Josh Gutteridge is featured on the first episode of BBC Three TV's new series Queer Britain (BBC Theatre is online only via iplayer, not on TV) due to be released on Sunday 7 May 2017Queer Britain: Episode 1: Does God Hate Queers?
BBC II! - Sunday 7 May 2017
Raised as Catholic, with a Muslim father, Riyadh has his own take on religion and being gay. He meets people who have lost their religious communities, found salvation in a new inclusive religious family, or found an unconventional route to having the best bits of their gay and faith identities.
READ MORE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2017/queer-britain
Gay Star News, 5 May 2017Meet the gay guys asking ‘Does God hate queers?’ in new BBC series Queer Britain
GSN speaks to presenter Riyadh Khalaf and ex-Jehovah's Witness Josh Gutteridge, starring in Sunday's episode
READ MORE: http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/queer-britain-bbc3/ -
darkspilver
Josh is featured in the first part:
-
scotsman
Josh seems like a nice guy. These letters from family, cutting you off are all to familiar (and I'm not even dfed). Wonder if his family and former friends watched it.
-
fulltimestudent
Thanks for posting these links, darkspilver.
Watching the video, I started thinking how little some of these people know about their own religions.
Let's start with the fake Christians:
Here are two Bible stories that seem to indicate, that when first written (or, perhaps a later redaction) offer a different view of same sex attraction.
1. David and Jonathon.
I guess most anti-gay Christians would refuse to accept that these two men are an example of same sex attraction. They would want to argue that the story is talking about a divine type of love between the two men. But let's take a look at the whole story.
David and Jonathon’s Love story.
The Bible tells the story of David and Jonathon falling in love.
In 1 Samuel 17:42, David is described as being of beautiful appearance. He kills an enemy of the Jewish people and comes to the notice of King Saul and his son Prince Jonathon.
Saul makes David move to the palace, because Jonathon had fallen in love with David, as 1 Samuel 18 verse 1 and 3 and 4.
“Jonathon’s very soul became bound up with the soul of David, and Jonathon began to love him as his own soul.”
And then … they have a ceremony like a wedding ceremony, Jonathon takes all his clothes off and dresses David in his clothes (verse 4)
And then they exchange vows. (Verse 3).
“And Jonathon and David proceeded to conclude a covenant (an agreement), because of his loving him as his own soul.” (NWT-Large Print edition)
Later King Saul became jealous of David and tried to kill him, and Jonathon told David to run away. But David never forgot the love that he and Jonathon had for each other, and many years later when Jonathon was killed in a war, David remembered their love ( 2 Samuel 1:26):
“I am distressed over you my bother Jonathon, very pleasant you were to me. More wonderful was your love to me than the love from women.”
Most biblical translations say something similar.
Here’s another three.
New International Version
I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.
New Living Translation
How I weep for you, my brother Jonathan! Oh, how much I loved you! And your love for me was deep, deeper than the love of women!
English Standard Version
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.So when we read those words, what can we conclude?"
Yes! Some people say that the Bible was not talking about romantic love, but if that was the sort of love that was being discussed, why say that it was better than loving a woman, because any love for a woman surely includes a sexual passion.
-
fulltimestudent
Now let's take an incident in the NT, where if Jesus was opposed to a man having sex with another man, he had an opportunity to condemn the practice.
So, If Male to male love is so wrong, WHY did Jesus heal the young male lover of the Centurion (Refer Luke ch. 7, verses 1 to 10).
It was common in the Greek and Roman times in which Jesus lived, for men to have a male lover. It was an even more common practice in the Roman Army.
Let's look a probable example, in the above text:
7 When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” 6 So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” 10 Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.:The word used in the Greek language to describe the young servant is ‘pais.’ According to the following Wikipedia entry that word was often used in Greek-Roman times to describe a younger slave or servant that was in a sexual relationship with his owner.
Homo-erotic connotations (from a Wikipedia entry)
According to James Neill, the Greek term "pais" used for the servant in Matthew's account almost always had a sexual connotation.[9]
In support of this view, he remarks that the word 'pais', along with the word "erasthai" (to love) is the root of the English word "pederasty".[9] He sees in the fact that, in Luke's parallel account, the centurion's servant is described as "valued highly"[10] by the centurion an indication of a homosexual relationship between the two, and says that the Greek word "doulos" used of him in Luke's account suggests he may even have been a sex slave.[9]
Daniel A. Helminiak agrees that the word pais could have a sexual meaning.[11]
Theodore W. Jennings Jr. and Tat-Siong Benny Liew further write that Roman historical data about patron-client relationships and about same-sex relations among soldiers support the view that the 'pais' in Matthew's account is the centurion's "boy-lover", and that the centurion therefore did not want Jesus to enter his house for fear perhaps that the boy would be enamoured of Jesus instead.Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_the_centurion%27s_servant
BTW, you can find a prior discussion on this in the JW-D files, with a comment by Leolaia on the Jennings, Liew extract above. https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/129703/greek-word-pais
-
fulltimestudent
I put together the two scraps of information (The Jonathon/David Love story and Jesus heals the centurion's young male lover for another friend (also gay) who thought he was going to debate with a JW pioneer on some aspect of being gay versus the YHWH/JESUS imagined deity...
There was no debate, the pioneer JW, flatly said, the Bible says you'll get destroyed, so I have nothing further to say. Anyway, as to Jonathon and David, there absolutely were no homosexuals in ancient Israel.
Can we fact check that last statement? Yes, we can! So how and where?
On this subject the Bible does give an answer. Open you're Bibles now ... to 1 Kings 14:23,24, which reads:
(its discussing what the Jews were doing during the reign of Rehoboam).
"And they too kept building for themselves high places and sacred pillars and sacred poles upon every high hill and under every luxuriant tree. And even the male temple prostitute proved to be in the land. ..." (NWT-Large print edition)
The JW publication "Insight" suggests that the 'sacred poles' were ... "It has been suggested that the poles represented the female principle, whereas the pillars represented the male principle. These appendages of idolatry, likely phallic symbols, were associated with grossly immoral sex orgies, as is indicated by the reference to male prostitutes being in the land as early as Rehoboam’s reign. (1Ki 14:22-24; 2Ki 17:10) Ref: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200003789#h=4
So, in the view of the author of 1 Kings, wherever you went in Judah, you would see these shrines with their representations of a penis and inside you could find a guy who'd have sex with you for fee. Did male Jews have sex with the 'male temple prostitute?' Its implicit in the text of the story that they would be likely to do that. Who screwed who? No clues about that, so we may just assume that some swung one way and some swung the other way.
The English language, for over 120 years has used the term 'homosexual' to describe, men who have sex with men.
So was the JW pioneer who told my friend, "there absolutely were no homosexuals in ancient Israel." right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!!! There were homosexuals in Israel, at leasst in the time Rehoboam, and probably always were.