As I get older, I'm starting to forget as memories fade. But here's a few.
1. I was an inexperienced young guy when I got mixed up with yhwh's mob, But, being in a congregation that was very near to the then location of the Aussie bethel, I also got mixed up with the bethel mob. And, I once volunteered to help an older bethel bro. pick up a shipment of books from the docks. As we waited for our turn at the docks this older man turned the conversation to more personal aspects of life. It made me feel uneasy! The unease grew as he started to rub my leg. I don't know how I would've coped if his hand had got higher - but our turn came and the conversation and the leg feel-up passed.
2. Of course, some brothers may have been (or had) SSA (same sex attraction) before they became witnesses, and not necessarily be effeminate (as some of the above observations noted). I'm thinking of a guy who had been a missionary and a C/O in OZ. (He was quite manly - had fought in WW2, been captured by the Germans, escaped an survived in the hills for a long time, until taken off that island by a British submarine). His wife was in a gossip session in field service one day with several sisters, and she let slip a bit of gossip about her husband. Before they got converted she recalled, they were at a party with some of her husband's former friends, and she saw him involved in a long, deep kiss with another young man. So, was he SSA, or what we describe as 'bi' or what? I do know (he told me so himself) that he'd been involved in the Sydney arts scene, before he became a witness, as he'd been trained as an Opera singer by a leading member of that Arts scene. so maybe he was SSA, or just sharing in a common practise among guys in that scene.
3. And, that guy was involved in another interesting experience. A certain Gerald G, was a young circuit servant (as they were called then) who left the truth in non-discussable circumstances. But the bro, (in 2. above) told a group of us one day, that he'd been able to help the young ex-c/s to come back to the 'truth.' He'd heard somehow that bro G.G was working as a barman in a gay bar in inner Sydney, so he went into the bar, talked to GG and persuaded him to come back to the truth. Bro. GG did become a C/O again but the last time I heard of him, was that he'd died. Of what, I never heard.
4. In one congregation I was in a couple of women, one older, one young moved into our territory. Their circumstances caused gossip, so the Cong. Servant (still the old arrangement, at that time) spoke to them suggesting one should move out (He saw only one double bed in their small flat). That caused an almighty row with the older woman, but the younger woman did move out and later married a friend of mine. I never heard anything to say they had engaged in any sort of sexual misconduct, so maybe the older woman was in the right when she blew up and told the 'conservant off.
It's all intriguing, especially when we consider that Palestine in Jesus time was thoroughly Hellenised, and that in Hellenic culture, SSA was acceptable. Even their gods engaged in sex with other men. Zeus, Apollo and Dionysus spring to mind.
Human sexual attraction, (Aristophanes declared) was/is inspired by our attempts to recapture the personality wholeness humans had before Zeus bifurcated primal humanity. Or stated another way, Eros enables lovers to regain the 'lost paradise' of spiritual and physical completeness. So any person's decision to 'join' themselves to another human - is a decision based on their own (likely innate) need for completeness.
Living in a Hellenised Palestine would mean that most Jews likely knew the Greek stories and myths. Note that when (In Matt 8 and Luke 7) Jesus healed the 'Pais' of the Roman Centurion, it is entirely possible that he was healing the Centurion's young lover. So why, does Xtianity make such a bloody fuss about 2 people of the same sex loving each other and never give a shit when people learn to hate other people and when their nations go to war, despartely want to kill the others?
