Q You were recommended to me by an acquaintance familiar with
your column and podcast. I am a 20-year-old male, and as such have
certain desires that almost all 20-year-old males have (desires of a
sexual nature). However, I am deeply religious. Religion has been for
me a source of strength in my times of weakness, a rock in the times of
storm and above all a home to return to when I have lost my path. In
the teachings of my particular religion, to indulge the particular
desires I am experiencing will condemn me to fates too grotesque to
mention. I am rational enough to realize that there is no way that I
can “pray away” these desires. My question is this: How does one
prepare for a life of celibacy and solitude (as that is what is
required of me to remain a member of this particular faith)? Based on
what my friend said, I know you have little respect for religious
practices and beliefs. However, these desires are not something I can
talk about with other members of my community. —Clever Acronyms
Escape Me
A Get over yourself, faggot.
If it’s possible for you to act on your unnamed-but-easily
identified desires in an ethical manner—if you desire to do whatever
it is you desire to do with consenting adults who desire to take their
turn doing it to you—this so-called expert on sexuality thinks you
should crawl down off that cross and find yourself a boyfriend already.
(“Pray away” the gay? I’m guessing you’re Christian, probably
Catholic.) And if you experience a moment’s anxiety the first time you
stick your ass in the air—pull the Jesus stick out first!—just
remind yourself that things have been crawling on top of each other and
madly humping away for 850 million years. Sex came first, then humanity
(200,000ish years ago), then religion came along tens of thousands of
years after that. Which may explain why religion, when pitted against
sex (really old) and human nature (pretty old), always loses.
Always.
Look, kiddo, you get one life, one chance at happiness. If it gives
you a spiritual semi to fantasize about a god who created you gay but
forbids you to act on your emotional and sexual attraction to men,
knock your damn self out. But you can have a boyfriend and Jesus,
too—look at the pope—you just have to do what people have been
doing since the first terrified idiot invented the first bullshit
religion: improvise. Find yourself a brand-new religion or sect, or
jettison the bits of your current faith that don’t work for you. If you
know anything about the history of Christianity—and it sounds like
you don’t—then you know that the revisions began before the body was
cold. No reason to stop now.
Q I’m an only child, male, born to a single mom. I’m about to
turn 21, and I’ve been with a great guy for over a year. I may be in
love. We both have steady jobs, and we want to move in together. He
came out to his parents after we started dating, and now I think it’s
my turn. Problem is, I don’t know how to break it to my mother. She’s a
tiny Mexican woman who isn’t afraid of smacking me. I’m afraid to tell
her. She considers herself Christian, although not the churchgoing
kind. When and how do I break the news that she’s not getting grandkids
from me? —Her Only Male Offspring
A Your mom is my favorite kind of “Christian.” She’s not the
“churchgoing kind,” as that would require some personal sacrifice on
her part. And she certainly didn’t let her faith interfere with her sex
life (I’m assuming your conception was something short of
immaculate). But when it comes to other people’s lives, when it
comes to your sexuality, then her Christian values kick into high gear.
OK, HOMO, lots of us have come out to hostile moms and dads and watched
in awe as they morphed into the loving, supportive parents we didn’t
know they were capable of being. For some parents the process is quick,
for others it’s slow, but it can’t start until you come out.
Now here’s when you come out: The sooner the better—but don’t come
out to your mother while she has the power to harm you, if you’re
dependent on her for a place to live or she’s paying for your
education. And here’s how: by US mail. Write her a letter, include the
contact info for the PFLAG chapter in your area, and tell her you’ll
discuss this with her after she attends a meeting, not before.
Finally, when I came out to my mother, the first thing out of her
mouth was, “I don’t ever want to meet any boyfriends.” She said the
word “boyfriend” like it had been dipped in shit. On her deathbed, my
mother told me to tell my boyfriend that she loved him. My mom came
around, HOMO, and so can yours. But not until you tell her.
Q My husband and I got married recently. His first pick for
best man was his older brother, “St. Paul,” a seminary student studying
to become a priest. When my husband asked, he started crying and said
he had hoped my husband would return to the church. We are both liberal
ex-Catholics. For a wedding gift, Paul gave us a book called Man and
Woman He Created Them: A Theology of the Body. In the five years
I’ve known him, he has rarely said more than one sentence to me, yet he
speaks boldly in favour of the church’s most conservative doctrines at
family gatherings. How much of his bullshit do I have to deal with?
—The Schismatic
A Man…so intolerant. I’m talking about you, TS, not your
brother-in-law. Don’t get me wrong: Your brother-in-law sounds like
total douchedrizzle. But he has a right to his opinions and a right to
express them. You have a right to your opinions, too, of course, and
just as much a right to express them. When St. Paul goes off on
premarital sex or the ordination of women or the gays and their Prada
loafers, smile and tell him he’s full of shit. You don’t see him too
often, right? Tolerate his bullshit—that’s what family does—and
count your blessings.
And don’t complain about every word that comes out of his mouth and
then gripe about how little he has to say to you.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2009.