Churches and Gays

I have been a Christian since the age of 13. During the past 40+ years, I have attended numerous religious services, Catholic, Christian fundamentalist, Jewish, Unitarian, Hindu, etc. I have been a member of various Christian sects ranging from very fundamental, evangelical, to extremely liberal.

I very rarely heard any mention of homosexuality in any of the fundamentalist churches I attended over the years, except in Bible study in which certain verses were read and discussed among the adults present. Never did I feel it was my place to judge people.In fact as a Christian I have always been taught we are to love the sinner (and we are all sinners) and hate the sin. God will ultimately do the sorting out. I was however, constantly met with a barrage of propaganda promoting tolerance, demanding acceptance, political posturing for the rights of gays, and condemnation of "traditionional" Christian views in the liberal church, and had their "open and affirming of gays" agenda constantly shoved down my throat.

It was especially disheartening to see the proseletizing on this subject to the very impressionable youth of the congregation. After a while, my husband and I had enough, no longer felt this was a place of worship at all, and left this so-called "church". I am amazed that organizations like this can keep their tax exempt status as they are nothing more than a social club and political organization masquerading as a church.

I am not presently attending any church, however, from past experience, my guess is that in most taditional, especially Evangelical, Christian churches last Sunday, there was very little if any, talk of the California ruling. Praise and worship of Jesus Christ is the predominant focus of the vast majority of these churches, Also, most have a large number of children and young people in the services, and that is not a subject that is deemed appropriate in a general arena with people of all ages present.

Teenage Sexuality

Actually, the latest statistics show only about 50% of high school students are having sex, still far more than when I was in high school in the early sixties. The trend seems to be reversing, as more kids are choosing to avoid all the problems associated with casual sex.You don't hear about it much, but thousands of teenagers have taken a vow of chasity until marriage. Abortion rates are at a 36 year low, for example, which may or may not be associated with less sex among teens, but still that is promising news. Kids need to kow that "everybody is not doing it" as the media and popular culture leads one to believe. Teenagers today, need to know it's OK not to have sex. and not feel the pressure to do it. If a young girl is taught responsibility, self respect, values, and morals from an early age, there is no need to worry about this movie influencing her in a negative way.

Today's Kids are OK

My almost 14 year old granddaughter is a competitive soccer player (State Champions this year!). I am constantly amazed at the fortitude of these young girls. They practice year round, through cold and hot days, sunny or rainy. The only time a game or practice is called is when it is lightening, or the field simply too soggy to be safe. The games can be pretty intense at this level also. I wasn't nearly as tough as she is at her age!

Fortunately, this discipline seems to carry over to the rest of her life, tackling school work with ease, handling relationships, etc. I'm not worried at all about this new generation that has a lot of kids like her.

Close-mindedness

There is a big difference in being "close-minded" and simply having an "educated opinion" on an issue. To be close-minded means that one refuses to listen to a differing view on a subject, is not interested at all in seeing the other side, and no matter what the evidence to the contrary presented is, stalwartly hangs onto their belief.

On the other hand, I pride myself in being a person who takes advantage of an almost limitless amount of information available today via the internet (google and other search engines) and other media, on all sides of an issue. Having the luxury of time, I spend hours and sometimes days, researching a lot of differing viewpoints filtering out the credible from the unreliable sources. That method, coupled with my extensive 61 years of life experiences, having been exposed to all sorts of people and lifestyles, not having been raised in an insular enviornment, traveling extensively throughout the world for weeks at a time in, sometimes, totally alien enviornments, having been in both a fundamentalist church in my childhood, and totally immersed in a free thinking "anything goes" college enviornment in the radical sixties, I believe I have emerged as a "free agent" with the requisite amount of wisdom garnerd from the afore mentioned experiences.

I've witnessed the "fruits" of the people I know my age and older and have seen what works and hasn't worked in their lives. All of this information has been processed in a way that is hardly "close-minded", but has merely enabled me to become a "casual observer" of life who has, hopefully, benefitted from what I have learned along the way.

Gay Marriage

No amount of legislation will ever make a same sex union equal to one between a male and female. It's about biology and perpetuation of the species as nature intended.

I think homosexuals ought to be able to form legal bonds with all of the same priviledges and rights as married couples (which they already have the right to do in a lot of states). There need to be a different word for that union, however.

The definition of marriage that that has stood for thousands of years, and is the cornerstone of civilization, should not be changed simply to accomodate a small, but extremely vocal and activist, segment of our society.

Thoughts on Marriage

As someone who has been happily (for the most part) married to my one and only spouse for 38 years), here are some things I've learned.

A good rule is, only one person gets to be crazy at a time!

A traditional marriage works best if you can pull it off. My husband and I have always had clearly defined roles. He would be the bread winner and build his career, in order to provide monetary sustenance for the family and our lives together.

In turn, I would be the child bearer, nurturer, house keeper, cook, nutritionist, household shopper, budgeter, social planner, etc.etc.etc.

Growing up relatively poor, and supporting myself totally since the age of 17, I was already somewhat of an expert in budgeting. He, the son of a prominent Memphis surgeon, had never had to think about money growing up! In the early years, there were some conflicts because of our much different backgrounds in this regard!

There would be necessary "spaces in our togetherness" (Kahil Gibran). Having him in a job that has always required a fair amount of travel took care of that.

I believe allowing each other some "breathing room" and the freedom to pursue our own hobbies and passions has been a large part of our success together.

We would both be responsible for keeping the marrige alive in the romance dept. and always put our relationship first.
The fact that we married fairly young (23 and 21), meant we entered the relaionship with relatively little emotional "baggage". We also did not live together before marriage, as was just beginning to be accepted in the late sixties, and is a lot more common in today's culture.

There have certainly been a lot of rough patches over the years, but we have weathered them together, because we were committed to each other and the marriage. It's not all about personal "happiness", especially when children are involved.

We are really beginning to reap the rewards of maintaining a stable marriage all of these years, in terms of a fairly comfortable lifestyle, wonderful, responsible, successful children who have begun great families of their own, providing us with life's greatest "fruits", our grandchldren. We are very blessed to have all of them living close by.