It’s Not Over Until It’s Over

So, the Internet is all a buzz over the 9th Circuit Court ruling overturning Prop 8 in California.   So much is being written about its details and specifics that I don’t think I need to add anything to it. 

This is such a bittersweet moment.  I'm happy and I'm sad at the same time.

The talks, discussions, arguments and yes, even the insane, bigoted, demonizing rants from some active LDS members and other religious fundamentalists that I've witnessed, and had to endure, over the last few days on Facebook, all pretty much fit in with the predictable pattern of human behavior that is based on extreme religious fundamentalism such as Mormonism as they go through culture changes.  Even drawing from my own experience as an angry and raging ex-Mormon homosexual who has been continually wronged by the hateful domination of my religious peers, and speaking hateful like language on my own blog towards the religions they've committed their loyalty to, I'm not completely innocent in my own rants.   But what is setting me apart in this is that I’m now aware of my own reality. 

 I can understand where they are and I know what drives their fears,  and I’m not trying to prevent them from living their religion, even if I find it misguided and hateful.  I’m also aware that I used to be one of them.  But now I’ve seen and experienced both sides, and I know that their fear is unfounded.  But they only know the shadows on the cave wall, which now look even more threatening to them than ever before.

We may have won this little fight, but the backlash, bullying, and violence are going to swell because of this.  The twisted, fear-crazed, religious fundamentalists, which includes much of the active LDS membership, right along with other fundamentalist around the nation, most of them in the south and mid-west, are going to be expressing their fear, hate, and rage in ways we've never seen before.   I fully expect to see an acceleration of the continual upsurge of violence toward LGBT people as this so-called "culture war" escalates. 

I know I'm considered a pessimist in this but sadly, this is just the way it is; this is reality. 

It will be several decades before it's even close to being over.  Even if the Supreme Court granted full national marriage rights in 2014, there will always be several generations of hateful and dangerous bigots to contend with.

It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

The Question of Choice, Again!

Well, controversy!  It appears that Cynthia Nixon has been saying things that have gotten a few people in a tizzy in the past about the concepts of choice and homosexuality.  And now, this recent article has brought that all back in to the discussion again.  (The money quote can be found in context on page 3 of the article.)

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice.
And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.
A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.
As you can tell, I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate.

And a few others have been weighing in on it as well:

Sulli: The word "choice"
and
dadsprimalscream: Choices – We’re not All the Same

I like what they have to say about it.  And I agree with Cynthia and Dad, on this as I had pretty much come to the same conclusion myself last year in my post A Question of Choice.

But there is an argument going on in a few Facebook groups about it that I sort of let myself get sucked into.    And I realized that the topic isn't as straight forward for some as it it was for me.  But I've been reflecting on it to see where I've come with this since last year. 

Some people feel like she was being a troll in her comment, I don't see it that way at all.  Some are concerned that bringing choice into the argument is dangerous for the younger and insecure kids trying to deal with this while being pounded on by the nasty religious environment they are growing up in, and that her statement is only adding fuel to their rhetoric.  I don't discount that many feel that way.   But I also believe that what they believe is fuel for their rhetoric could also be the very thing that drowns it.

Cynthia has a slightly different perspective than I do as she is attracted to everyone whereas I'm only attracted to my own sex.  Cynthia chose gay over not gay in the end.  But before that she also had to make the choice to accept that part of herself and choose to live it as well.   I also believe that many of the worst homophobes out there may have had the same type of choice.  But they chose to be not gay.  But before that, they chose to reject and hate the gay part of themselves.  

My choice was to decide if I was going to accept it and live as I am or repress it and live as someone who was not attracted to anyone.  I eventually chose the one that would make me happy because choosing asexually for the past 17 years stopped working for me.  So, I tried gay and gay was better.  I never chose heterosexuality because I could never understand it.  I did choose to consider it, date a few women, even claim I was straight, but all that time I was essentially, unconsciously, choosing asexuality when I did that.  And after awhile, I began to believe I was asexual and then eventually identified as such for a time.   I also chose not to live AS a heterosexual because I didn't have or understand what it was.  I chose what I understood.  

For far too long the LGBT community as been on the defensive.   The choice question has been allowed to be framed by the people who want to see choice in terms of right and wrong.  I can say I made a choice and I can defend my choice because I don't let the bigots frame the question of choice as right or wrong.   I did not choose my innate desires.  But I choose how I'm going to live with them.  The LDS church has come to the point now of accepting that the innate desires are not chosen, but that how we act on them is a choice.  Well, of course they are right, HOWEVER, they are also dictating what is the right or wrong choice by giving that choice meaning that is important only to them. And that if we choose wrong by their standards, we should not be respected, supported or loved.  This is pretty much the entire religious right's stance on it not just the LDS view.   

What I'm getting at and what I believe Cynthia is trying to say is that pandering to the bigotry, as if the bigots have any right to dictate what choices people make, is the wrong approach and the wrong way to justify one's own choices.

We do not have to justify our choice to live as we are, even though they are demanding it from us.  They're also demanding the right to have control over people to prevent them from making choices that they don't agree with and that don't even affect them.  That is what needs to be challenged.

Ironically, reminding them that their religious belief is a choice actually doesn't work because they see it as someone making the right choice.  And for them, if it's something they agree with, why shouldn't it be protected? 

Again, challenging their argument that personal choices shouldn't be protected because they disagree with them is really what it comes down to, and it's basically want the whole Prop 8 trial debate has been about.

Version 1 Results of LGBT Mormon Survey

The first version of results regarding the LGBT Mormon Survey has been released.
Contains explanations about the charts released in the prelim results.

Please click here:
Version 1 of LDS SSA study newsletter now available

(Previous reference: Prelim Results of LGBT Mormon Survey )

Reclaiming Complex and Nuance

This post is about my anger, frustration, pain, anxiety, fear and all that baggage that is associated with my inability to know what to say about my dear sweet friend who attempted suicide yesterday. 

But before I get into my shit, I want to direct you to Mr. Doodle's:
Top 10 Reasons Why I Left the Church
Top 10 Reasons Why I Came Back to the Church

Feel free to leave Mr. Doodle a comment or write your own blog post about your top ten reasons you left.   If you haven't left the church then write a top 10 reasons why you stay or came back.  But by all means, avoid calling people to repentance if they don't agree with you.  It's not going to convince anyone.  Mr. Doodle has every right to do as he please for whatever reasons he has.   As do I and as do you.  But just know, if you say I should do things a certain way, convince me first how your life's path can possibly have anything to do with the reality of mine when it comes to your own self-awareness of what I perceive.   In other words, if you can get inside my head, you would know what to say to convince me. 
  
I don't have a top ten reason why I left myself.  It's more like a top three.
#3 Co-dependency runs rampant and is self-sustaining.
#2 A dogmatic culture of "one life fits all" philosophy.
#1 It's a twisted, abusive, homophobic, fallacy, of conditional love which imposes unnecessary complexity and nuance into the social lives of vulnerable people where there otherwise would be a naturally simple existence. (see #2 & #3)  

Yes, I'll say it; my life is still being complicated by the baggage that comes with deeply imposed, completely unnecessary, fallacies of religious belief, which create a complex and nuanced social climate that only an omnipotent god could navigate, a complexity and nuance that must be danced around and walked on like a fucking, god damn, eggshell so as not to frighten the overly sensitive egos of the superstitious, busy bodies.   If you are offended by that classification, ponder it for yourself why that is the case.  You may have a blog post you could write for your own blog. (Post a link to it in the comments if you like.)

I used to love the word 'nuance'.   As a music composer it was the nuance of the performance and harmonic selections that separated a good piece of music from a great one.   I used to love the word 'complex' because, as a composer, I could stun my rhythmic sensibilities with layers of poly metered rhythms that was both invigorating and meditative.

But I've learned to distrust these words.   I've seen them used against me.  Thrown back at me as yet another means by which I am to compromise my feelings, sensibilities, life experiences and just plain life, so that fearful superstitions will not be challenged in their inability to look at anything other than the shadows on the fucking wall.   

Navigating these waters, wading through the mud, balancing on a pin head, opening a fucking window, is now this delicate and unattainable "complex and nuanced" perfection that must be played in just the right way or they revoke their love, shut off all dialog, close down all ability to communicate and then they take their ball and go home, a ball that was gifted to them by the one seeking an understanding dialog in the first place.  All the while, as they leave, they are screeching the need for empathy and understanding.   

Empathy?  Yes, amongst the complex and nuanced wash of social engineering is the word empathy, a concept that is imbued, in this case, with conditions that only go one way because only one side of that dialog understands and practices it.   The other side can only pay lip-service to it.  

I sit and watch with full understanding, yes, even empathy, all of the struggles and fears that have embodied those who can only pay lip-service.  And I can understand why they can only pay lip-service, but I can't say a single thing about it.  I can't tell them what my path of life has been, I can't talk about my experiences, fears, struggles, joys, loves.  I can't even begin to express how our experiences are wrong for each other.   All I can do is just listen and let them tell me I'm a perverse and evil miscreant because I cannot believe and live as they do.  I understand why they believe and say that  but I can't say anything about my reality.  They won't listen.  They can't listen. They can't understand.    They are like little babies who only know the world as it exists inside of their heads.   I understand why they can't understand even if the words fail me in explaining it.  But I can only sit there for so long before I have been drained of my will to live.  I resent having to babysit these adults. I've got a life to live; I can't waste it away trying to open a dialog with unreason.  And yet I keep trying.  It's leading to insanity.

I have, for the most part, learned to no longer believe that I am a perverse and evil miscreant, but only when I'm rational.  But the strange nuanced and complex world of the human psyche can still be triggered into readopting those old beliefs, and often in subtle and gradual ways.  Before long, the mind has switched into a new consciousness, into another space, another reality where I only know, understand, and experience these irrational beliefs and nothing else.  If the head-space is irrational,  I can't think my way out of it.   I become the baby who must be babysat.  And now I'm the social burden that only a nuanced and complex pandering of my fragile ego can pull me out of.   And if I'm lucky, I'll get the empathy I need before I've convinced myself that I must die.  This is fucked up!

Nuanced social navigation is an unnecessarily activity when religious dogma is not imposed on a person's identity, thus warping the very reality that is our existence.  Life is not complex when religious dogma is not imposed into every aspect of it, especially aspects of life where it  cannot offer anything of value, which is all of it.

I would love to say that religious dogma is to blame for this social dysfunction but I can't.  All it really does is use us and abuse us and keeps us stuck in it.  There is no way around this.  We are like this because we evolved to be this way.  What I can only hope for is that we will eventually evolve out of it, so that the words 'nuance' and 'complex' can go back to being words to describe aesthetics rather than the navigation of social dysfunction.  But, religious dogma doesn't believe in evolution.

My dear, sweet, Kate, I love you!

Prelim Results of LGBT Mormon Survey

UPDATE (Jan 7, 2012): Version 1 of LDS SSA study newsletter now available


Some preliminary results are in for the Utah State University conducted LGBT Mormon Survey.

Please click here:
Preliminary Results of LDS-SSA Survey Now Available

(Previous reference:  LGBT Mormon Survey)

where no one wants to be

Why don't I write here anymore?  I think a part of me doesn't want to answer that question here.  It's not safe anymore.  After all this time, all these months, I've realized that I've been bullied to keeping my mouth shut about some aspects of my life.  The realm of my mind that needs a voice doesn't have an understanding ear.   And I'm sick and tired of trying to say what it is, without saying what it is.  But then, don't expect me to say it now that I've mentioned I'm sick of keeping it to myself.    

What I want to say, I want to say it to a person.  To their face.  I want to read their expressions and watch for sparks of understanding, insight, inspiration, and I want to hear what they have to say about what I said.  I want them to talk to me with the desire to know what I have to say about what they said.   I want to hear and feel the tone of the voice, read and experience the body language.  I want to be someone to them in real life, and I want them to be someone to me in the same living space. 

This medium of text, a string of words which only convey just a microcosm of information is cold, empty, shallow.  It is not the essence of the person; it's not the essence of me. These are just my words filtered through hours of thought and rewriting.  I don't talk like this; I don't express my essence this way. 

When someone experiences me in the flesh, they don't see the formality or the humor they saw in my writing.  I don't think that fast, I don't talk that fast.  I stumble with what to say, I constantly misspeak my thoughts and often repeat myself.  Many times the words I want to speak never seem to reach my mouth leaving me to frustratingly search, strain and grasp for them. Often in failure.  I know what they mean, I know what I want to convey, but that damn word won't come forward.   So I pause, think, ponder, clear my head, wait for the word to come to the surface.  "Ses...sees...serrs...serrr...serpe...serep...what the fuck is the word I'm looking for?"

This is not stuttering.   I'm vocalizing in an attempt to stir up the word to come forward. Perhaps, desperately, give the listener, who I would hope hasn't tuned me out already, a clue so they could offer a suggestion to trigger my memory.   All too often they have tuned me out or take my pause as a queue instead to change the subject or worse, walk away.

Things haven't always been this way.   But they are getting worse and I fear that in time I will have lost all ability. 

Nonetheless, with that frustration aside, speaking my mind, has given me more than any writing has done because it has connected me to people in deeper ways, given my mind a chance to reprogram all of its errant beliefs about body language, mannerisms, vocal tone, and the intent behind it, undoing years of social malignment from growing up with emotionally abusive parents up in a deeply judgmental culture.  It's allowed me to find a community of likeminded people who can relate to my ideas and feelings and given me perspective and companionship.  

But, only to a certain extent. 

I've come to a moment in my life where I have found that I can no longer speak an important aspect of my essence.  I've tried to speak it but I get blank stares, disapproving glances or just plain antagonistic comebacks to shut the fuck up about it.  Bullying.  This place, this blog, is actually not a safe space for me to explore those thoughts either.  For this aspect in my life,  I'm not in the right community.   I'm stuck, alone again, without a community for the thoughts in my head. 

But I do know where those communities are!  And even though I don't know the right words to use, I give it a try anyway.  And if it doesn't fall apart right away, or never starts because I'm not versed on using the correct language, it eventually falls apart anyway.  Why?  Because I'm too far away.   I'm not worth the trouble or the time because I'm too far away.   But what do they mean by that?  Many of them are willing to travel 5 to 10, 20 hours away, or even fly across the country.  But they won't for me?  Why?  Because I don't live in a city or an area of the country that interests them; I don't live in a place where there is a community.  It's just me.   And because of that, I seem to have nothing to offer them, despite my ability and willingness to travel to them.  So our communication ends. They no longer return my inquiries or express any interest in what I have to say.  No more email, no more chats. Alone, again.

That triggers me.  Anxiety, frustration, anger, hurt, rejection, abandonment...

The only thing left is to delete them from Facebook so I don't have to subject myself to a constant barge of all the great things they are posing about the community.  And as I'm quickly losing my ability to freely travel, I can't help but think to myself,  "what's the fucking point of any of it anymore?"

All, I've got right now is my isolation in my dead end job in a corner of the world where no one wants to be.  

Disillusion

It hurts.

When one set of friends talk total shit about another set of friends, 

it compels me to question the value that I am to people.

Especially If someone's value can be so easily tossed aside.

So, as I sit in stunned silence for a moment,

I am deeply afraid to say anything, and not sure what to say.  

What I fear, if I do say anything at all, is what my rage will say.

Which, if left unchecked, will make me the new object of scorn.

It all makes me feel isolated. 

More so than I already am.