The Cost of Being Gay
One of my blog friends,
Pomoprophet, has been going through an unbelievable
ordeal over the last month or so. Just reading the last several entries on his blog (which he had to make private for a period to try to stave off any more problems) left me choked up.
Pomo has been a teacher and football coach at a Christian school. He loved teaching, he loved football, and most of all, he loved his students. All of that came crashing down when someone he knew two years ago while he was an ex-gay called his school to tell them
Pomo was gay. It's
unbelievable, really, that a person could work so hard to try to destroy someone
else's life, but it happened, and now
Pomo is left to deal with the aftermath.
Pomo lost his job and lost the students and players he cared so much about. His post, "
Redemption," really tells the story of his last day with his students in heartbreaking detail. It's not just him that lost out, but his students, players, and coworkers too. It truly is unbelievable that something like this can still happen.
Please read
Pomo's story in his own words, on his blog. It's a story of betrayal, heartache, and in the end, awe-inspiring strength. Unfortunately its also a story of a Christian school getting it all wrong in the name of "love."
Pomo's moving on and finding strength in all of this, and maybe one day his story will help people realize how wrong this type of thing really is.
This Just In
I suck at Mondays. Ugh.
The Pros of Being Gay (Take Three)
It's time for part three of my series "The Pros of Being Gay." Click these links for part
one and
two.
- You can go to dance clubs shirtless!
Let me clarify by saying that I've never gone shirtless in a club, and have never really felt the urge to (my pale freckledness has made me somewhat image concious, especially when not at a beach or pool). But hey, if you like to be shirtless, gay clubs are the place to be!
"What if You Just Thought You Were Gay"
I'll start this post off with a little joke that made me laugh (or if you prefer, "it brought the
lulz"). "I like my women like I like my coffee...I don't like coffee." That's how Dan
Rothenberg used to start his comedy routines when he was a gay comic back in the day. The only problem is that he's straight now, and not because he hated being gay.
If you've been reading this blog, or really most of the blogs on my
blogroll, you should know about ex-gays and what the term means. Generally speaking, these are people that have decided (usually for moral or religious reasons), they no longer want to be gay. So, they work to either change their orientation, reduce their same-sex attractions, or simply avoid sexual contact with the same sex. I'm being simplistic, but you get the idea.
I've been researching, studying, and reading all about the ex-gay lifestyle (good one, huh?) for something in the neighborhood of 5 years now, and I'm fairly familiar with it. But, Dan
Rothenberg, and lots of other guys out there, according to Details Magazine Online, turn out straight without ever going the ex-gay route. I guess you could call them formerly gay, or maybe just straight. The
article over at Details discusses 4 former gays that never really were ex-gays. These aren't folks that tried to be straight or sought out some religious or political organization to help them solve their same-sex desires--they simply discovered that they were attracted to women and not men one day.
The idea sounds a bit weird to me, if for nothing else because I'm one of those Kinsey 10 people...I have no attraction to the opposite sex at all, as much as I've tried. And, of course, the first thing that came to mind for me was bisexuality. The author over at Details, though, dismisses that idea, saying the men were, in fact gay.
Intriguing, to say the least, but then I read on, and the bisexual dismissal started to sound just a little fishy. Even if I let the bisexual idea slide, experimentation, rather than orientation, seems to be the most likely reasoning to explain this phenomenon.
Let me explain:
The first person in the article (the comedian I mentioned above) "discovered" that he was "a bit of a boy
magnet" in his early 20's after performing his stand-up routine in a gay area of San Francisco. He goes on to claim that he found hooking up easy for the first time in his life. So, before his 20's, it sounds like he'd never leaned gay, but realized he could get some action if he were. The article mentions the comedian is 35 and married for 7 years but realized 5 years before that that he probably wasn't gay. That made him early 20's when he thought he was gay and 23 when he decided he wasn't. Not a real strong argument for gay turning straight. Sounds more like straight guy experiments, realizes it's not for him, and then goes back to being straight again.
The second guy isn't quite as easy to categorize, but he did say that he was "all about girls" until he hooked up with his first guy. Basically, he hooked up with a guy for whatever reason, and liked it, but he was never not attracted to girls. Most gay guys don't describe themselves as being "all about women."
The third guy describes chasing women post-college as a "chore" and realized when he went to gay bars he "got hit on like crazy." According to the story, he convinced himself that dating men would be easier than dating women, so he gave it a shot with 2 guys for a couple of months each. Basically, he decided it wasn't for him and he went back to women. Experimentation strikes again.
The fourth guy says he thought he was gay from early on but had to fantasize about women to achieve an orgasm. I'm not really sure what was going on with him, but not being able to have sex with a man pretty much means you're not gay, regardless of what you've convinced yourself.
So that's the article in a nutshell. I'm not claiming that no one has ever thought they were gay (or even been gay) and then all of the sudden realized they were straight (hey, I've seen plenty of stories where it happened the other way around), but let's not go jumping the gun here. We can't forget that bisexuality happens and experimentation happens. Whether or not you agree with "trying out" both sides, just hooking up or even dating the opposite sex, doesn't immediately mean you're gay, as much as this articles seems to think it does.
P90X
So, I've been putting off writing about this, even though I kind of feel like a broken record in real life about it. But, I've been doing this at-home workout video (well series of videos really) called
P90X recently, and I basically talk about it non-stop. Ask J. He's beyond sick of hearing me talk about it.
I may not have mentioned that I'm an infomercial junky. I watch them a lot. Somehow the magical powers of the devices and programs the "shows" are selling just draws me in (I love how a lot of them pretend to be real shows, btw). But, I don't just watch them, I sometimes purchase them too. Between my brother and me, we probably have close to a dozen things that have at one time or another been on an infomercial (although we usually wait until we see them at a store and buy them there).
It all started in high school when we bought some program for improving your memory. It was cool, and it worked, but we lost interest fairly soon. Later it was the more traditional products. I have the EZ touch razor, which is this little battery-operated razor that is great for trimming sideburns and nose hair, and I still use it regularly. My brother has these little tupperware containers that fit into this handy little spinner, so it keeps them all neat and tidy. They work, but they're kind of small. I've bought some little special pet brush that doesn't work so well, we have a juicer, in college our mom gave us this little device that allows you to microwave eggs. A few Christmases ago we got a food dehydrator as a re-gift from my dad after he and my step-mom got each other the same thing (now that I think about it, maybe this runs in the family), and we have a magic bullet, basically a personal blender, which is really cool.
I'm sure there are more, but you get the idea. Some of the products work, some don't, but basically I'm a sucker for a good marketing campaign, even if a lot of times I just watch. So, the newest one is P90X, which is, like I mentioned, an at-home workout routine. The program is 11 videos that last 90 days. So here I am at day 30 of the program, and I can tell you that so far it's pretty good, and I'm definitely seeing results. Granted, working out for an hour to an hour and a half 6 days a week for 4 weeks and not having a single hamburger (or really any junk food at all save 3 pieces of pizza) is going to do that to you, but so far so good. I can tell a difference, and J seems pretty believable when he tells me he can too (but then again, isn't that what boyfriends are for?).
So, 60 days left. Maybe if I get really ambitious and really impressed with my results I'll post some before and after pictures up here. Until then, you really should look at some of the results people have posted on the
message boards. These are just pictures average people have posted to show their progress and success, not the regular marketing stuff, and a lot of them are truly amazing.
Bye for now, I'm off to work out. Ok, just kidding, I already did it today and tomorrow is my off day, which I'll be spending at an all-day pool party. Did I mention I hate working out? It's not going to be the easiest 60 days, but it can't be that bad, right?
Shooting at Gay-Friendly Church
I was out of town at a family reunion in South Texas this weekend and through part of the week, and I'll admit I haven't been watching the news (or reading it online) as much as I usually do, but how on earth did I miss this?
A man walked into a gay-friendly church in Knoxville, TN, during Sunday services last Sunday and opened fire,
killing two people and injuring at least 7 others, 5 seriously. The shooter later told police that he had intended to kill everyone inside the church, and many in the community believe the gay-friendliness of the church is a possible motive. What an unbelievable tragedy.
Had this been a school shooting, I feel like I would have seen high level news footage for weeks. Much like schools, people go to church expecting to feel safe and be protected from the dangers of the outside world. So, did I just miss all the news coverage of this shooting, or did it not get the coverage we've come to expect from similar mass shootings?
Incidentally, neither of the two victims that lost their lives were gay. Not that that matters, I just thought it was worth mentioning.
Check out
Box Turtle Bulletin for tons of coverage on this tragedy.
