Religion And Sexuality

nakedguy77

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If this is wrong place to post this I apologize I see play politics forum but I do not see one for religious questions

I'm wondering if you gentlemen have had any issues with past religious experiences with your current sexuality and drive the reason I ask I grew up hit a home that identified as Christian to be more specific it was the Baptist flavor of that sector when I was young I also identified as a Baptist and for many years refuse to look at p*** because I did not want to see a man's penis and I thought it was a sin against God to see people having sex now obviously there was a major life-changing event which made me rethink my religious preference and since then I am completely walked away from all of that and I now consider myself to be an atheist because I do not see any evidence at all for higher power since that time I have been able to explore sexuality and realize you tell me things I was missing out on and how many things I truly enjoy doing not just by myself but with my partner

My wife grew up in a home where they practice Jehovah Witness and she is not big on any of the holidays even though she does not practice that religion herself however there are things that she will not do just because of how it's been ingrained in her head and she does not want to walk away from it I am not going to force her to walk away from it that choice is hers and hers alone however things I enjoy doing she is not real big into do it

So the big question here is have you guys had similar issues and if so how did you overcome them or is it still something you're working on
 
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51arledge

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Oh boy, do I know this territory!
I grew up Southern Baptist in North Carolina where the first question a newcomer was asked was, "Where do you go to church?" I was also being groomed and trained to be a church musician. We were in church multiple times per week.

But I knew by age 13-14 that I was into men not women, and I heard the "hellfire and brimstone " sermon many times.

I got into a college as far away as I could reasonably manage with a goal of exploring my sexuality there, but I was 20 years old before my first sex happened. And then I fell quickly into alcoholism to deal with the shame & guilt. I had stopped going to church but I still had the ingrained belief system.

Finally, at age 32 I got into 12 step recovery programs and was encouraged to define my "higher power " in what ever way worked for me. 37 years later, I'm still an atheist. I defined my spirituality without a "god" and in terms that encouraged me to be comfortable in my own body.

I'm a product of a universe that is "home" and I need to feel comfortable at "home", so I can kick my shoes off, be naked when appropriate and live according to my values (which still include kindness, respect for others, compassion, charity, love...)
 

nakedguy77

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That's the thing that really bugs me at the religious indoctrination they got to realize what it does to young boys and girls and how it affects their adult life that kind of thing it just it makes me sick
 
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Now I am absolutely convinced that the main source of hatred in the world is religion and organised religion. Absolutely convinced of it. Most who follow any of the many religions are afraid of the dark and afraid to die, believing in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated any scientist can see through them. The Quran is heavily plagiarised from both the old and the new testaments, and now we have the Pope saying same sex relationships are okay; yet for many years it was not.

To answer your question on “how to deal with it,” tell them to fuck off. I’m an anti-theist and I don’t need a celestial dictatorship watching over me and praying for my thought crimes.
 

halcyondays

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Yeah. Roman Catholic. Religious education K-12. Even wanted to be a priest for a while when I first became an altar boy in middle school. Because of that I read the Bible inside and out. (If you read it backwards it's the voice of Satan! :laughing:) Discovered all the conflicts and contradictions within and between the books and between them and the theology. By 15 I was a non-believer. Studying world religions and their scriptures & theologies bared all their ugliness too.

Indoctrination. It's a fancy name for brainwashing.

The sinister thing is that's done to us primarily by our parents with love and affection. Makes it hard to resist and criticize. In that respect all children are victims of Stockholm syndrome except that our parents didn't kidnap us. They didn't have to.

Parents get to raise their kids almost any way they want in any religion they want. The result is a world of damaged, guilt & shame ridden adults when it comes to sexuality. It doesn't end sexuality it just drives sex lives underground and causes all kinds of problems up to and including sex trafficking, cultural rape and murder.

I've become anti-theist as well. By law parents/family and other adults should not be able to teach or indoctrinate children in religion. Secular education about all religions should be taught exposing thoroughly the good the bad the ugly and beautiful. Then they can choose a religion when they become adults if they want.

I've been a part of the secret sex lives of many. I am currently. I feel no guilt about it. I feel sad that some of my partners have but I cannot free them from what causes their guilt or shame. They have to work that out themselves. Some don't even want to. The fact that it's culturally forbidden makes it hotter for them.

Welcome to freedom brother. :cool:
 

nakedguy77

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I became ordained just over a decade ago. While doing that is when i realized that the training was all the nice parts. Do i read it. Front to back. Several times. I pissed my professors off with my essays about the justifications under gods law on the morals of owning women and children and how to properly beat them for different infractions of family to gods law. They tried to rip mr open for that but i got the head of the department involved and he could find nothing that was taken out of context.

That was when it all clicked what was truly going on. It made me sick. I am still ordained, and can legally preform weddings. So that part i have used.
 

halcyondays

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I became ordained just over a decade ago. While doing that is when i realized that the training was all the nice parts. Do i read it. Front to back. Several times. I pissed my professors off with my essays about the justifications under gods law on the morals of owning women and children and how to properly beat them for different infractions of family to gods law. They tried to rip mr open for that but i got the head of the department involved and he could find nothing that was taken out of context.

That was when it all clicked what was truly going on. It made me sick. I am still ordained, and can legally preform weddings. So that part i have used.

lol... when I was nine or ten I discovered slavery on the same page as the ten commandments (Exodus 20 & 21). When I asked my parents about it they looked at each other like oh boy how do explain this one to him?

At age five I heard the Adam & Eve story in detail at school for the first time. When I got home I queried my parents.

Me: Adam and Eve were the first two humans, right?

Parents: Right.

Me: They had two sons, right?

Parental units: Right. Cain & Abel.

Me: Both got married, right?

Parents: Yes.

Me: Then where did their wives come from? Wouldn't they have to be the daughters of Adam & Eve?

Parents: (And this was the first of many times I would hear it) Not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken literally.

:laughing:
 

nakedguy77

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No one I agree and there are some good lessons in the Bible but there's also good life lessons in the Book of Mormon and I've also found some decent things in the Quran I've also read some of the Hindu texts and they also have some good life lessons the problem is so many people do take it literally and then raise their families in that fashion and then try to force their beliefs on people who don't want it
 

Sagittarius84

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Atheism helped me immensely. Prior to that, id have probably been described as a budding agnostic that was slowly picking up on the tenets of control interweaved in most religion's approaches to sexuality and the morality of sexual acts.
Perhaps I'd see things differently if I had come up in different or polytheistic ideologies, but I think id have come to the same conclusion within the entirety of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.
 

halcyondays

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No one I agree and there are some good lessons in the Bible but there's also good life lessons in the Book of Mormon and I've also found some decent things in the Quran I've also read some of the Hindu texts and they also have some good life lessons the problem is so many people do take it literally and then raise their families in that fashion and then try to force their beliefs on people who don't want it

Problem is that kids don't have a choice. Nor do they know they're being indoctrinated. It's instinctual for human children to trust what parents and other adults tell them. By the time they become adults they can't or won't think outside the box of that indoctrination without great difficulty. It may take a lifetime to undo if ever.

As a teen I laughed when I first heard the term Recovering Catholic. I was one.

St. Augustine said give us your children and we'll have them for life. St. Francis Xavier said the same thing a thousand years later. They weren't the first, only or last in history to say let us train your kids what to believe and how to think and they'll be that way for life.

Beauty in scriptures? Sure but they're also sexist, racist, classist, ethnocentric, tribalistic, unforgiving, threatening, violent, homicidal and even fratricidal which soils the beauty.
 

Infernal

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I walked away from my faith for many reasons. The first step was when I came out to my mother. Aside from telling me she loved me and that wouldn't change, she asked if I understood that her faith told her that homosexuality was a sin. I told her that it was her problem, not mine. Being gay wasn't just about sex and I refused to believe in something that considers my love for another human being a sin. She never had to make peace with me, but she did make peace with her own father. She decided that her love for me was stronger than her faith because that I was what was most important to her.

Many years later I went to church with a friend who was exploring different faiths. It was what I had grown up with but vastly changed over the years. The priest's wife drove up in her Mercedes and started to tell us about her kitchen remodel, and how pretty her new gold-plated kitchen faucets were. Meanwhile, we're standing outside while homeless people are pushing their carts by. Later, while her husband was performing mass, she passed the collection plate while encouraging people to give generously. I stood up and left. I haven't gone back to a church service for myself since then and that was 20 years ago. Now the only time I go into a church is for a wedding, baptism, or funeral. I only go because those services aren't for me.

Over the years I've watched family members excuse their own bad behavior by finding justification in their faith. He wasn't sucking face with his son's cub scout den mother, he was comforting her in a "Christian" way. He just happened to have his tongue down her throat and his hand on her breast to hold her close. He didn't get that woman pregnant out of wedlock. They were dating. He had needs, and masturbation would have been a worse sin. His first marriage wasn't a real marriage in the eyes of god, even though a high-ranking priest performed the rites. It was all too much nonsense so I said fuck it and walked away. I don't need those people dictating my morals when they don't follow their own beliefs.