THE REWARDS OF DESPAIR: ¨To live through horror, persecution and deprivation is not unknown to many peoples; indeed, LGBTQ people seem to be rather adept at learning how to survive in a hostile world.¨

¨Suffering does give us an insight into the human condition, with all its foibles and its hopes. And it does take courage and bravery to live through anxieties, and we are brave and courageous if we dare to look horror in the eye and scream, “I want to live,” as loudly as we can.¨ Desmond Rutherford 

¨Just screaming that you aren’t going to take it anymore, is not enough; you must demand to live. I know it can seem impossible…I’ve felt despair too. I’ve seen the horrors in the faces of others, reflected in and lurking behind their eyes, in the dungeons of their minds. And I am humbled when I have little, and they have nothing…but their determination to go on living.¨

¨The circumstances of one’s life are often overlooked as being a significant contributing factor for creative work, and yet adverse conditions might be used to dismiss the opportunity to create.

Trying to write, compose, or even live, whilst constrained by one catastrophe after another is, obviously, challenging. The uncertainty of not knowing if the bed you got out of this morning will still be yours tonight is not something that provides the most stable environment conducive to creativity.

It seems that we can recognize the emptiness of our own personal apocalypse, simply through our life’s circumstances...¨ please read it all,   HERE

·  Thanks to Desmond Rutherford
·  Thanks to LGBTQ Nation, sidebar

I spent sixteen years as a fundamental evangelical Christian, trying to get God to fix me: ¨I was really at the point where I was either going to be a gay woman, or a dead woman¨

‘They publicly prayed for my death’

By John Shore

[Here is one of the thirty letters from gay and lesbian Christians included in Wings on a Pig: Why the "Christian" View of Gays Doesn't Work, now available as a Kindle book and a NookBook.* I wanted to collect and present these stories, because I knew that -- especially in the aggregate -- they would obliterate the notion that one cannot be both gay and Christian. And if it's possible to be both entirely gay and entirely Christian, then the whole argument that God condemns homosexuality necessarily starts breaking apart. This is one of the thirty hammer blows in "Wings" that contributes to that demolition. And it certainly shows the anti-gay sentiment in our churches, in all of its ghastly, dysfunctional splendor. But more than that, it shows what one person, who refuses to be beaten by ignorance and bigotry, can do, just by keeping their vision focused not on hatred, but on love.]

¨I spent sixteen years as a fundamental evangelical Christian, trying to get God to fix me. I studied theology and Biblical counseling for three years in the hopes of discovering what I was doing wrong that was keeping God from answering my prayers to make me straight. I struggled with the guilt of same-sex attraction every day, and had no way of turning it off.

I was so despondent over my situation that I felt suicidal. I knew what was in store for me if I came out, but I was really at the point where I was either going to be a gay woman, or a dead woman. Thinking about my two beautiful children, I knew that they would prefer a gay mom. So I did what I had to do. I just had no idea how bad it would get before it started to get better.

I came out to my fundamental evangelical husband almost four years ago. Initially, he was loving and kind. However, the church knew something was wrong–and when he told them what it was, I never had another civil conversation with him. He came home from a meeting with the pastors, and announced that the church was starting “Biblical discipline proceedings” (construed from Matthew 18) against me, and that the elders of the church would be contacting me...¨ please read it all, it´s important to expose the dominionistlike ¨Biblical discipline¨ insanity, HERE

·  Thanks to Wings on a Pig: Why the "Christian" View of Gays Doesn't Work
·  Thanks to John Shore
·  Thanks to LGBTQ Nation, sidebar
·  Thanks to Views and Voices, HERE

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