You were recommended to me by
an acquaintance familiar with your column and podcast. I am a
20-year-old male, and as such have certain desires that almost all
20-year-old males have (desires of a sexual nature). However, I am
deeply religious. Religion has been for me a source of strength in my
times of weakness, a rock in the times of storm, and above all a home
to return to when I have lost my path. In the teachings of my
particular religion, to indulge the particular desires I am
experiencing will condemn me to fates too grotesque to mention. I am
rational enough to realize that there is no way that I can “pray away”
these desires. My question is this: How does one prepare for a life of
celibacy and solitude (as that is what is required of me to remain a
member of this particular faith)? Based on what my friend has told me,
I know you have little respect for religious practices and beliefs.
However, these desires are not exactly something I can talk about with
other members of my spiritual community. And while I am currently
seeking counseling related to other issues, I was wondering what a
so-called expert on sex and sexuality would have to say.
Clever Acronyms Escape Me
Get over yourself, faggot.
If it’s possible for you to act on your
unnamed-but-easily-identified desires in an ethical manner—if you
desire to do whatever it is you desire to do with consenting adults who
desire to take their turn doing it to you—this so-called expert
on sexuality thinks you should crawl down off that cross and find
yourself a boyfriend already. (“Pray away” the gay? I’m guessing you’re
Christian, probably Catholic.) And if you experience a moment’s anxiety
the first time you stick your ass in the air—pull the Jesus stick
out first!—just remind yourself that things have been crawling on
top of each other and madly humping away for 850 million years.
Sex came first, then humanity (200,000ish years ago), then religion
came along tens of thousands of years after that. Which may explain why
religion, when pitted against sex (really old) and human nature (pretty
old), always loses. Always.
If you’re on the cross, CAEM, it’s because
you put yourself up there. Which means you’re not some poor mortal
trapped between a cosmic rock and an existential hard place; you’re
just another closeted cocksucker with a martyr complex.
Look, kiddo, you get one life, one chance at
happiness. If it gives you a spiritual semi to fantasize about a God
who created you gay but forbids you to act on your emotional and sexual
attraction to men, knock your damn self out. But you can have a
boyfriend and Jesus, too—look at the pope—you just have to
do what people have been doing since the first terrified idiot invented
the first bullshit religion: improvise. Find yourself a
brand-new religion or sect, or jettison the bits of your current faith
that don’t work for you. If you know anything about the history of
Christianity—and it sounds like you don’t—then you know
that the revisions began before the body was cold. No reason to stop
now.
And finally, CAEM, there is no God—you
do realize that, right? No hell below us, above us only sky, etc.
I’m an only child, male, born
to a single mom. I’m about to turn 21, and I’ve been with a great guy
for over a year. I may be in love. We both have steady jobs, and we
want to move in together. He came out to his parents after we started
dating, and now I think it’s my turn. Problem is, I don’t know how to
break it to my mother. She’s a tiny Mexican woman who isn’t afraid of
smacking me. I’m afraid to tell her. She always talks bad about the gay
lifestyle because she considers herself Christian, although not the
churchgoing kind. When and how do I break the news that she’s not
getting grandkids from me?
Her Only Male Offspring
Your mom is my favorite kind of “Christian.”
She’s not the “churchgoing kind,” as that would require some personal
sacrifice on her part (of her Sunday mornings, at least). And she
certainly didn’t let her faith interfere with her sex life (I’m
assuming your conception was something short of immaculate*). But when
it comes to other people’s lives, when it comes to your sexuality and mine, HOMO, then her Christian values kick into
high gear. How convenient.
Okay, HOMO, lots of us have come out to
hostile moms and dads and watched in awe as they morphed into the
loving, supportive parents we didn’t know they were capable of being.
For some parents the process is quick, for others it’s slow, but it
can’t start until you come out.
Now here’s when you come out: The sooner the
better—but don’t come out to your mother while she has the power
to harm you, i.e., if you’re dependent on her for a place to live or if
she’s paying for your education. And here’s how: by U.S. mail. Don’t
give your mother the chance to smack you. Write her a letter, include
the contact info for the PFLAG chapter in your area, and tell her
you’ll discuss this with her after she attends a meeting, not
before.
Finally, when I came out to my mother, the
first thing out of her mouth was, “I don’t ever want to meet any
boyfriends.” She said the word “boyfriend” like it had been
dipped in shit. On her deathbed, my mother told me to tell my boyfriend
that she loved him (“like a daughter”). My mom came around, HOMO, and
so can yours. But not until you tell her.
My husband and I got married
recently. His first pick for best man was his older brother, “St.
Paul,” a seminary student studying to become a priest. When my husband
asked, he started crying and said he had hoped my husband would return
to the church. We are both liberal ex-Catholics. For a wedding gift,
Paul gave us a book called Man and Woman He Created Them: A Theology of
the Body, 700 pages of dogma by JP2. In the five years I’ve known him,
he has rarely said more than one sentence to me, yet he speaks boldly
in favor of the church’s most conservative doctrines at family
gatherings. How much of his bullshit do I have to deal with? I’m a huge
fan of yours, and I know that you’ve had some issues reconciling your
own life with loved ones within the Catholic Church. Your advice would
be appreciated.
The Schismatic
Man… so intolerant.
I’m talking about you, TS, not your
brother-in-law. Don’t get me wrong: Your brother-in-law sounds like
total douchedrizzle. But he has a right to his opinions and a right to
express them. You have a right to your opinions, too, of course, and
just as much a right to express them. When St. Paul goes off on
premarital sex or the ordination of women or the gays and their Prada
loafers, smile and tell him he’s full of shit. You don’t see him too
often, right? Tolerate his bullshit—that’s what family
does—and count your blessings.
And don’t complain about every word that
comes out of his mouth and then gripe about how little he has to
say to you.
* Note to Bill Donohue: Yes, I’ve confused
the virgin birth with the Immaculate Conception. So sue me,
motherfucker.
i love when we get theme weeks! keep up the great work, dan.
First?
Great as always, Dan! Telling off Christians is just what I needed this week to vent some frustration — now I do it vicariously through you.
Man, you are on a tear today Savage! Love the advice, agree with so so much of it, but couldn’t help but notice the tone – cranky!
CAEM should go to seminary and kill two birds with one stone…
What’s the difference between virgin birth and the Immaculate Conception?
Virgin birth… I have to laugh.
Dan — yay for the Bill Donohue joke. It makes me consider forgiving you for all the space you waste encouraging dumbasses to ascribe stupid meanings to stupid people’s names.
Dan, thank you very much for your advice to CAEM. People have been making up their own religion since religions have existed. I love to reference the bible as the “Big book of pick and choose”. Gays are bad but you can’t sell your daughters? Why follow one of those and not the other?
Also, as a heads up to CAEM – your religion clearly isn’t a “rock in a time of storm” right now.
Dan, anyone as smart as you, who only PRETENDS to confuse the Virgin Birth with the Immaculate Conception (brought to you by Pius IX in 1854, btw) deserves every accolade possible. You go, Girl!!!!
ps As a half-convinced, (non-practicing) raised Protestant with seriously laissez-faire Hindu/Buddhist/futurist tendencies, it gives me great pleasure to inform you that I have made a part-time career of betting my Catholic* friends that they are wrong in thinking that the Immaculate conception refers to the virgin birth of Christ. It’s so satisfying to get hammered on cocktails bought for me by rueful catholic buddies…. try it you’ll like it!
* TRIVIA NOTE! Oxford Dictionary definition of small-c “catholic” (what the word meant BEFORE the Church of Rome did its thing): all-embracing; of wide sympathies or interests; of interest or use to all, universal.
hmmm….
Nice job on the religion smackdown, esp. re: CAEM’s letter! As a militant atheist with lots of deeply religious friends, I have always tried to be tolerant of belief systems. However, over the last few years I have become more tuned into all the harm that religion does to the world and think that the world would be better off without it. I’m glad there is a widely read advice columnist out there who is willing to tell it like it is: Religion is useless.
@ Brandon G.
Immaculate Conception: Most christians believe that Mary was conceived/born without sin — helps lend credibility to the Jesus’ mother thing. Remember that they believe that everyone, at birth, inherits Adam and Eve’s original sin that the committed by listening to the ‘talking snake’ as Bill Maher irreverently refers to it. The “immaculate conception” gives Mary a loophole so that Jeezus isn’t born with sin too. Make sense? Not really? Bingo.
Virgin birth: this is where JC is born to Mary without her having “known” a man. Don’t laugh, it happens. Look up the term parthenogeneis and the lizard genus Cnemidophorous as an example. It doesn’t happen in HUMANS, but it happens.
Better yet, semenary!
oops, typo: that’s “parthenogenesis”
Wow–I’m an anti-religious homophobophobe, yet I thought that first response was stupidly harsh. Maybe there’s missing info, or did Dan assume this guy is gay, simply because the guy wrote him specifically? There are actually religious groups that act like it’s a huge sin to even have sexual thoughts of a hetero nature. Or how do we know the guy isn’t fighting his desire to have sex with dogs? Dan needs to learn tricks from the sneaky christians; if the hell-bound heathen peeps in and says “Hi, I have a problem…” smile and welcome him and slowly brainwash him. They’re smart enough to know not to fling poo, why isn’t Dan?
Well telling CAEM there is no God isn’t going to help him beleive that he can have God and still be who he is. I think it might be better to give him some religious sources that are affirming of who he is. I’m ex-catholic, now a member of the United Church of Christ, and I think having a church family who supports you can be good for people who are religious. http://www.ucc.org/lgbt/.
What if CAEM is a pedophile? or something similarly disgusting? I find it hard to believe that he wouldn’t admit to being gay to DAN SAVAGE in an anonymous letter. I think he’s worried about something else.
Also, I’m sick of all this crap from religious folks for whom religion is therapy, or has use value – his religion is his rock in times of trouble? Whatever. How about believing out of conviction rather than need, rather than weakness, rather than desire for community? You can get similar help by joining a book club.
ok 1st of all CAEM is most definitely queer… I am big fat cunt munching dyke that was born a scared little catholic school girl who was voted most likely to become a nun… 10 years ago CAEM’s letter could have come from me… and at that time even if I had be GUARANTEED anonymity I would not EVER have typed or spoken or whispered the word lesbian… it makes no sense so don’t try to make sense of it… but let me tell you (especially CAEM if he reads this) my life has been 100% better since I jumped off the cross, and dove into my wife’s bed.
Actually, there HAVE been documented virgin births…but only if you define “virgin” as “no vaginal intercourse.”
The most hilarious one was reported in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology and related the case of a young woman with congenital absence of the vagina who was stabbed in the stomach by a jealous suitor who caught her giving head to someone else…..and was delivered by C-section 9 months later. Apparently semen in a stomach with a stab wound can travel through the abdomen to the ovaries. Astonishing but true — you can look it up.
Another was documented in British law in an aristocratic divorce. Lady X accused her husband of impregnating her via “Hunnish practices” and produced a doctor to testfy that her hymen was intact at her delivery. Her marriage was annulled on grounds that it was never consummated.
Very funny this week on the column and the podcast!
I recommend if anyone wants to laugh until they cry/pee themselves/literally ROTFLtheirAO to listen to the call and response from this week’s podcast where the guy calls in about the dog licking the cum off his hand. That has to be the funniest thing I have ever heard.
Great advice. Special note to CAEM – assuming you are interested in lawful, consenting activities, (which I am sure you are), remember that feeling a little guilty and deviant, about your perversions are definitely part of the fun – part of what makes them hot. Come off the cross but don’t forget about it completely. I’m telling you, I wish I had a strict religious upbringing to contemplate while my wife puts me through my decidedly unholy paces.
I would reccomend the website http://www.gaychristian.net for anybody trying to reconcile conservative christianity with being gay. It’s not very liberal, but I think liberal gay christians have an easier time finding fellowship, because they can just go to the nearest unitarian church.
Thank you #17, I think we’ve all learned something there. That may be my all-time favorite post on this site.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict that one day in the future we see CAEM and TS’s brother-in-law on the youth pastor watch.
CAEM is almost certainly not gay, he identifies “certain desires that almost all 20-year-old males have.” There’s only one desire that almost all 20-year-old males have in common, and that’s to stick their junk into 20-year-old vaginas.
whoa
I enjoyed the theme as well, but that first response was a little on the harsh side. Not that I don’t think what was said needed to be said, but couldn’t it have been said in (at least in the start) a slightly more gentle fashion. Clearly Dan likes to vent, and just as clearly we all like to read/listen when he does, but I have to believe that helping the person asking for advice is a goal in there somewhere. I can’t see this advice bringing anything but despair. I’m willing to believe that CAEM (gay or not) is going to have to suffer some despair before he finds happiness (don’t we all?), but I think that fact could have been delivered with a little more empathy or at least sympathy. Sure, maybe he’s hurting because he’s being pigheaded, but it’s not entirely by choice, and anyway who cares? He’s hurting. Don’t people who are hurting and reach out for advice in such a polite and careful manner deserve a little compassion?
Right on, Dan, to the religion sufferer.
He says he is “rational enough…,” and that he will roast in hell or whatever “in the teachings of my particular religion….”
If you’re so rational, then you should realize that you won’t roast in hell BECAUSE your cult teaches that. You will either roast in hell or you will not roast in hell, whether or not you believe it and whether or not your cult teaches it.
Hint: the briefest reflection will make clear to you that no one is going to roast for anything, because no one is going anywhere. This is all there is!
P.S. Your priest knows this, too.
Great column. I appreciate (and share) your view on religion. Though I must say, I do have some problem with gays (or adulterers, or whoever) who insist on reconciling their Christianity with their lifestyle. The truth is, the bible is pretty explicitly against these things, so I think the honest thing to do is decide whether you want to believe the bible and forgo your lifestyle, or indulge in your natural desires and reject the faint consolation of organized religion. The religious gays I have met seem almost pathologically unhappy–like the Jew that’s desperately trying to parse Mein Kampf so he’s not left out of the Nazi community. Seems to me that Christianity + Homosexuality= Misery, though I feel for all those born into situations where they must make a choice.
Michael Carlos (10) – I don’t think “most Christians” believe in the Immaculate Conception of Mary. This is a recent dogma which the Vatican pulled out of its ass. Absurd, obviously, like all the other crap they extract from up there. Protestants recognize it for the nonsense that it is.
Mr Me (25), the Bible is not exactly clear on gays. There was no word for gay back then and the words used in the ancient Greek and Hebrew text have no equivalent word today, even if scholars all agreed on exactly what the word meant. Most of the anti-gay passsages are modified to suit the purposes of the translators, who had their own axe to grind. King James was more interested in pretty words than exact translations and it’s gotten worse since then.
Granted, most fundamentalists/Mormons/Catholics/JW/whoever I’m leaving out have to have someone to hate and vilify, but they’re not getting it from the Bible, just their own translation and hate-infused lens.
Oh, STFU, Deleanore @ #3. “Cranky”?? WTF?? When he’s dealing with the kind of shit that has oppressed men and women for thousands of years, don’t you think Dan has the right to adopt any kind of tone he wants? Besides, it’s his f*cking column. Got a problem with his tone? Then — duh! — don’t f*cking read his columns, dumbass!
Bill Hicks said it best.
Pissed-off redneck: Hey buddy we’re Christians and what you said offended us!
Bill: So? Forgive me then.
Why do some people assume that anyone who is religious is therefore also a weak, stupid, blind, narrowminded sheep? That’s an extremely intolerant and divisive generalization.
I am a Christian. I was born in NY, but live in the south. I go to a Baptist church down here that is filled with … gasp … liberals, homosexuals, environmentalists, and feminists. I know, right? Jesus is totally going to firebomb the place.
Dan, religious people ARE NOT ALL THE SAME. Yes, some of us are jerks. You know what? Some of us aren’t. Stop being so willfully ignorant. And you have no more proof that there is no God than I do that there is. It’s an opinion based on faith or the lack thereof.
CAEM – God made you and God loves you. God gave us these bodies and these hormones and these minds. Jesus never said one word about homosexuality and didn’t say much more about heteroseuxal sex. Jesus talks about love, compassion, unselfishness, and joy. You can enjoy sex. You can enjoy your body. Don’t use sex to hurt people or control people. Don’t use sex to forget God. Keep praying, but don’t pray for God to remove your desire … He won’t because He loves you.
Guess you had a choice to either go gently on him and read him the errors of his ways, in the hope he would draw his own conclusion, or give him the harsh truth! Still not sure how I would have responded, but loved the pope angle. I’d have mentioned how the Borgias used sex, adultery, nepotism, cunning, intrigue to get their family members promoted to bishop, cardinal and pope! Or mentioned Pope Julius III 17 yr old ‘Ganymede’… So much for “fates too grotesque to mention.”
On second thought, I’d have given plastered him as well!
Attitude Devant [sic]: please provide citations for your claim. I am unable to find a record of a woman with MRKH conceiving through a stomach wound. That seems extremely unlikely to me, since (a) I don’t think sperm would survive the extremely acidic stomach conditions, since only the hardiest bacteria can do so; (b) any wound extensive enough to provide a pathway between the stomach and ovaries would lead to such massive internal bleeding, infection and trauma that, even if the mother survived, it’s hard to see how she could possibly bring a child to term; (c) I fail to see how such a horrific event could possibly be considered “hilarious,” even if mother and child both survived it.
While conception resulting from anal sex (through an EXTERNAL pathway; semen can drip) is not unknown, it seems at least as likely that Lady X simply paid off the doctor, or fooled him with a false hymen, as women have been taking advantage of male ignorance of female sexual anatomy by doing for thousands of years.
Dan,
My mother is coming for a visit next week, I hope you don’t mind if I borrow your line:
“But when it comes to other people’s lives, when it comes to your sexuality and mine, HOMO, then her Christian values kick into high gear.”
Not that she reads Savage Love or anything, but I’ll change it to sound like it’s coming from me.
Thanks.
@CAEM If you believe in a personal God then there’s two possibilities.
1) God made you the you are and loves you that way. If you’re Christian, you’ll see that God doesn’t have much to say about who you love, only how you approach love. It’s his followers that have something to say about who. But, frankly they’re a bunch of judgmental, fearful, powermad humans and you don’t have any particular obligation to listen to them. If you’re not acting on your desires in a way that hurts others, if you’re doing so being mindful of a need to treat your partner as you would want to be treated, and if you are acting with love, you should be cool with God. It’s up to you to decide whether you have a religious obligation not to celibacy but to testifying to your fellow believers about the faultiness of their assumptions.
2) You and your religious authorities are right, and God made you and some other people in such a way that you desire love and intimacy but only in a way that you’re forbidden to express. If that’s true then…that’s incredibly, pointlessly cruel. I don’t think a being like that deserves my love and loyalty, or yours. And if you’re worried about torments too grotesque to mention…the other option is doing what the bully wants and then spending the rest of eternity at his side watching him throw a fit and punish anyone like you that didn’t cut themselves off from love. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound like any paradise I’d want to be a part of.
@Shoshannah – false hymen?? Explain, please!
I find the alternative more likely, since I work at Planned Parenthood, where we’ve had girls with intact hymens come in pregnant through dry-humping, for lack of a better term. And in one case, where the girl’s religion made it important for her to have an intact hymen before marriage (I know, I know – tampons, horseback riding, but it was still her request) the doctor was able to perform the procedure without disturbing that sacred little flap-o’-skin. Not trying to say anything about the Virgin Mary now…
@octopodes: right on.
For the record – I’m your average liberal British girl. I don’t go to church, I haven’t made up my mind about my spiritual beliefs yet, I’m a big fan of all the science stuff. I’m not defending religion from a personal standpoint; my mother used to be Catholic and my dad is Jewish. I’ve seen the kind of intolerant dickweeds religion can spit out.
I just don’t see how an atheist who goes “what, you’re *religious*? Pfft, then there’s no point in talking to *you*, as you’re self-evidently stupid” is any different to the Christian who goes “what? *Not* religious? Well, there’s clearly no help for you; you’ll burn in hell”. It’s the same kind smug intolerant bullshit, no matter which side it’s coming from.
@15, if CAEM is a ped, that might not necessarily be at odds with his religion. Homosexuality, on the other hand…
Shoshannah (@32, and sic to you, too!) the case was published in the letters section of BJOG in the 80s and was required reading in my residency. The hilarity came from the details of the case which took place in rural South Africa, and appears to have been treated in a matter-of-fact way by all concerned. Indeed if memory serves the young woman ended up marrying one of the young men (in Africa childbearing cements a family union), and there was an exchange of livestock between the three families to settle any hard feelings. I’ll try and dig up the actual citation, but it’s going to be a hard slog, given their computerized data base is of recent origin.
Since you know the acronym of the mom’s condition, then surely your knowledge of anatomy will demonstrate you that one or two stab wounds to the belly, anterior to posterior, could perforate a full stomach without damaging an artery. As to whether or not sperm could survive stomach acid, that’s the wonder of the story—apparently they did (but then the author makes it clear that they weren’t in the stomach long before she was stabbed). BJOG at one time was a great source for weird and wonderful stories like this.
As for the British case, of COURSE she could have lied. That is, in fact, my point. What makes you think people aren’t lying about Mary too? On the other hand, I have treated a pregnant woman, a Saudi, with an imperforate hymen, not FGN, so there you are: life is truly stranger than our textbooks let on.
p.s What’s with the “sic?” Unfamiliar with ballet? Google it!
I’m not sure what in CAEM’s letter implied he was gay; I know quite a few people with such conservitive upbringings (I live in the bible belt) that ANY expression or feeling of sexuality brings on personal guilt and fear of damnation. After all, he did say they were “desires that almost all 20-year-old males have.” I presumed CAEM was assuming almsot all 20-year-olds have heterosexual desires rather the homosexual ones. Your advice still stands, though, its good advice for repressed, overreligious straight guys, too.
hey dan, loved the column this week… as a former/recovering all-consuming christian, your advice to caem is right on – get down off that cross and into someone’s bed! one of my great pleasures these days is hooking up with the hot 19-year-old who goes to the local bible college and posts everyday on his facebook site about how god is so good and how he wants to live his life for god… but when we’re in the sack, he LOVES getting his cock sucked, LOVES having me rim him hard and deep, and LOVES getting stuffed with my big ol’ cock over and over and over! and i didn’t even bring up his diaper fetish…
been there and done him in minneapolis
The British case is fairly famous:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/articl…
The South African case is elusive: because it is old, and because the Journal’s search engine relies on title words (there are not titles to the Letters).
Still working on it…
@37 – if he doesn’t act on his [insert horrible inclination], he’s ok in christianity, even as a pedophile. I’m no theologian, but I don’t think pedophilia is that different o a hardcore christian from homosexuality. Anecdotally, haven’t we heard plenty of “believers” say “gay marriage?! what next, marrying kids?”
@33 I’m going to have to borrow that one some day too! My mom’s religious views miraculously only kick into high gear when someone else (me) is doing the sinning. Her 20 year affair is no big deal, but apparently, being gay or bisexual is an affront to the almighty. Her religion is only really an issue when she can use it against someone else. It’s mostly all about controlling people and has very little to do with any of the things that are actually in the bible.
Yeah, a little harsh on CAEM there. If he wants to keep on believing (the nice parts) about what he’s believing, he should check out the United Church of Christ. I’m Unitarian, born and raised, and as much as I enjoy it I don’t know that someone with lots of God-faith will immediately take to it. UCC seems to be about as liberal as you can get before you transition into a congregation mostly comprised of practicing agnostics/atheists. Sky Papa love without centuries of bullshit.
@Octopodes, but mostly Rei:
Do you honestly think that upon learning of someone’s devotion to a violent, divisive, and largely intolerant cult-dogma that I should be welcome to their opinions about how I should be living my life? Have you considered that because of the endless persecution and accusations of immorality projected by christians and other religious devotees, people such as myself make snap-second decisions about emotional and social profiles? You can gasp in shock that I would not want to get into a discussion about morality with a christian all you want, but it’s a reaction to a lifetime of bearing witness you YOUR people’s self-righteous bigotry. I am just as happy to ignore you and your delusional D&D land of make-believe.
in re: the stabbing-virgin birth case, all I can offer is a passing reference to it in Morton Stenchever’s farewell editorial in Obstetrics & Gynecology (July 2003, Vol 102, p.5-6). He reports that the case study was submitted to him but rejected for publication, since he felt the case was of limited relevance to American readers but notes “The case report later appeared in another journal.”
I quote here (since you cannot access this journal without a subscription): “It was submitted from an African developing country and reported on a pregnancy that occurred in a young woman with agenesis of the vagina who was having oral sex with a man who was not her usual partner. As the man climaxed, her usual partner arrived and stabbed her in the abdomen. Her stomach was lacerated and its contents spilled into the peritoneal cavity. The author reported that a pregnancy ensued, several pigs and cattle were exchanged to secure a marriage, and a birth by cesarean delivery later occurred.”
Now Shoshannah, I will grant you that as a woman I find violence against women indefensible (Hell! I find violence against people of all genders indefensible)…but…can you think of this case without even the tiniest bit of mirth?
Virgin conception could also occur if the vagina or pubis comes into any contact with male ejaculate. A session of mutual masturbation or similar fun could create such a situation. Sperm a very determined and will find the way or die trying. Odds are against, but those are just odds.
Dan, I understand that this is not your strong point and you’ve never claimed it as such, but I still think that CAEM could maybe have used a gentler hand. Ridiculing somebody’s faith (particularly if it’s one you yourself have experience with) may feel good but I don’t think it helps the person that much. It’s too much to ask a 20-year-old kid to do a total instant 180 on something that’s been an important part of his short life and turn right into a godless flaming fag. Of course if he WANTS to eventually turn into a godless flaming fag, that’s perfectly fine, but I think it’s important to emphasize (as you hinted but did not elaborate upon) that gay and religious do not have to be at odds with each other. There are groups for gay Christians of all types. There are more accepting churches and versions of Christian ideology. There are people who believe that a loving God does not cast people into Hell for being who they are. He should explore these different ways of being Christian.
CAEM, I’m just one of many people that embraces both my religion and progressive values. If you want to, you can be another. There are plenty who will support you.
I think Dan was right in assuming that CAEM is gay. The reason CAEM couldn’t say what he wanted outright is because it’s too shameful for him to admit, even to himself. There’s no way he’s going to put it in black and white that he prefers a big, hard, throbbing cock over boobies and vajajay. He can barely think it, much less say it out loud or write about it.
Religious guilt can be really intense and overwhelming. If he’s anything like me, he’s had a lifetime of guilt and garbage put on him by his family (even those who are well-meaning) and church community. The church has shamed him into believing that homosexuality is dirty and wrong. That kind of guilt trip doesn’t go away overnight.
I”m mostly straight, but have bisexual tendencies. I’ve made out with a few women (years ago, though-no recent experimentation) and enjoy lesbian porn. I think women are beautiful, but it’s taken years for me to admit to myself that I even like the idea of sex with another woman. It’s taken an abundance of reading, meditating, therapy, visits to a UU church and Dan Savage columns for me to be ok with my sexuality. The head trip that my religious upbringing put on me was incredibly emotionally scarring (in more ways than just sexually). The guilt and shame made me so repressed that I was in denial about my attraction to women.
So, in short, I think Dan was right on the money. He has probably had enough letters like these to recognize a repressed gay guy with religious baggage when he sees one. There are probably plenty more people out there just like CAEM who not only have to deal with the societal taboo of being gay, but the religious implications as well.
Good luck CAEM! You’re not alone. There are others just like you.
@32–BTW what in the world do you mean “even if both mother and child survived?” It’s how she got pregnant—there was no baby at the time. As I’m sure you must know the peritoneal cavity is one big spaghetti bowl. Whatever gets in there (in this case via a stab wound to the stomach) floats around like marinara sauce. Of course sperm swim, so this is marinara sauce with a propulsion device….