Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Louie Crew) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: homosexual Message-ID: Date: 17 Jun 91 00:37:57 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Lines: 73 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu debotton@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Len DeBotton) writes: >One of my very close friends has just told me that he >is homosexual. Congratulations. Sounds like he trusts you. Almost everyone has family and friends who are gay or lesbian. If they do not know any lesbians or gays close to them, that fact demonstrates how untrustworthy they seem to their lesgay friends. >... The other part of me says that I dont want >him to be homosexual. Reasonable feeling; but be cautious about the conclusions you draw. Of those most opposed to homosexuality, few therapists claim to be able to change it, even if the homosexual person wants to change. Given the enormous persecution which lesgays face in our society, your friend could not be where he is now without having seriously considered his own chances to succeed with a heterosexual adaptation. You note, for example, that he has related to females sexually. It appears that he has worked hard to find out about who he is. Since he has concluded that he is by nature gay, not straight, his remaining choices are quite real and important: the choice of what kind of gay person he wants to be. Given the trust he has put in you, you can encourage in him those loving, generous, caring, humane, imaginative, and other positive resources that he manifests as a gay human being; or you can treat him with fierce reductiveness, pity, disappointment, shame, or other demeaning gestures. How you decide to treat him will say much more about you than about him; and I hope you discover your own goodness. Please don't take time out to play God the eternal judge. Rather, imitate God the eternal lover and friend. Your own loving kindness to your friend may well be his only chance to know God. Don't worry much about his Christian conversion: that's the Holy Spirit's job, and She often protects sheep in other folds, especially when Unlove takes over the official congregations. I have it on good authority that God already loves your friend immensely, enough to die for him. >If I invite my >friends over to my house and they bring there >girlfriends over do I ask him to bring his boyfriend. Of course. Don't just ask, encourage! If you don't, he will hurt himself if he spends much more time with you. But don't spend your time gawking or using the two of them to "study homosexuality." They're not going to watch you and your wife to study heterosexuality either. Be hospitable. The test of how successful you are will be how comfortable they feel to invite you back to their own space. Thanks for your posting. Right now your fears are rational, given the education you've received. Don't shift to make them phobic. And use this occasion to enlarge your education. Now fewer than 100 books have been written in the last two decades dealing with the questions you raise. Read a couple. You might begin with Virginia Mollenkott's _Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?_ Louie Louie Crew . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu Associate Professor . . . . . . . . . . . . . .lcrew@draco.rutgers.edu Academic Foundations Department . . . . . . . CompuServe No. 73517,147 Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey. . . . . . 201-485-4503 h P. O. Box 30 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201-648-5434 o Newark, NJ 07101 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201-648-5700 FAX Only a dead fish floats with the current.