As many who come here to read my rants and Ali’s up lifting posts, and Randy’s deep thought out posts may understand I have a troubled issue with religion.  At 17 after years of abuse, emotional, physical, and sexual, I took a bad beating just as school ended.  I was working for a wealthy local farmer who was deeply religious.  He found me hiding in one of his barns, his wife was a nurse and she addressed my bleeding wounds.  I begged him to let me stay in his barns for a while sure the anger at home would blow over.  He had a totally different idea.   He talked me into going to a church school he supported and paid for other kids to go to, but there was a catch, I would have to agree to the principles of his church and honor them while at school.   Considering where I was in my life I would have agreed to become his sex slave it if would have saved me from more beatings.   I don’t know how he did it but as he left me in the hands of his nurse wife he went to face my adopting parents.  I have no idea what was said, but when he came back he told me to go home and promised I would be safe, pack my clothing needed … and he gave me a list.  Then he would come get me in the morning.   I was terrified to return back to the place I lived and still very sore from my beating.  But I did it.  No one spoke to me or stopped me.  I got my stuff and stayed in my room until the next day when the farmer showed up in the driveway.  

That is why I have conflicted feelings about religion.  See I feel that man saved my life.  Yet his religion was very much against gay people.   By now I had accepted that I was gay, I was a homosexual that they claimed were all these horrible things.  I knew I was not that, and I was a good church boy.  But inside I knew I was something they felt was an abomination.  After school the farmer took me to his Livingroom and told me he felt I would make a great pastor for his religion.  He decided to pay for me to go to their seminary.  I knew two things, I couldn’t tell him why, and I couldn’t do what he asked.  I was gay and my desire for male sexual comfort was too high to be hidden.  I thanked him, and too the only choice I had left, the US military.  

Which leads to the video posted below.  I love this Priest.  Maybe if I had been in his accepting church I could have given my best to joining that ministry.   But the faith that saved me also was a faith that hated me for existing.   Hugs