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| SPLITTING BETWEEN GAY SEXUALITY AND HETERO AFFECTIVITY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-17-2018, 09:03 PM - Forum: Gays and sex
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To face the topic starting from a concrete basis and to invite all of you to say your opinion in order to enrich and complete the picture, I report here, with the permission of those involved, some traits of e-mails and some sections of a conversation in chat on the subject. Obviously the names are fictitious. Immediately after, you can read the text of the article GAY SEXUALITY AND HETERO AFFECTIVITY. I think it can somehow be the basis for a discussion, with all the reservations of the case.
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Mail by Albert
[omissis] I grew up in a strange family, my parents think that homosexuality is a psychiatric illness that feminizes you, basically they don’t have the faintest idea of these things, a gay man, so to speak, normal in external behaviors, according to them , cannot even exist, that’s why they not only have never thought about the fact that I can be gay but they consider it radically impossible, because I don’t have anything of effeminate.
The absurd thing of my family is instead the fixed idea, of my mother in particular, that guys have always and only sexual fixed ideas on the girls, it could also be true, but for my mother the fact that her son can have sex with a girl before marriage is really inconceivable, is monstrous.
They think I have a girlfriend. When I talk about a colleague of the university, my mother surely assumes that I have for that girl some kind of sexual interest. Even now she tells me that I have to be careful and that "I don’t have to do stupid things! (sex)" But for her to do stupid things basically means just getting pregnant a girl.
Now she still behaves like that and thinks that I didn’t bring home a girl so as not to give my mother the opportunity to intervene to give me advice on an aspect of my life that she considers so important, always taking for granted that I can only be heterosexual. But when I was younger, 14/15/16 years old, my mother was heavily involved in my female friendships, she invited my female friends to my house and subjected them to a kind of scrutiny, it was something I could not stand. As for the guys, on the other hand, my parents never got involved in anything, they only warned me, but rarely, about those who talked too much about girls, because, according to my parents, they could take me on a bad road. In practice between the ages of 14 and 16 everything about the girls had to go to the scrutiny of my mother while male friends didn’t get involved.
At 14 I had a crush on a girl my schoolmate, that is, I better say I was very good with her but I didn’t feel sexually attracted even because I discovered the masturbation a year later, at 15, a bit late, I know. Anyway at the time of my first crush with a girl I can say that I felt it above all as a beautiful thing, I liked being with that girl even if I didn’t know how to give it an explanation. Then my mother understood what, according to her, was happening and she interfered heavily: "Who is she? Do you know her parents? Why you don’t invite her here at home?" etc. etc., in practice they made me hate her. She was a very pretty girl, but when she realized that I wanted or had to bring her to my house to let my parents know her, she absolutely didn’t want to hear reasons and she looked at me as if my way of doing was strange. Then such a thing it bothered me a lot because I thought I had done everything as it had to be done, that is, as my mother told me. Then I realized that I was perhaps succubus of my mother and that my so to say girlfriend had realized it.
Let's say that after that I didn’t have any more fantasies about girls and my discovery of homosexuality took place. It happened in the summer when I turned 15, at the seaside. I was camping with my parents and with my sister. We stopped for almost a month in a camping and after a few days I could get to know other guys. I had met another guy who was 16 years old and my parents left me very free because I was with him and they trusted him. Actually he was a very good guy who seemed older than his age. I spent all day with him, from morning to late evening, I was fine, I felt comfortable, it made me feel older but he never talked about girls. He was modest to the incredible, a bit my opposite, I had no problem then to show me naked, perhaps because in the nudity I saw nothing sexual. For him I think it was exactly the opposite. I think it was just this that triggered the spring that made me enter the gay world. We took a bath and then we changed into a thicket near the beach. There I started to tease him because he never took off his swimsuit, he pretended not to hear and then I threw myself on him and ripped his swimsuit away by force, then he reacted and ripped away mine, then we did compare our equipment and he got an erection, I remember everything like it was now, he was red like a pepper, then began to masturbate and I imitated him, in practice I discovered masturbation like that. Then for a few days the thing went on great, so we masturbated each other, but then something happened that I didn’t like at all, he wanted to kiss me and I remember very well that I replied: "I’m not a fagot!" He pretended not to have heard and didn’t insist but our relationship changed radically, we continued to have sex but he was not at ease. After three days in this way we quarreled furiously and we also got into a fight. I realized that he was gay, even if he hadn’t told me it and I disliked very much being pampered by him, it almost made me sick, at least I told him so, even though I continued to masturbate in practice until now on the memory of what I had lived with him that summer. The point is this, I have never fallen in love with a guy. When I see a guy I like him, I would never be able to kiss him or be pampered by him. I read in the forum that many guys like these things even more than sex, but for me it is not so, I don’t see myself spending my life next to a guy, it seems to me an unnatural thing absolutely not mine.
In very recent times there was something important, I met a girl and for the first time I think I feel for her feelings, I like to stay close to her, to flood her of text messages and call her on the phone three or four times a day (I cannot more because we are hours on the phone), for me it’s just a pleasant company but there is a fact, for her I feel tenderness and a lot, but not really a sexual desire like what I feel for guys. Even if, after what happened at the camping beach, I no longer have had physical relationships with guys, I would like to explore the sexuality of a guy, it's a kind of fixed idea, but for a girl I don’t feel the same things, I don’t know at all the sexuality of girls and I would feel a tremendous embarrassment if I had to have a sexual intercourse with a girl. I tried to masturbate thinking about that girl but it was just a forced thing, I came also to the ejaculation but just mechanically, in practice I didn’t feel any sexual transport. What I think is that I stopped in the middle of the ford, I don’t feel gay because I don’t fall in love with guys and I don’t feel heterosexual because girls sexually don’t tell me anything. I think that I could also stay with a girl but passively, that is, I would accept it but I would let her do everything, admitted and not granted that there can be results then. I feel strange, Project, in a great uncertainty, very unstable. In practice I don’t know what direction I have/want to give my life.
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Chat with Nicola
Nicola writes: ok, now I go to the point, in short, I think I'm straight, you could ask me then why I'm here, if you give me some time I'll explain, but I would like to start from the fact that I think I'm straight. “I think” it means that in practice I am convinced or almost convinced of it. So, I've always had girlfriends since I was little, at 16 I had my first real sexual intercourse with a girl, my first girlfriend.
I have had three girlfriends and with all of them I have had sexual intercourses and from that point of view things have always been all right, even auto-eroticism was all about girls. Now it's almost a year since I've had my last girlfriend. Until recently, having sex with a girl was something missing, but now things are changing. I practice sports, I see a lot of naked guys every day but gay fantasies never went through my mind, this up to a month ago, then a strange thing happened, in the gym came a new guy who is 23 years old , I’m 24, and I began to fantasize about this guy, just on a sexual level, something that had never happened to me before. In the evening I lie down on the bed and I think of him, that is, I think of him and me in a sexual situation and it excites me a lot. In practice I don’t masturbate any more thinking about girls, or very little, while I'm fine even just staying in erection when I think of him without even needing to get to orgasm, it happens sometimes but it's just thinking sexually of him that makes me feel good, I think that we are in the gym alone and we undress each other and then we masturbate each other, rarely I fantasize of oral sex. I tell you, Project, I never imagined I could think of a guy in these terms.
Project writes: but did you spoke with this guy?
Nicola writes: spoken in the serious sense of the term no, because I'm afraid, in fact I have almost the certainty that he is straight, it seems so strange that it’s me to write something like that, I think that in practice my interest in him is only sexual, I don’t know, but I have this impression.
Project writes: if this guy corresponded to you, that is if he was interested in talking to you, how would you react?
Nicola writes: I would be very happy but I think it’s an impossible thing and then look, I think of him just in terms of sex, this is true, even if hetero fantasies are not 100% finished, but I also think that I would like to embrace him, maybe fall asleep next to him, but to create something emotional two persons are needed and I'm alone and that's why I settle for a bit of sex. If I imagine a couple relationship with him, I think of it more or less like what happens with a girl, sex, all right, it's another thing, but I think the affection would be more or less the same, but I don’t know because I've never tried and then I think that if I happen to meet a girl who falls in love with me at the end I would always be straight, maybe straight with some gay fantasy but essentially straight. And then with a guy how would I do? My parents would kill me, they always saw me 100% straight and in fact I still think it's more or less like that. For them the word gay is like saying depraved. Frankly I have never felt homophobic like my parents, I had never felt gay until a month ago and I don’t even feel now, even if I feel something strange but I'm not afraid of these things, if I find out I'm gay it’s okay, what I don’t like is uncertainty and still I don’t think I’m really gay.
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Mail of Federico
I read everything you wrote about the weight of affectivity in the relationship between two guys, frankly it is very nice even if I don’t know how realistic it can be. That is, let's understand, I speak from my point of view, that is from the point of view of a married 33-year-old man who is going into crisis because he has sexual fixed ideas for a 25-year-old known at work. I underline that I’m and I feel heterosexual, I love my wife and I also desire her sexually, but now it’s more than a year that there is this new fact and it’s something that destabilizes me a lot. I masturbate thinking of a guy. It's crazy that a married man does these things and yet it happens. At first I felt guilty towards my wife, but now it doesn’t happen to me anymore, I live two parallel lives or better a life and a half, because my being gay is only halfway, there's the sexual part, the rest doesn’t exist at all. I never considered my 25 year old like a guy I could fall in love with, it's just that female sexuality is not enough anymore for me, I like it very much but in my horizon there is not only that, in fact I see my 25 year old a bit like a porn actor (he is a very serious guy! Indeed even too serious) that excites me.
Is all this pathological? At first I thought about it but now slowly I got to the point that if I masturbate thinking of him I don’t do anything wrong, he doesn’t know it and will never know it and also my wife will never know it. So where is the problem? What am I doing wrong? Anything! On the other hand, I would never abandon my wife, it doesn’t even pass through the antechamber of my brain that I could put myself with a man. I don’t know how such a thing can evolve over time, maybe in one year I will have abandoned my wife and I will have escaped with him, but it doesn’t seem to me even thinkable! And then, one like me what is he? Is he gay? But from what you say it doesn’t seem realistic. Is he bisex? Frankly I don’t believe it and I don’t feel like it. I think someone like me is straight even if he has some small interest in gay sex, and I only say sex, perhaps I had better to say only at the level of masturbation because I would never go with a man apart from the risk of aids, it's not really something that seems possible to me. What do you think about Project?
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GAY SEXUALITY AND HETERO AFFECTIVITY
It happens to me quite frequently, in interviews with the guys, to find myself faced with real forms of splitting between affectivity and sexuality. It is not uncommon for guys who experience sexual drives that are strongly or even exclusively oriented in a gay sense, to feel an affective attraction towards girls, for whom, however, they live forms of attenuated or strongly sublimated sexual interest. This phenomenon is found many times also in forum posts and is confirmed by the statistics on sexual orientation of Project Gay. 23.72% of the guys who took the test on sexual orientation of Project Gay (a sample of several hundred guys, but not representative of the general population and with high concentration of gays) claim to have a masturbation oriented exclusively in the gay sense, while only 15.22% claim to fall in love only with guys, but what amazes even more is that compared to a 11.68% of guys who claim to have a masturbation oriented exclusively in straight sense, 27, 26% claim to fall in love only with girls. From the statistics of sexual orientation by age we can deduce that in the same sample the percentage of gay masturbation varies little with age while the percentage of hetero masturbation tends to increase and, at the same time, bisexual masturbation decreases (with sometimes hetero and sometimes gay fantasies).
Sexuality becomes polarized with the years and tends to follow not the masturbatory gay tendency but the affective hetero one. I mean that a percentage of younger guys tend to experience hetero affectivity despite gay masturbation, for them the homosexual dimension has only strictly sexual contents while the affective ones are reserved entirely or almost entirely to girls. The sexuality of these guys tends to evolve over time, the heterosexual affective tendency slowly becomes sexualized and the tendency towards heterosexual masturbation increases. While hetero affectivity is also enriched with explicit sexual content, the gay orientation on the strictly sexual level tends to be recessive. This is the underlying reason for which, to consider gay a guy masturbation is indicative but doesn’t solve the problem definitively and it’s necessary to say that a guy is gay if he has both a gay masturbatory sexuality, and also a gay affectivity, that is, he falls in love with guys.
As if to talk of gay sexual orientation it’s necessary to find together an exclusive tendency to masturbation with gay fantasies and also an affective tendency equally exclusive to fall in love with guys, so to talk about real bisexuality it is necessary that a guy has a masturbation that contemplates both heterosexual fantasies and gay fantasies, even in different proportions, and that he falls in love with both boys and girls. I mean that in a defined sexual orientation, that is stable, gay or heterosexual or bisexual in different degrees, strictly sexual drives are always associated with the tendency to fall in love with the same persons for whom sexual drives are felt.
Bisexuality is not a phenomenon analogous to the dissociation between affectivity and sexuality. Basically, a hetero guy falls in love emotionally and sexually only with girls, a gay guy falls in love emotionally and sexually only with guys, a bisexual guy falls in love emotionally and sexually with both boys and girls. In these situations affectivity and sexuality interact in an organic way and tend to direct a guy in a global way, both affective and sexual, to other people.
The dissociation between affectivity and sexuality is not a form of bisexuality but is a completely different reality. I would like to underline that it’s not a matter of pathological phenomena but of normal realities that touch significant percentages of the population. As it also happens for homosexuality and for bisexuality, the dissociation between effectivity and sexuality can lead to states of suffering, sometimes very heavy, if the social environment is constrictive and adopts rigid sexuality models, but suffering doesn’t come from the split between affectivity and sexuality but precisely from the sexually repressive climate.
Statistically, the dissociation between affectivity and sexuality is a relevant phenomenon, as it’s evident from the Gay Project statistics. The discrepancy between orientation of masturbation and affective orientation is noticeable but tends to decrease with the passing of the years and several guys who despite falling in love with girls had a gay masturbation, tend slowly to orientate even sexually in the straight direction. Approximately 5% of guys between the ages of 14 and 18 who took part in the Gay Project survey on sexual orientation tend to orient themselves definitively in straight direction as time passes. I must underline that the guys generally consider the split between affectivity and sexuality as a form of bisexuality and tend to consider themselves bisexual or even gay, above all due to the gay masturbation. Interpreting these phenomena is not easy because they are things that start with guys who consider themselves essentially gay and then slowly, not realizing their emotional world in a gay dimension, experience affective attraction to girls and slowly also discover a straight sexuality that is rewarding for them.
In the interviews with the guys, elements have emerged that lead me to try to give an interpretation of the facts that could at least in a good percentage of cases be realistic, clearly all of it should be taken with benefit of inventory.
In several situations of dissociation between affectivity and sexuality, in the background can be found the presence of a very rigid family in the sexual field and of children who have felt hyper-controlled during adolescence. Their female friendships were evaluated and judged by the family that tended to exercise control over the sexuality of the children, automatically presupposed exclusively hetero.
Sermons on the way to behave with girls, attempts to know how the child behaves with girls, tendential intrusiveness in the relationships of the child with the opposite sex, and on the other hand no interest in the male friendships of the child since early adolescence. If you go out with male friends, all right, if you go out with a girl you have to tell your parents who she is, where you go, when you come back, etc. etc.. The lack of freedom in the sexual field sometimes leads hetero guys to try to realize their freedom from the family in the environment of male friendships. While for a guy who can have a heterosexual emotional and sexual life basically free from family control, friendships are only a part of actual life, and not the one that polarizes sexuality, for guys who have no freedom in their emotional and sexual hetero behaviors, the friendships with other guys constitute an extremely gratifying environment because it is completely foreign to the family.
It often happens that, even in groups of substantially heterosexual guys, forms of special and very close affection are created that are not necessarily sexualized, the so-called special friendships (the best friend). For a guy who has no other sexual release valves, particular friendships easily take a sexual coloring. Pretty common episodes in the environment of heterosexual teenagers, such as masturbating together watching a straight porn, become, for a guy who feels forced by the family in his sexuality, a way to have his own private in which the family cannot enter, a sexuality which is finally subtracted from family control.
Sexual fantasies about friends and masturbation in a homosexual key end up dominating the scene and for a long time the guy can consider himself really gay, but since this sexual tendency cannot be declared nor shared and it is only experienced at the level of masturbation, the guy clearly perceives the difference between his way of living the para-sexual experiences with his friends, such as the nakedness in the showers of the gym, and the way of living those same experiences on the part of his friends, and this tends to confirm him in the idea of being gay.
However, the sexual morality of the family makes it practically impossible for the guy to accept the idea of an emotional couple relationship with another guy that would involve bringing homosexuality from the level of masturbation to the level of sharing and conscious and courageous choice. Sometimes guys also come to real sexual experiments with other guys but in situations that are not in any way accessible to the family and only with contacts for sexual purposes. From this phase that is from the greater awareness that non-affective homosexuality is not really gratifying, derives a sense of deep dissatisfaction or devaluation of sexuality, which is finally considered just as a technique. These are the most acute phases of the dissociation between affectivity and sexuality. In these situations the guys become again (now they are fully adults, 22, 23, but also 25 years old or more) particularly sensitive to a hetero affective contact. It’s obvious that after having become accustomed through years of gay masturbation to having homosexual fantasies, the approach with hetero sexuality is experienced as problematic, but that approach has a deep and satisfying affective dimension that the guy had not known in the gay environment. Thus begins a path of reunification of sexuality and affection that can last even two or three years, during which slowly but gradually the gay fantasies give way and heterosexual sexuality, combined with the effectivity gains ground.
We must immediately say that the process is delicate and, for example, a traumatic experience in a hetero environment can interrupt it, as a true and profound gay falling in love could also interrupt it. These are important transitional phases of the definition of sexuality in which, even if statistically evolution takes place prevalently towards heterosexuality, it is not at all said that the opposite does not happen. One idea must be kept in mind: sexuality must never be forced. The dissociation between affectivity and sexuality represents an evolutionary phase which, I repeat, has nothing pathological and must be experienced for what it is by following one's own affectivity and spontaneous sexuality, avoiding to create too many problems and on the contrary setting aside any abstract and preconceived vision of oneself in both a straight or a gay key. Anxiety is the worst enemy of sexuality, so those who find themselves in such situations do not consider them as a problem to be solved. Sexual orientation issues are problems only to the extent that they are considered as such.
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| A GAY COUPLE WITH A SPECIAL FRIEND |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-15-2018, 01:15 PM - Forum: True gay stories
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Hi Project,
I wanted to tell you shortly my most recent story, which began quietly but that is becoming the backbone of my life.
I’m 41 years old, so I am no longer a boy for a long time, I have had my stories, especially between 20 and 30 years old, then under the sexual profile I entered a kind of limbo, I dedicated myself mainly to work and in practice I put my emotional-sexual life on standby. I met my friends, I spent the evenings with them and I was fine with them but I had put aside the idea of finding a guy. My work, which I like a lot, involved me and occupied almost all my time, I dedicated the time left to friends.
This condition, let's say this suspension of emotional life has been going on for several years, I would say almost up to 38, then I met Steven, a guy who was then 25 years old, I was 39. With Steven something new and unexpected started, which at the beginning I struggled a lot to define. It was not the classic love story, even if he is really a handsome guy. He has his emotional and sexual life, he has a steady boyfriend and wouldn’t certainly leave him for me. On the other hand I have never considered him as a possible boyfriend and for the truth I have had very few sexual fantasies about him, fantasies happened especially in the earliest times, when I tended to frame the relationship as a classic couple relationship, then, as I realized that things were not like that, sexual fantasies also disappeared.
Steven calls me more or less once a week, I send him a very intense text message on holidays or in response to text messages sent by him. We don’t speak often but between us has created a special relationship that I cannot define, we are fine together, there are very intense moments but he is with his boyfriend and from what I see for him his boyfriend is really essential, he speaks often of him and not superficially, he speaks with respect, with esteem, it is clear that they love each other and that there is a serious communication between them, but his boyfriend is 21 and I’m 20 years older and this certainly makes the difference, at least that's what I think.
I think that Steven tends not to load too much his boyfriend talking about his problems, somehow he feels he has a protective function with respect to his boyfriend, he tends to reassure him. He spoke to me about his boyfriend and insisted that we had to meet all three of us, which happened. They exchanged tenderness in front of me and not only it didn’t disturb me in the least, but it seemed very beautiful.
Now his boyfriend, from time to time, calls me, above all to know if Steven is in my house, I think he has realized that he has nothing to fear, and on the other hand to undermine a love story of a guy 21 years old, who by the way is Steven's happiness, it would really be a squalid thing.
But let's get back to Steven. Now I take his presence for granted, I think it will be a constant in my life and already now he’s a fundamental reference point. I asked myself a thousand times and I keep asking myself every now if my presence can in any way damage Steven or the relationship with his boyfriend, because I could also be a disruptive element, but I see that neither Steven nor his boyfriend see me as a danger, the relationship between us is absolutely calm, I don’t think at all that Steven's boyfriend recites with me pretending sympathy to please Steven, I see him quite serene and at ease. On the other hand, I try to invade their field as little as possible.
Some time ago I was not well and I clearly perceived the presence of both Steven and his boyfriend. They came to see me several times, they called me several times. Believe me, Project, sometimes I don’t know what to do and I try to put myself aside, to leave them the maximum freedom, even, sometimes, not letting them find me at home or on the phone.
Sometimes I would like to get out of this kind of relationship that in some ways seems strange to me but then I don’t do it because I realize that they don’t allow me to get away, that in some way they don’t want to lose me. I feel almost loaded with a responsibility and not only towards Steven. I cannot deny that this is also deeply gratifying for me, because my emotional life now turns completely around these two guys and I finally feel alive.
I’m struck by the fact that all this doesn’t have sexual implications for me and that to the maximum I expect the continuation of things as they are now, what I consider really important. I don’t know if I would prefer a normal couple relationship including sex, after all, that is only a hypothesis, while the presence of Steven and his boyfriend is a reality and implies a very strong and mutual emotional involvement.
Steven considers me "only" a friend but telling "only" he only wants to specify that he has already made his choice of a partner that will remain, but there are other levels of implication in which a "simple" friendship can have a huge weight in determining the inner balance of an individual. I confess to you, Project, that I'm worried about doing damage that could occur after many years. I well know that everything that goes somehow out of the scheme presents risks, I just wish that all this did not transform over time from a beautiful relationship in a reason of misunderstanding and resentment. At the moment there is nothing like that and just to exorcise this eventuality I'm trying to gradually get myself out of the way.
What do you think, Project? Obviously, if you want, you can publish my mail.
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| GAY LOVE IF THERE IS SOMETHING BETTER |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-14-2018, 01:33 PM - Forum: Gay couples
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Oh! Well…. I know you're disappointed and I'm sorry ... but what can I tell you? So, open-hearted I tell you that I expected it ... but sorry, ok, not with me, ok, you have a thousand reasons, you didn’t say brutally what is the reason, but I know it very well ... not with me because "there is something better."
After our story is over how many other guys did you meet? Six, seven, I don’t know, I lost the bill. Every time you left one of them the speech was always that: "there is something better ..." I think that due to this reasoning you will make such a collection of frustrations that you will eventually have to recognize that you have thrown away some golden occasions. I'm not saying with me, maybe it would not have worked, but with some of those guys you could have built a serious story.
Fabio was really in love with you and he was a wonderful guy, if he fell in love with me I would have felt the richest man in the world, but he was in love with you and you didn’t want him because you said there was something better and you made him feel bad like a dog and then he came to me to lick his wounds.
And not only that, you fooled him, you made him believe you would spend your life with him. I still remember that time, we went out together, you cuddled him so tenderly, you kissed him so tenderly, you were hugged with him all evening and I said to myself: "Poor Fabio! He believes it ... " and punctually, after a month, the crush for Fabio was over and you started again to search for other guys and you didn’t even tell him ... I, maybe I’m stupid ... but I cannot understand.
It's like you were taken by a kind of irrepressible craving, for you sex is a drug, you use it just like drugs, you're addicted. You court a guy like just a lover would do, then he surrenders to you and then you say he has no character, cannot assert himself, you pull out reasons of all sorts ... you even go so far as to say he's not good at making love and then at the end of the speech comes the usual phrase: "there is something better!" ... and the game starts again ... you make victims and destroy the lives of these guys, who will never forgive themselves for listening to you, you don’t even notice it because you think only of yourself ... you don’t even know the damage you do ... but eventually the years pass and you throw them away like that.
You are not looking for love you are looking for the "perfect guy" you are looking for things that don’t exist and throw away the real guys. I don’t say they are better than you but are definitely at your level ... You once did a crazy speech that irritated me a lot: you said you wanted the hands of one, the eyes of another, the smile of a third and the way of making sex of another. But who put these stupid things in your head? Do you realize that you are almost 30 years old and you know absolutely nothing about what love is? You have made a collection of guys, you know, just like the English lords who hang in the hall the hunting trophies, you still see things like that ... you still, at 30, go looking for the perfect guy!
You could say to me: "why are you telling me such things?" ... well ... we're friends isn’t it? In fact I think I'm one of the few friends that you still have, the others have abandoned you ... you are convinced that you have given them up but in reality they are the ones who gave you up... in a minor tone, but you have applied the story of "there is something better” also to friends ... you've tried to apply it even to me ... and it's me that I didn’t want to give up you despite everything. I kept telling you what I really think, that you are going to a total dissipation of yourself, you're throwing yourself away in a lot of stupid things, and going at thirty still in search of fantasies ...
I think you're still conditioned by the myth ... right by the myth of the ideal guy ... at 30 you would like a sweet, good guy, affectionate, totally without experience because you think you can educate him, but you don’t even say to educate, you say to wean ... You? And what could you teach a clean guy? Could you teach him how to pretend to be in love ... or how desperate you feel when you pretend to continue playing but you realize the castle is collapsing on you? I don’t know what you can foresee for your future because you in effect always seek this blessed ideal guy.
And then if even this ideal guy existed, do you think he would fall in love with you? So you're the ideal guy! ... Of course, it's obvious ... look in the mirror ... in fact you're a handsome guy but not so young, you carry with you a lot of manias and frenzies that a psychoanalyst could work a life about, when you start with your bla bla you don’t stop anymore ... you always say the same things, do you think you are charming? But you are not and you don’t even realize it.
Did you leave Matthew? You are convinced, but it is not so and you know how things really are? Matthew left you ... it‘s he who has left you and you know why ... it’s he who told me: he left you "because there is something better ...". You don’t believe it? How is it possible that there is something better than you? ... But Matthew was perfectly convinced ... and do you know who taught him this philosophy? You taught it to him! Matthew would not have done a reasoning like this before ... I knew him well before, he, before, was looking for a real guy ... but after he met you he started to look for the ideal guy too.
Now I told you what I had to tell you ... wake up until you're in time ... don’t run after butterflies. If one at 30 has not yet understood what it means to love he must try to understand it quickly because Matthew who has left you because "there is something better ..." is likely not to be an exception but the first of a long series of guys that will abandon you and then you'll understand ... but then it will not make any sense. I tell you these things because I think they are true ... don’t worry, I'm not trying to get together with you again ... I know that "there is something better! "... but at least as a friend you can still go well.
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| GAY GUYS AND SEXUAL MALEDUCATION |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-13-2018, 12:19 PM - Forum: Gays and sex
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Yes, you can record it, all right, but before starting with the story let me explain a little what it is, otherwise it may seem strange and I can make a fool of myself and I don’t like it.
If I had to define it I would call it the story of my awakening ... now don’t tell me that I am doing it long but I have to start from the beginning, otherwise they don’t understand anything.
I am 30 years old and there is something that has always conditioned me very heavily and made me lose, in my opinion, the most beautiful emotions that a guy can experience ... I know that you have not yet understood a damn thing, but I'm approaching.
In short, my sex education was 100% on porn movies, on porn sites (even for a fee and I threw there a lot of money!) Let's say that I have done these things since I was 15/16 years old. One moment! It is not the thing in itself that I don’t like, after all so many people do it ... but for me, in a sense ... the reality was exactly that. I mean I had never seen a true gay guy, but not only at 15/16 but not even at 20, I didn’t even enter the chat rooms, the temptation was very strong but I never went there.
In the last years I had filled whole hard discs of porn movies, I had learned them by heart. You can say: But why do you come to tell us such things? ... they're your problems … One moment! ... If you have gay friends you cannot understand my story, because you can have a direct feedback, that is you know what is a gay guy ... but I didn’t know it and slowly, from all that seeing gay movies I made up my mind that a gay guy was more or less a porn actor and masturbating everyday thinking of it I convinced myself that gay life was that and when I was thinking of a guy, that is, I was doing my erotic fantasies, I imagined it just like in a movie ... That's what I meant ... those models had become models of my erotic fantasy ... Take me for crazy or for the idiot of the village but for me it was just like that and I actually met the first gay guy in the flesh at 23 ... well I knew he was gay and he didn’t know about me and I had the idea to try it as in a scene I had seen in a porn movie.
I'm a pretty good guy, everyone says it to me, that is, girls run after me even now, so you can imagine ... well. It was summer, he was part of my group, we were in a bathing suit and the two of us in a place a bit secluded, he was sunbathing with his eyes closed ... in short, I was badly tempted to try just like in the porn and I thought that things would go just like in the movie ... then I didn’t have the courage and just approached slowly and I tried to kiss him ... He turned against me with a string of bad words that you can’t even imagine, so I told him: "I know you're gay and I'm gay too." He replied with a very loud “Go fuck yourself!” I didn’t get scared and tried to put him on the wall by force, a bit as in the film, but he gave me a kick in the balls that if I think back of it, I could also have lost them. I went away and told him ... "But you're not gay ... gays don’t do that!" ... and I had to run away, but there were somethings I could not understand. A gay like that is better to lose him than to find. Then, over time, I acted less like a fool ... but not so much, I actually kept thinking that maybe the first approach had to be a bit on the vague, but I thought that once the guy had agreed to come to bed with me, which by the way I took for granted while it was not at all like that, at least in bed it would have been all like in porn movies.
With two guys the approach succeeded. The first, in my opinion, would have well agreed it ... in short, he comes to my house, I had prepared everything, from the dinner in the room to the bedroom, he eats a little, doesn’t want to drink, sits in an armchair to watch television, I take him by one arm and say: "Come on ... go ..." he looks at me and says, "Where?" I tell him: "Come on, come to bed ..." He looks at me with a surprised face and says: "What?" I showed him the muscles but he looked at me laughing and saying: "What the hell do you want?" I ask the critical question: "Active or Passive?" He looks at me and says, "Have you ever been with a guy?" I say to him: "No!" and he says to me: "I see!" I did nothing of what I wanted to do but he told me a few things about his experiences ... and he was a guy who had a lot of experience. It seemed strange to me, then I told him "Boh! ... Now I have the ideas much more confused than before."
With the other guy we started at least a little sex because I had learned something of the lesson, but he looked at me in amazement. I said. "Oh well, let's go to the concrete! ..." and I told him what I wanted to do and he immediately told me: "No!" I say to him: "Why? You are gay and you say no? ... My beautiful! But we are already in bed together and if I want I break you (and he was also a thin slender)". In short, I threatened him to make him do what I wanted. He got up, got dressed and left me like that, like a total imbecile! ...
Laughing and joking, I went on a little more with such stories and then I thought I would try paid sex. There were no stories there but they raised the price and I didn’t like it at all, they were not even looking at me ... And so I came to 27 years ... then I met Max, he was four years younger than me ... I tried with him the usual technique but he told me: "Come on! Try not to arouse compassion! So you're ridiculous! I see that you're alone ... " So my detox began ... now he’s helping me to grow, he pampers me a bit and I'm good, and it's a beautiful thing, beautiful, mutual tenderness, mutual listening ... are very beautiful things now I understand it but to detoxify I took more than ten years. If you want to know how the other gay guys really are, don’t watch porn movies, those things have nothing to do with it and I only understood it at the age of 30! That's all ... Come on, if you want you can turn it off.
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| JULIEN GREEN CATHOLIC HOMOSEXUAL |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-12-2018, 10:45 PM - Forum: Homosexuality in history and literature
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Scrolling through the catalog of “La Pléiade” it’s easy to realize that from 1972 to 1998 eight full-bodied volumes were published, for a total of more than 14,000 pages, containing the complete work of Julien Green. Those who have even a minimal acquaintance with French Literature know that the honors of “La Pléiade” are due only to the recognized great masters of French literature: Julien Green is one of them. Elected, first of the non-French, among the "immortals" of the Academy of France in 1971, in place of François Mauriac, he resigned in '96 claiming to feel "exclusively American" and "not at all interested in honors, whatever they are."
He was not actually of French descent, his real name was Julian Hartridge Green. He was born in Paris on September 6, 1900, the last of eight children, from parents of Scottish and Irish ancestry, who emigrated to France from Georgia in 1893. Julien's grandfather was a rich cotton merchant, owner of plantations, which made in France a good fortune, the mother came from Georgia, the father, originally from Virginia, was a businessman and was Secretary of the American Chamber of Commerce in Paris.
Julien Green is generally qualified as a Catholic writer, an expression that has, in his case, a very particular meaning: Catholic yes, certainly, but also homosexual. The lacerating attempt to reconcile homosexuality and Catholicism was a constant in his life and it must be said that this attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable, at least giving the word Catholicism the traditional sense that the Catholic hierarchy attributes to it, emerges very clearly throughout his work.
Julien Green has offered an extremely honest and realistic picture of himself and his inner conflicts. The self-censorship concerning sexual contents has become increasingly less binding over the years and it has happened that subsequent editions of his works have been enriched with many pages, originally omitted; a large part of these pages deals with homosexuality. This is the case of the first volume of the "Diary", Les années faciles, the first edition of 1938, is heavily censored, while the second, of 1970, which presents almost 200 pages more, gives much more space to the theme of homosexuality. The censorship, on the other hand, remained rigid in relation to the homosexuality of other people, sometimes referred to as pseudonyms.
However, a laic homosexual, in the most radical sense of the term, who approaches the work of Julien Green cannot but recognize a considerable intellectual and moral rigor, of course, in the secular sense of the term, and a basic honesty in dealing with the theme of homosexuality and trying to analyze it in front of his own conscience. Julien Green has undoubtedly an emblematic value because he embodies the ideal aspirations and anguish typical of true Catholics who want to be honest with themselves in the face of homosexuality, not considered as a theoretical question or as a problem of others, but as a profound element of their own personality, irreconcilable with faith.
On May 15, 2013, “L'Osservatore Romano”, the newspaper of the Holy See, published an article by Joseph Ratzinger entitled "And Julien Green became himself again". So Ratzinger expresses himself on the religious education of Green:
"He tells how, from his childhood, his mother, Anglican, had literally immersed him in the Holy Scriptures. It was obvious for him to know by heart all the one hundred and fifty Psalms. Scripture was the atmosphere of his life. And he says: "My mother taught me to understand it as a book of love and deeply permeated me with the idea that, from the beginning to the end of Scripture, it was only love to speak. And all my being wanted nothing but love." In the end a man who has received such bases cannot be lost."
These statements by Ratzinger, from a secular point of view and in reference to the homosexuality of Green, instead, show the violence of a religious education based on Scripture, which was accompanied, among other things, by the radical repression of sexuality, systematically operated, from an early age. As we will see later, this repressive education left deep traces in the soul of adult Julien. To memorize the one hundred and fifty Psalms is not at all obvious to an adolescent who, exposed to such a radically and strictly religious education, risks becoming dependent on many prejudices of religious origin, from which it is often difficult to get free. Julien's mother was by no means the "ideal religious mother" described by Ratzinger, or perhaps she was fully, the assessment depends on the idea of religion of the one who judges. The fact remains that Julien's mother heavily conditioned her son in the development of his sexuality. Julien remembers at least twice the rigid behavior of the mother when he was in the bathtub and the attitude of almost rejection that she showed for everything related to sex in relation to her 10 or 11-year-old son.
Julien remembers that when he drew naked bodies they were always completely without sex.[1] The only sexual curiosities came to Julien's mind by reading the Bible and were systematically resolved with a "You will understand when you grow up. For the moment there is no need for you to know."
Green does not omit to describe his perplexity at the attempts of other boys to explain something about sex or even to seduce him, in fact he was not able to recognize the normal awakening of sexuality or to have an authentic awareness of pleasure like his peers. He was about 15 years old when some of his high school friends of the Lyceum Janson of Sailly started him with the pleasures of masturbation. At that time the sense of sin was linked to the concept of pure and impure, not through a personal assessment but in terms of permitted or prohibited. Referring to masturbation he says: "As for the gesture in question, I didn’t reconnect it to any known offense." Weeks passed before it occurred to him that he should regret it.
Julien himself speaks to us of his silent love for his classmate Frédéric: "No carnal desire tormented me. If the heart burned, the senses were sound asleep and I was exceptionally cold. The idea of getting my hands on Frédéric would have seemed to me simply monstrous, because nothing seemed beautiful to me that it was not pure, finding that word in my mind all the power that it had almost lost."[2]
Of his love for Frédéric Julien had spoken to the his friend Philippe but not to Father Crété who was in charge of his religious education. Not having the courage to confess to Father Crété what he did with his friend Philippe or alone, he went to confession elsewhere in complete anonymity. Teen Julien is now fascinated by the human body, especially the male one. Julien rarely talks about girls, when he shows a slight interest in a girl, every approach is cut short by the intervention of his sister Mary and his mother, terrified by the idea that Julien could follow a destiny similar to that of his uncle Willie, who died of syphilis inflicted on him by a servant.
At 15, Julien read Baudelaire but was unable to grasp his sensuality.
Only the following year the awakening of the senses occurred, at least partially, during a trip to Italy. In Italy he read Boccaccio and was shocked.
In 1916, after the death of his mother, he converted to Catholicism and let the hypothesis of a vocation to religious life in the order of the Benedictines emerge. Sister Mary was the first converted to Catholicism, then her father and mother followed her. From a secular point of view it is hard to believe that the conversion of Julian sixteen years old and his momentum towards monastic life were free and well thought out choices.
A year after the conversion we find Julien seventeen years old involved in the war, to volunteer in the red cross of the United States on the Italian front. After the war, now eighteen, oscillates between the idea of religious vocation and artistic tendencies (painting and music). He then went to the United States and studied from 1919 until 1922 Languages and Literature at the University of Virginia, three years of studies offered to him by Savannah's uncle. It is precisely at the University of Virginia that Green begins to understand that he is "a man with a great secret", that is, a man who must bring with him the secret of his homosexuality. He is however enchanted by his fellow students, who considers the best humanity imaginable. At the University of Virginia he falls in love with Benton Owen, whom he will call under the pseudonym of Mark. It is through the Virginia guys and through the unconfessable love of Owen that Green realizes the emotional strength of homosexuality. Love towards Owen is platonic but not for this reason it is less violent. Green abandons Mark in 1922 without confessing his love, but then has an unforeseen opportunity to meet him again in July 1923, when Mark is traveling and is in Paris. Julien promises to finally speak clearly to Mark on the Pont-Royal, Mark is ready to listen, but in the end Julien gives up:[3] "One or two minutes later, on the other side of the bridge, I said to Mark:" I'm sorry but I cannot". He squeezed my arm a little and told me: "I understand you very well" Once again I found myself faced with the risk of permanently losing his affection and I had considered that risk too great. There is no need to stress that in my work Mark reappears continuously, under one form or another. He is always the mysterious handsome guy to whim you does not dare to declare your love. Eric Mac Clure, in "South", Praileau in "Moïra", Angus and Wilfred, both of them alternatively, in "Chaque homme dans sa nuit", Paul in "Le Voyageur", and especially the handsome guy of "L'Autre Sommeil" "
Perhaps it is no coincidence that after a long time Green has considered the years of Virginia as some of the saddest of his life, were certainly those that troubled him more and put him in front of the reality of his homosexuality.
Leaving the University of Virginia without graduating and returning to France in 1924, Green publishes under the pseudonym Théophile Delaporte the "Pamphlet against the Catholics of France"[4] dedicated "to the six French cardinals."
Let it be clear, this is not a pamphlet against the Catholic Church but rather a pamphlet against Catholics accused of being too lukewarm with regard to their faith. Some quotes of the text can give an idea of its content. The Catholics of this country have ended up making their religion a habit, to the point that they no longer worry about whether it is true or false, or whether they believe it or not; and this kind of mechanical faith accompanies them to death.[5]
"It is not possible to believe without fighting, but they don’t fight at all with themselves, and accept Catholicism as something simple and natural; and they would end up killing it, if this was possible."[6]
"However they are Catholics, because they have received the mark of the Church, and they are forever, because the Church does nothing that is not eternal, but these submissive children bring the germs of a powerful corruption. Don’t look elsewhere for the true enemies of this Christian Church of which they believe themselves be the defenders."[7]
"They were raised in Catholicism; they live and die there, but they don’t understand what they themselves represent or what is happening around them, and they don’t perceive anything of the mystery that surrounds them and separates them from the world."[8]
"They live in the world as if they were of the world; however, they have been chosen by virtue of certain signs and certain words and if they understand that they have received a mark and are rebelling, they are not less Catholic for this, and if they degrade, they remain Catholics even in their fall and in their damnation."[9]
"They read the prayers, every word of which is of great importance, and read them as if the prayers were for someone else, for someone else's life, for someone else's salvation. One would say that they don’t know that prayers speak only of their condemnation to death and their grace; one would say that they believe that Catholicism was founded for others and if they themselves are part of it, it is only by chance or by game."[10]
But if 1924 is the year of the apology of Catholicism contained in the Pamphlet It is also the year in which, after having reached the peak of his religious exaltation, Green moved away from Catholicism. Here I quote Ratzinger's quoted article:
"[Julien Green] He writes that in the interwar period he lived just like a man of today lives: he allowed himself all he wanted, was chained to pleasures contrary to God so that, from one side, he needed it to make his life bearable, but, on the other, he found that life itself unbearable. He looks for ways out, connects relationships, goes to the great theologian Henri Bremond, but the conversation remains on the academic level, theoretical subtleties that don’t help it. He establishes a relationship with the two great philosophers, the spouses Jacques and Raissa Maritain. Raissa Maritain indicates to him a Polish Dominican. He meets him and still describes to him his lacerate life. The priest tells him: "And do you agree to live like this?" "No, of course not!", He replies. "So do you wants to live differently? Are you repented?" "Yes!" says Green. And then something unexpected happens. The priest tells him: "Kneel! Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis - I absolve you." Julien Green writes: "Then I realized that after all I had always awaited this moment, I had always waited for someone to tell me: kneel, I absolve you. I went home: I was not another, no, I had finally become myself." "
So Julien Green wrote to Jacques to Raissa Maritain on April 25, 1939:
"I am writing a few words to you before leaving, to tell you that this morning I had communion after a conversation I had with Father Rzewuski."[11]
It’s easy to understand how much the young Ratzinger found in the account of the conversion of Green a confirmation of Saint Cyprian's famous statement that "there is no salvation outside the Church".[12]
Yet Green was Catholic, he had converted at age 16, because people speak of a second "conversion" in 1939? Ratzinger does not explicitly tell us what was there in Green's life, before April 25, 1939, which then led to the need for a new conversion to Catholicism, and prefers to remain vague on the subject for the fear of dirtying a character who seemed fully embody the ideal Catholic model. To understand that what happened in the life of Julien before 1939 we can be read a short novel published by Green in '31, "The other sleep" (L'Autre Sommeil), all centered on the theme of the discovery of homosexuality (awakening) made by Denis, the protagonist.
The novel portrays Denis, first child and then teenager, who lives a life neither better nor worse than that typical of the children of thousands of bourgeois families. The death of his father, who is a liberation for him, marks the true beginning of his youth. Chaste up to 15 years for natural coldness, Denis experiences a little later, the revelation of the pleasure of senses. "With oscillations between coldness and the will to resist, I was weak and sensual" He then knows the strange ways of passion, he believes he loves Andreina but it is Remy, her lover, who fascinates him. "Nothing is as mysterious as the path of passion in a heart without experience." Claude, Denis's cousin and childhood friend, who was an orphan after his mother's death, is welcomed into the house by Denis's parents and the two guys are living together. For Denis it is as if a dam had collapsed revealing the violence of all that it held, now Denis is aware of being in love with his cousin. He would like to reveal his feelings to Claude, but during the few occasions he has to see him, after a period of absence, before he leaves again, this time definitively, he cannot confess to him those feelings. The protagonist realizes that he will regret this failed declaration for life. This portrait of a young man with a heavy heart, whose dreams, whose desires and fears nourish a rich and terrible inner life, highlights the eternal emotion of a silent love, of a passion that doesn’t dare to declare itself and of which he preserves the sad and useless weight throughout life. This book reveals "the obsession of cold and the fear of fire", a rather surprising tale of psychological darkness. It is obvious, and Green himself admits it without difficulty, that "L'autre sommeil" reflects his falling in love for "Mark", the Benton Owen that Julien had met at the University of Virginia, so it is a substantially autobiographical novel. But homosexuality as a fundamental element of Green's life between the two conversions also emerges from other elements. It is Green himself, in "Jeunesse", the fourth volume of autobiography, who talks about the period after his return to France from Virginia and presents us with a Julien who attends the meeting places of the Parisian homosexuals of the Lungosenna. It should be added that in that period Green knows and frequents literary man who had publicly declared themselves homosexual like André Gide and Jean Cocteau and also others who were homosexual but much more secretly than Gide and Cocteau, like François Mauriac, on whose homosexuality I refer to the excellent study of Jean-Luc Barré.[13]
The fourth volume of autobiography concludes with a reference to a "person" with whom Julien falls in love and who will make him live the best years of his life. Despite the extreme reticence of Green himself on this point, we know that Green was bound by strong friendship with Robert de Saint-Jean, Green rarely talks about the relationship with his friend and defines it as Platonic. Anyway Green's Diary and Autobiography leave no doubt that the two have lived together for years. That the link was really important is also apparent from the fact that Green did much to do, after the Germans entered Paris, to allow Saint-Jean to leave and take refuge in the United States.
Saint-Jean was a very important person and very exposed at the time of the German occupation, he was not only one of Green's dearest friends, most probably the most loved, he was also the deputy chief of staff of the French minister of information.
Saint-Jean had written several times in the French press about Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German foreign minister, who harbored a personal grudge against him, and if he could, he would not have let him escape.
Saint Jean called Green from Bordeaux when the French government was disintegrating, and Green, who had taken refuge near the Spanish border and could have crossed it because for him, an American citizen, the ban on entry into Spain ordered against fleeing French citizens, could not be applied, had no doubt about what to do, he would in no case leave his friend Saint-Jean to his fate and to the revenge of Ribbentrop. In "The end of the world", which dates back to June 1940, Green tells how he managed to get his friend to Portugal, and then get him a visa for entry to the United States.[14] In essence "The end of the world "of Green is a true love story, even if it doesn’t have such appearance. The relationship between Green and Saint-Jean had begun well before the war.
In "Fin de Jeunesse" Green talks about a trip to Germany together with Saint-Jean, in the summer of '29, and doesn’t hide that the purpose was the search for sexual adventures. It was the twilight years of the Weimar Republic and the city of Berlin appeared to the homosexuals as a kind of ideal homeland, where tolerance was highest and the guys were available and not biased against homosexuality. Christopher Isherwood's "Farewell to Berlin" represents very well the particularly welcoming cultural and human climate typical of Weimar Berlin. However, if we wanted to try to reconstruct the relationship between Green and Saint-Jean, on the basis of Green's works, we would not come to anything because self-censorship and the defense of privacy are essentially impenetrable. It should be emphasized that Saint-Jean was also a homosexual, in his novel "Passé pas mort" - The undead past[15] male loves are often quoted, without masks or modesty, even if with all the moderation and elegance of writing. The struggle of the soul with the body is also felt in Saint-Jean but less exasperated than it appears in Green: We would have gone through storms and this need for mutual presence would not have failed, this hunger that time cannot satisfy. Why he? Why me? Why this happiness that is nothing more than feeling silent in the same room?[16]
To try to understand the evolution of Green's positions towards homosexuality after the second conversion, I would like to focus on two closely related works of Green even if far in time, the novel "Moïra" published in 1950 and the theatrical text "L'étudiant roux" completed by the author in 1993. The play is an adaptation of the novel for the theater but with substantial changes. Who reads the novel tends not to interpret it as a homosexual novel because the protagonist, a nineteen-year-old student of the University of Virginia, red hair, violent and fanatical, yet another literary reincarnation of Benton Owen Green had fallen in love with, is openly heterosexual. Joseph shares with his fellow students that season of life in which the drives explode uncontrolled and in which every value is questioned. Joseph imposes himself both for his physical presence and for his very particular moral disposition as a radical "puritan", a staunch defender of an uncompromising faith. In the novel there is also a homosexual character, Simon, who, in love with Joseph and, not returned, decides to commit suicide, but it is a marginal episode in the novel, admitted and not granted that such an episode can be considered marginal by who really remains involved. It’s also possible to perceive by intuition something similar to a secret relationship between Joseph and his friend Praileau, but the thing remains too vague to assume a real weight in the development of the story. Moira, which is the Irish form of the name Mary, adopted daughter of Joseph's landlord, is used to seducing and does not expect herself to be seduced by a beautiful virgin guy who seeks holiness and considers chastity the supreme value. At the end of their only night of love, Joseph will realize that his myth of chastity and holiness is now destroyed and will kill Moira. "I hate sexual instinct," Joseph said in a dull voice. He stood straight at the table, his fists clenched, his forehead illuminated by the lamp. Something was broken in his features like a wave. With a contained violence, he resumed: "Did you hear what I said? I hate the sexual instinct. Do we yield to that instinct? That blind force is evil [. . . ]. We are conceived in a crisis of dementia." After mentioning this passage.
Ferdinando Castelli, Jesuit and professor of literature at the pontifical Gregorian university, in his essay "The taste of hell in the novels of Julien Green"[17] continues: Perched in this hatred, Joseph becomes an isolated man: he lives in the company of mistrust, fear, contempt for the sex sphere. They call him "the Angel exterminator". He has no friends [. . . ], has no interests except that of eternal salvation, he does not grant himself entertainments. Above all it has no love. Can one live without love in proud solitude? When the demon of lust, crouched deep inside, awakes and bites, Joseph strangles the girl with whom he has sinned: Moira.
The reading of the novel by Green given by Castelli, as a conflict between the flesh and the spirit, which on the other hand reproduces a motif dear to Green, seems logical and satisfying, even if it leaves the reader, and especially the homosexual reader, rather perplexed. A beautiful heterosexual guy, paladin of chastity, who strangles the only girl with whom he has had a sexual intercourse inevitably pushes the reader to wonder what is behind the crime and above all what lies behind the hatred declared towards sexuality.
The answer to the doubts comes from Green himself, who in 1993 adapted the story for the theater reveals the arcane: a relationship of homosexual love exists between Joseph and his classmate Praileau. It is Green himself who states that this is the fulcrum of the whole affair. Among other things, in the play, the episode of Simon is greatly reduced and Simon, rejected by Joseph, will simply abandon the university and will not commit suicide as happened in the novel.
Let us now try to give a reading of a non-Catholic but homosexual matrix of the whole affair, of course it is only one of the possible interpretations and it’s up to the reader to judge of its plausibility. Joseph, as already said, a nineteen-year-old student at the University of Virginia, a southern United States region that didn’t shine at the time for openness, has a homosexual love affair with a classmate, Praileau, obviously Joseph and Praileau's story is lived in a completely hidden way.
Joseph is not afraid of homosexuality itself but of being identified as a homosexual. The love story is lived with such discretion that another homosexual guy, Simon, finding in Joseph something that attracts him and not seeing him at all interested in girls, thinks he can move forward. Joseph is already engaged on an affective level, but the real reason why he leaves Simon is another: Simon tends to express his feelings too openly and Joseph risks being identified as a homosexual. Then there is another fundamental point, for a very nice 19-year-old guy it is obvious to have adventures with girls, Joseph must therefore find something that allows him to keep girls at a distance without fueling gossip, the best trick is chastity for religious convictions. That’s why Joseph becomes the sworn enemy of sexuality, but attention, we talk about heterosexual sexuality. It is in essence a very exasperated attitude but at the same time all exterior. The secret life of Joseph in fact isn’t involved at all, rather it is almost defended and secured by these attitudes. So far we could say that it is a classic homosexual story in a homophobic environment, but apparently at least, one would not understand how Joseph can get to spend a night of sex with a girl and how he can get to strangle her soon after. Let us now try to deepen the discussion. Joseph, is living, it is true, a homosexual love story, but in reality he is not willing to renounce, in the name of that love, to a rewarding life made up of frequent and "normal" social relationships, a little like the Clive of the "Maurice" of Forster.
The appearance of Moira is lacerating for Joseph not because Moira unleashes in him the fire of lust but because she brings to mind a reality alternative to his homosexual love, socially accepted and much less complicated to manage. Moira represents for Joseph the temptation to betray his true love and to live like a hetero guy. Moira is very seductive and Joseph thinks that you can also try to be straight and the thing at a technical level works, this is the great temptation of a repressed gay, but then comes the idea that you cannot betray yourself and live a life that is not your own. Moira is murdered because she destroyed the "true" dream of love of Joseph that is the relationship with Praileau. This reading of the story of "Moira" and "L'étudiant roux", which is much more credible than that based on a figure of Joseph considered a true heterosexual, torn apart by the struggle between flesh and spirit, is yet another proof of how much, even many years after Green's second conversion, homosexuality is alive and present in his works.
An example perhaps even more significant is found in another novel "Le malfaiteur". Green had stopped working on this novel in 1938, when the time for his second conversion to Catholicism was maturing, but in 1955 the intimately felt desire to contribute to a deeper understanding of the homosexual condition led Green to resume and complete the novel "To bring to the attention of serious readers one of the most tragic aspects of the sexual (carnal) life of our modern world, tragic because it involves in a sometimes violent way all affective life and seriously affects spiritual life."[18] As we see quite clearly, Green, over the years, while remaining Catholic, recovers at least in part his homosexual conscience. The novel has a rather simple plot: Hedwige, a young orphan, lives in the same house as Jean and only partially realizes Jean's homosexuality, he would not be afraid to explain things to her even if in writing. Gaston Dolange, the object of love both of Hedwige and Jean, is unashamedly homosexual and knows how to monetize his graces.
Gaston, who is not interested in either Hedwige or Jean, appears only briefly at the beginning and end of the novel, but his sexual orientation is absolutely clear both to the other characters and to the reader. The evildoer is Jean, because he loves too much the handsome guys. The bourgeois society is still willing to turn a blind eye avoiding at least sending the police to give scandal knocking on Jean's door. For years Jean lives hidden then, before disappearing committing suicide, he confesses himself (the so-called confession of Jean), in a letter to Hedwige, the girl, in the text of 1955, is not able to really understand the meaning of what he reads because Jean's confession is vague and cryptic. She only knows she is a girl in love with a man who will never be able to desire her physically and she will also end up following the path of suicide. If it is true that Green in 1955 considered it his duty to shed light on the unknown world (then as today) of homosexuality, he left his work deliberately in half because, in practice, the text of 1936-38 was published in the '55 without the fundamental chapter containing "the confession of Jean". In the '55 edition, the reasons that push Jean to flee to Italy, where he then committed suicide, remain smoky and incomprehensible, and it should be emphasized that the vision that Green offers of homosexuality is radically negative because Gaston is a nice maintained gay and Jean is a guy deluded and depressed who ends up committing suicide, and as if this were not enough, no explanation is offered either for the behavior of the former or for the latter. Only in 1973, with the second edition of "Le malfaiteur", there is a substantial resipiscence of Green: the "confession of Jean" is reintroduced in the original integral form of 1938, without censorship, and so, reading the text, we understand that homosexuals, both in Paris and in the province, are forced to attend the typical places of clandestine meetings, disreputable and seedy places, because they are forced to live in falsehood and in constant fear of scandal, are filed and monitored by the police and even denied by their families. The reintroduction of the full text of "Jean's confession" gives the text another depth and makes serious understandings of the dramatic situations in which homosexuals were forced to live in France in the 1930s.
But let’s close the references to the works and return to the biography of Green. There is a part of his life on which Green is totally reticent, if possible more than about Saint-Jean, I refer to his relationship with his adopted son Eric Jourdan. If Saint-Jean was a year younger than Julien, Eric was 40 years younger than him. Jourdan is a novelist and a playwright, his debut novel "Les Mauvais Anges", published in 1955, when he was not yet 16, is still one of the most popular homosexual novels, in which sensuality emerges to the highest degree. Pierre and Gérard, two seventeen year old guys are overwhelmed by passion, their sexual desire is violent: "We had wanted to know all the secrets of love in a single night and a real fury guided this discovery, to the point that dawn enlightened in these bodies satiated but not satisfied two young lovers doubly male for their way of taking and giving to each other."
Such a union could not but arouse jealousy around them. Some young neighbors of whom the two guys had slaughtered the falcons, for play or revenge, kidnap Gérard and rape him. From here begins the sliding of Pierre and Gérard towards death. Their love is both joy and torture. They are both slaves and masters in satisfying their pleasure, they don’t tolerate any compromise and prefer to choose the death that suffer the wear and tear of the feelings and bodies caused by time. As we can see, it is not only a homosexual novel in the most explicit way, but a novel that is immensely distant from the vision of homosexuality typical of Green.
After the publication of "Les Mauvais Anges" Juordan lived in a very free way before being adopted by Green. After his adoption he settled in Paris and remained close to Green until his death. But we don’t know more than this. Francesco Gnerre interviewed Eric Joudan in 2007.[19] Jourdan had made the condition that there were no questions about Green, However, to the explicit question of Gnerre: "Why don’t you want to be asked questions about Julien Green?" Jourdan replies: "The fact is that very often we tend to make allusions to the story of my adoption to belittle my work, and I don’t like this. Of course I adored my foster father, but we never practiced the same kind of writing and our vision of life has always been poles apart. Juliern Green was a fervent Catholic, I am a pagan, an iconoclast. I am convinced that all the churches and religions, in the first place the monotheistic ones, are kept standing by people who exert their influence on individuals and on the community under the exclusive pressure of material interests. They blame the people for "making them pay", both in terms of cash offerings and the removal of their drives." Frankly, I don’t think that the relationship between Jourdan and Green can be seen as the relationship between the devil and holy water, things are certainly much more complex. Green and Jourdan met when Jourdan was 15 years old and all kinds of gossip were made about their relationship, but the two did not get destroyed by gossip and after a few years Jourdan's parents died and Grenn adopted him and even on this the gossip spread. In "La Civiltà Cattolica",[20] after the death of Green, Ferdinando Castelli published the article "Julien Green witness of the invisible - in memoriam". Castelli's article aims to emphasize the figure of Green from the point of view of faith, but in the article there is a direct reference to the problem of homosexuality in the work of Green. "What does Green think about sexuality and homosexuality, themes repeatedly taken up in his work? - "There was in me, in different periods, an element of terror before sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular [. . . ]. In 1958 I won (supprimée) sexuality. I heard a voice saying to me: "Or now or never." I replied: "If You don’t help me, I cannot do it." The help has arrived, but the experience has been excruciating. It lasted about two years, but now peace is back ". Homosexuality is a very large theme, it is a mystery that concerns the wider sphere of sexuality. Both homosexuality and heterosexuality fall into the struggle between the flesh and the spirit: the problem is this,"[21]
I point out that Green doesn’t see a specific problem in homosexuality but tends to frame all the sexual morality in the dimension of the struggle between the flesh and the spirit. Radical dualism seems inevitable to Green, but a secular spirit, faced with these things, wonders what is the reason why sexuality should be suppressed and finds no other motivation than the blind obedience to a precept that is attributed to God. I can understand that in tracing the obituary of a homosexual and Catholic writer, “La Cività Cattolica” is concerned with giving God what belongs to God, but for a secular homosexual, like me, it is essential to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and highlight the elements of the life and work of Julien Green that make stand out the homosexuality, won or repressed as you like, but essential to understand the true torment of a soul torn by faith. The prohibition of homosexuality, I return to the point, as in general the prohibition of non-procreative sexuality even within marriage, has no other reason than the will to conform anyway to the alleged will of God, even at the cost of suppressing sexuality violently. God gives us sexuality and then forbids us to use it according to our freedom and without harm to anyone. The prohibition has no other reason than to measure the level of obedience and self-denial before the God's request, a little like the request made to Abraham to sacrifice his son, but, to take back a bit of evangelical language, whoever of us, if he saw his son in a garden full of fruit, would forbid him to eat the fruits of a particular tree to test his obedience? If therefore we, as bad as we are, don’t forbid our children to eat any fruit of the garden, because should God, who is infinite goodness, show Adam the tree of knowledge to say: you will not eat the fruit of this tree? It will be possible to answer that this is a mystery of faith, but it is precisely because faith, through these mechanisms, creates suffering, that I cannot conceive how blind obedience can be made a principle on which to found life.
__________
[1] Julien Green: Religion and Sensuality - By Anthony H. Newbury – p. 12-14.
[2] “Aucun désir charnel ne me tourmentait. Si le cœur brûlait, les sens étaient profondément endormis et j’étais d’une froideur exceptionnelle. L’idée de porter la main sur Frédéric m’eût paru tout bonnement monstrueuse, parce que rien ne me semblait beau qui ne fût pas pur, ce mot retrouvant dans mon esprit tout le pouvoir qu’il avait failli perdre.” - Partir avant le jour.
[3] “Une ou deux minutes plus tard, de l’autre côté du pont, je dis à Mark : «Je regrette, je ne peux pas.» Il me serra légèrement le bras et dit : «Je comprends très bien.» Une fois de plus, j’avais mesuré le risque de perdre à jamais son affection et l’avais jugé trop grand. Ai-je besoin d’indiquer que dans mon œuvre, Mark revient sans cesse, sous une forme ou sous une autre ? II est toujours le mystérieux beau garçon à qui l’on n’ose pas déclarer son amour. Eric Mac Clure, dans Sud, Praileau dans Moïra, Angus et Wilfred, les deux alternativement, dans Chaque homme dans sa nuit, Paul dans Le Voyageur, surtout le beau garçon de L’Autre Sommeil”. (Terre Lointaine, V, pp. 1257-1258)
[4] “Pamphlet contre les catholiques de France”
[5] «Les catholiques de ce pays sont tombés dans l’habitude de leur religion, au point qu’ils ne s’inquiètent plus de savoir si elle est vraie ou fausse, s’ils y croient ou non ; et cette espèce de foi machinale les accompagne jusqu’à la mort.»
[6] «On ne croit pas sans se livrer bataille, mais ils ne luttent pas avec eux-mêmes, et ils acceptent le catholicisme comme quelque chose de simple et de naturel ; ils finiraient par le tuer, si c’était possible.»
[7] «Cependant ils sont catholiques, puisqu’ils ont reçu la marque de l’Eglise, et ils le sont pour toujours, car l’Eglise ne fait rien que d’éternel, mais ces enfants soumis portent les germes d’une corruption puissante. Ne cherchez pas autre part les vrais ennemis de cette Eglise chrétienne dont ils se croient les défenseurs.»
[8] «On les a élevés dans le catholicisme ; ils y vivent et ils meurent, mais ils ne comprennent ni ce qu’ils représentent ni ce qui se passe autour d’eux, et ils ne pressentent rien du mystère qui les enveloppe et qui les sépare du monde.»
[9] «Ils vivent dans le monde comme s’ils étaient du monde ; cependant ils ont été mis à part en vertu de certains signes et de certaines paroles, et s’ils comprennent qu’ils sont marqués, et qu’ils se révoltent, ils n’en sont pas moins catholiques, et s’ils s’avilissent, ils demeurent catholiques dans leur chute et leur damnation.»
[10] «Ils lisent des prières dont chaque mot est d’une grande importance et ils les lisent comme s’il s’agissait, dans ces prières, de quelqu’un d’autre, de la vie de quelqu’un d’autre, du salut de quelqu’un d’autre. On dirait qu’ils ne savent pas qu’on y parle uniquement de leur condamnation à mort et de leur grâce ; on dirait qu’ils croient que le catholicisme a été fondé pour les autres et qu’eux-mêmes, s’ils en font partie, c’est par hasard ou par jeu.»
[11] L’Osservatore Romano, 27/28 August 2008 – “Storie di conversione: il duplice ritorno di Julien Green – by Claudio Toscani”
[12] “Salus extra ecclesiam non est”, Cyprian, epistle 72 to Pope Stephen
[13] François Mauriac, biographie intime, by Jean-Luc Barré - Fayard editor, Paris, 2009.
[15] Passé pas mort, Grasset, 1983, re-edited in 2012.
[16] «Nous aurons traversé des orages sans que cesse ce besoin réciproque de la présence, faim que le temps ne rassasie pas. Pourquoi lui? Pourquoi moi? Pourquoi ce bonheur rien qu’à se sentir silencieux dans la même pièce?»
[17] Civiltà Cattolica 2971-2976, p. 353.
[18] ... de porter à l’attention des lecteurs sérieux un des aspects les plus tragiques de la via charnelle dans notre monde moderne, tragique parce qu’il engage d’une façon parfois violente toute la vie affective et qu’il touche gravement à la vie spirituelle] [Introduction to Le malfaiteur in the Complete Works of 1955.]
[20] La Civiltà Cattolica, 1998 IV, 365-375.
[21] Taken from the interview reproduced in Le Monde on 19 August 1998, 17
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| GAY LOVE NOT EXCLUSIVE |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-12-2018, 12:52 PM - Forum: Gay couples
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Hello Project,
I saw that in your forum there are several posts dedicated to ex boyfriends and it is not very rare that even after the end of the couple relationship guys keep important contacts with their ex, and that is what happened to me too. I am a forty years old man who has been with only one guy in his life, this guy is 11 years younger than me. I loved my boyfriend and I also felt his love for me, I think it was a fundamental experience for both of us.
I was very inhibited and basically unable to understand the value of sexuality lived in couple, he was much more sexually uninhibited than me but tended to give little value to affectivity, which for me has always been fundamental. Our different visions of couple relationships initially created some problems, but then, over the years, our positions have come closer.
In theory, everything suggested that our relationship could continue indefinitely, but that didn’t happen. After all, my complexes were still there for the most part and he continued to have resistances to understand that for me to love him was not just a matter of sex. After all, even for him it was not a matter of sex. Sometimes I could not understand how much he needed sexual contact and I started talking about very theoretical and even stupid things, instead of really being in tune with him, he felt not understood, neglected, I saw him change mood and I didn’t understand why.
When he needed sex, in spite of his sexual ease, he didn’t always say it explicitly, partly because he knew that I was often a bit loath to follow him on that ground, even if it seems paradoxical. For a while things went on like that, then he told me clearly that he loved me but he needed something else. At the time I was upset, then it occurred to me that he is so much younger than me and that perhaps the underlying reason is just that. I told him that I understood him very well and that I would not have been upset and so I encouraged him to find another guy.
When he found that guy, I really went into a crisis, I felt alone, in a sense I knew I had done the right thing, but I missed him very much. He had his boyfriend and he was also fine with him, at least so it seemed, but he didn’t abandon me at all. When we spoke, I felt him more serene, less neurotic, and this made me feel good. I never called him to let him fell free, but we kept in contact anyway, we spoke quite often on skype. Our conversations were no longer those of two lovers, by now we had overcome that dimension, but were conversations between two people who esteem each other and who don’t want to lose contact and frankly it didn’t seem to me that our relationship had less value than before, even if perhaps for him it was not exactly like that.
I met his boyfriend, who knew that he had been with me before, and I was very impressed, he was a very serious guy and he loved him. The story with this new guy has been going on for four years, then it happened with him something similar to what had happened with me, they were not together anymore but they continued to stay in touch and I think also to love each other.
One day he comes to me, tells me that he wants to have sex with me but he immediately adds that he has just been with his other ex. I am very puzzled, I tell him that there may be risks for diseases, he says to me: "We can only go to bed together and you hug me ... ok?" And we did so. He told me that his other ex knew that he would come to me and had no problems. We talked a lot. It was one of the nicest nights I spent with him. Is my story a couple story? Technically not, perhaps it is an anomalous thing, but it is still a way to love each other. I say this with full awareness because I see that none of us, today feels uncomfortable for our story. We all know how things are and we accept the situation without problems.
Certainly it is not the story of Cinderella and the charming prince and, seen from the outside, it may seem strange. He loves me but also his second ex, we have been used to thinking that emotional relationships and even more sexual ones must be exclusive, that fidelity is a virtue and that betrayal is a serious fault, but here there is no betrayal, we all know how things are. I certainly cannot say that I love my boyfriend less because he loves also another guy, who then is someone who really loves him. Why should he give up or me or him?
Frankly I would feel uncomfortable if my ex really forgot about me, but if he also needs another emotional-sexual relationship, well, I don’t see why he has to do without it. He's not fooling me, it's all in the light of the sun and they are very serious things that can have a major impact on his life. Are we really white flies, Project? Have you ever seen similar situations? I would like to know your opinion and also be able to compare my experiences with those of people who have experienced similar situations.
Peter
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| OR CHRISTIAN OR GAY |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-11-2018, 12:28 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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I am very reluctant to write this story because it touches very delicate issues. The facts are told in a very short diary of which a person I know made me have photocopies, I asked the phone number of the author of that diary and they gave it to me, I called him, he knew me only by interposed persons, because he had heard about me and my blogs, but he said I could use that material but he asked me to do it with extreme caution, and that's what I will do.
The diary in some places presents true dramatic tones. I rewrote the story, (in the first person) summarizing it and, as usual, trying to respect its spirit. I emphasize that what you will find below is absolutely not my personal point of view.
“My story is a very particular story, it is the story of a very intense and very short but essentially impossible gay love, impossible because denied, suffocated in the bud. All this took place over 25 days, I counted them one by one.
I am 23 years old and he, Mark, 19, we met at university, he was enrolled in the first year, I was about to finish letters. It was late afternoon, after classes, he asked me about the institute of glottology, I tried to explain everything and it started like that, then we kept talking and he was fine, he was hesitant but he was happy to be with me. I didn’t know him at all, he was a handsome guy, but I also liked him from other points of view, he was straightforward, authentic, he did not play, that evening I would never go away. I didn’t even think to tell him I was just fine, I had no second purposes, in fact I often talk to some guy, but just because I’m there and I must pass five minutes. I felt bigger than Marco, more mature, somewhat protective.
The next day he looked for me in my classroom and I took him home, a very long and pleasant trip. In the following days I noticed that between us a strong relationship was creating and I didn’t know how to behave, with me Mark talked about everything but never of girls or sex. If I wanted to be honest, at the cost of losing him, I had to tell him exactly how things were. I did it. Marco was deeply troubled because he wanted to be my friend, but not that way, he told me it right away, but he didn’t know if he would ever succeed.
At first I simply thought that being like an object of love of a gay guy was not an acceptable for him, but the problem was not that. I understood it a minute later because he himself told me in an effort of sincerity that must have cost him blood, he told me: "I cannot share your feeling because I am Christian", but from this sentence I still couldn’t understand what he was really telling me, I simply told him: "I didn’t understand ..." And he replied, winning a very strong embarrassment and without looking at me: "I am gay but I am a Christian and I want to live chastely ... and being close to you it would be much more difficult."
I was shocked by this explicit statement, but he is like that, he is not really capable of cheating anyone, ever! Then he told me: "it's a battle with myself but I have to win it, it may seem absurd to you but for me it's essential." I didn’t know how to behave, whether to do all my usual talk about religion or avoid. I said nothing, took it as a form of respect and he didn’t run away, when we saw each other he was happy but always with a sense of underlying guilt. I let him talk about it, I was hoping very much that he could also understand things from my point of view, then we also talked about religion. For him it was an essential thing, He tried in every way and with the utmost commitment to do things honestly. He was not bigoted, he was not invasive, no! He had taken it 100% seriously.
I have not been to churches since I realized I was gay, in practice since I was a kid, but I read some gospel pages willingly, the closures that the Pope has on gays seem to me absolutely immoral but I don’t think at all that religion is a stupid thing.
Mark realized that I had a certain respect for these things and was happy with him, but he never spoke to me about the problem of religion and gays. The twenty-fourth day, one Saturday, he asked me something very strange, he asked me to accompany him to church the next day ... I told him that I would certainly come. Sunday was a particular Sunday and there was a bishop who was supposed to confirm more or less twenty guys.
Marco and I have entered. I would have stopped at the bottom, but Marco wanted me to go further with him and we went to a desk about halfway up the church. The bishop entered for the mass, a thin, tall, old man. The guys were singing, the church was full of people, there was a nice atmosphere. Then the bishop made his speech e he said some very beautiful things, which moved me, on the fact that we are all brothers and that loving our neighbor is difficult. In practice there was not a single word of the bishop's preaching that I would not have said identical. They seemed like beautiful things, 100% shareable, then we exchanged peace, but it did not have the ritual flavor it usually has, it was serious.
He got up and went to confession on the way back he knelt right next to me, then he went to make communion, he was happy as I had never seen him. When we left the church we talked for a quarter of an hour and he told me that he wanted to be a priest but that now he would have problems in the seminary, before deciding he had to be sure he could take it all the way without hesitation, he explained to me that he would first have to solve the problem of homosexuality and that if I loved him I really had to help him by not looking for him anymore.
I think nobody can imagine what I felt in those moments, I was upset, I didn’t know what to say, he asked me to say goodbye forever and I respected his decision, I told him that I would love him always and however, he replied that he knew this and that he too would not forget me but that his path was different.
It's been a week now and I have not heard from him. Now I feel sick inside, I feel lonely, I feel lonely and I think I was a coward, I didn’t do what I should, I think I only respected his words and not his soul, that I did him go for what he told me to be his way but that maybe it's not really his way, because he chose that choice in a dramatic way, because he was split in two, because to save his soul he had to destroy himself. What makes me feel bad is that if he had to repent of his choice he would have no one willing to listen to him. I absurdly followed him in choosing the path that led him permanently away from me, but if he wanted to go back, no one would help him and I think that sooner or later he can go into crisis. The sense of despair comes to me not only for me but above all for him and I feel guilty and I think that my behavior was hypocritical because respecting a person means always telling everything you think and I didn’t do it with him.”
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| BIRTH OF A GAY LOVE |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-10-2018, 09:25 PM - Forum: Gay couples
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At the end of December 2007, I published on the blogs of Gay Project three separate posts containing an interview, divided into three parts, recorded by me in September 2007. The original interview is in Italian or better, in a very lively colloquial language, spontaneous and colorful, typical of young Italians of the time. It is a very interesting love story. It was certainly not easy to translate the story into English trying to save the broken prose and the typical tones of the way of speaking of young people. I think it is worthwhile to read the story, even if it is not very short.
__________
I
Frederick, I call him Chicco, damn how he gave me a pretty hard time ... but I love him to death ... As for me, well ... anyway, I was a little too rush before, I can say precipitous, that is I didn’t even know what the embarrassment was, I had had more or less serious stories with four or five guys in three years, maybe too many stories ... let's say I was rather uninhibited ... yes ... that is, I have always liked guys very much, they're so sweet, I don’t know, being close to them gives me a lot of ... well ... it's not just a philosophical thing ... In short, a nice guy is beautiful and he also gives you a real sensation, that is, you really want him, And let me be blunt about this, I'm not ashamed, I like a guy because he stimulates me sexually ... otherwise ... he can also have the brain of Einstein but he tells me nothing ... I'm not one of those who are fascinated at the mental level, for me the physical reaction must take place ... you certainly understand ... well ... the trouble is that this thing happens to me very often, that is, I don’t say just with all the guys I know ... but it happens a lot ... and then ... Oh well, what is it? Oh ... it's like that ... when it happens to me, it's not like I'm having too much problems ... I just try ... I’m a little afraid of being detected by other people but it never happened and then I have the gay radar and up until now I have hit the mark ... I've done so, let's say from 16/17 years until 22, the first real sexual contact ... always something relative, but sex in explicit terms with another guy I had it at age 19 ... he was not bad but he was not even all this overwhelming beauty ... and then one usually gets depressed or must calm a bit ... but can you see me depressed or calm? ... I said: "This guy is so ... but I can find a guy even better!" ... and then, one after another ... well! What are you laughing for? ... Don’t be stupid ... oh ... it happens ... well two years ago I met Frederick at the university ... he was 21 years old, and was in my course, a year after me. I have always passed the exams ... but I never got the star of the first of the class, that is, I go to class ... but if by chance I find a cute guy I go around with him and in class I'm not going at all ... oh! I don’t get overwhelmed by scruples ... I can lose an hour of lessons and even two, but I don’t want to lose a cute guy ... Oh well ... I see him, but he does not make me all this effect, cute he is cute, but there is even better, at least, so, physically, I say ... I then I was dry with the guys ... and I said to myself: "I try!" ... I approach him, I greet him ... I don’t know what to think, my radar is disoriented ... I said ... "I hope I'm not going to start a story with a straight guy!" ... I needed some more element. Chicco talked only about exams, not about girls ... you know ... it's already a lot ... but you can always take the beating ... then I said: Forget him! ... he didn’t go along ... in short if a guy likes it, even just to chat, you understand it ... but he was formal and made me get some nerves! He spoke like a printed book and I said: "Go fuck yourself! ... you and your haughtiness! I’ll find another better than you!"... So I said ... but, you know, one thing is to say and one thing is what happens to you inside ... I went to class and I kept thinking about Chicco, I then didn’t even his name ... then I had two hours of break, usually I go to the library because it is the ideal place to look at the most cute guys, you put yourself there with a book in front and pretend to read. "Oh well, this time I didn’t go to the library to do the gaywatching and I started looking for Chicco around the university, I could not enter the classrooms where there was a lesson but I was looking for him and I said to myself: "Dear Sandro, but you are becoming totally stupid! ... You are running after a guy who barely looked at you! "... oh ... it was so! In short, I find him in the small library on the second floor ... I go to sit next to him ... because sometimes I'm just a bad guy ... but he doesn’t change his attitude ... nothing at all! Not even a small sign, he greets me, he beckons me to shut up because you cannot talk there ... so I write him on a sheet: "What time do you go home? So let's have a chat." He answers me "Now I have to study because I have an exam in 20 days, but thanks for the proposal." An ambiguous and provocative answer at the same time ... I pretended to read and then every now and then I looked at him but he never looked at me, he thought only of the book ... I look at him once, two and three times and then I break my balls. Well no! I cannot waste time with this guy! I feel like a fool, I get up to leave, I do bye with my hand, he responds the same way, looks at me and winks ... But go to hell! He winks at me ... he doesn’t greet me as he greets his colleagues, he winks at me ... I had already said goodbye. I'm leaving. Oh! I could not get him out of my head ... The following days I always saw him in the library to study ... I went in, I said goodbye, he winked at me, then one day he waved me -10, as if to tell me that the exams would have been in 10 days, then we counted down day by day. I went to hear him at the exams and he was a monstrous thing, I didn’t know even a half of the things he knew. I had arrived when he was already in front of the professor and I thought he had someone accompany him but it was not like that. He took his 30 and praise (I dream of such things!) as if nothing had happened, then he approached me ... and he told me: "Here I am ..." We went out, he invited me to have breakfast with him. He spoke little, he was formal, I didn’t know what to do, I felt a little uncomfortable, he didn’t show any emotion. I didn’t know what to do. I told him he was nice and I was happy that the exam was fine ... the dialogue was very slow, at the limit of the impossible. After two hours we took the subway but he was going much farther than me. I was upset a lot. So the next day I see him and we spend two hours together, two strange hours but not two hours wasted, he didn’t leave, neither I, even if there was talk just about nothing ... in short, we went on like this for some days, now the fact of seeing each other and talking a little bit became an obvious thing. I said to myself: "If I don’t break ice myself we get bogged down here." So one day, after a few generic conversation, I told him that I had to tell him something important and that I wanted some privacy, we left the university and I told him: "Listen ... I have to tell you that I'm gay". He doesn’t upset at all, he tells me that he had already understood it and that the thing is not a problem for him, but the answer that I wanted from him was not that ... and then I ask him the direct question: "Are you gay?" ... He only tells me "Yes" and doesn’t add a word, he is absolutely peaceful in saying it ... then I insist: "And … if I had fallen in love with you?" ... and he begins a very strange speech, he tells me that he is not in love with me, then he asks me what does it mean to fall in love ... and I don’t know what to say ... we keep on talking ... then he tells me that it’s evident that I love him but he thinks he doesn’t love me, he tells me that he doesn’t believe in love. I take courage and I tell him that I really want him on a sexual level, in saying it I fear his reaction ... he replies that he wants me too but this has nothing to do with love and that what he feels is not love but only selfishness, because really of me as a person he doesn’t care at all ... he tells me that he will never make love with me because he doesn’t want to play with feelings ... he is upset, very upset ... I propose to him to take a ride in the car, he accepts ... We go out of town, I don’t know what to do, he doesn’t speak. I make a risky gesture, I take his hand, the first physical contact with Chicco. I, who was never afraid of anything, with him felt embarrassed, upset ... he waits a few seconds, obviously doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t withdraw his hand, doesn’t retract it but doesn’t even tighten mine ... tens of seconds pass like a nightmare, then finally he shakes my hand and hugs it very close to almost hurting me ... then starts crying and says that he will never succeed to love me really. I take a handkerchief, wipe away his tears and he shows me slightly a smile or better a half smile ... I feel him very close but I don’t have the courage to kiss him. We remain silent in the car for a very long time without looking at each other, hand in hand. Sometimes he hugs me tightly. Then he says to me: "Take me back home, I'm fine now, but I don’t want to deceive you". I raise his hand and kiss it, he lets it go, now the magic moment seems over, I start the engine and bring him home. He greets me giving me a very light caress on the hand, he had never done such a thing ... then he tells me. "With me you have to be very patient ... please don’t abandon me ..." He got out of the car, I did the same, he didn’t expect it, I hugged him very tightly and lifted him off the ground, I made him just do a round of 360° without letting him touch the ground, then I kissed him. He was crying! Our story begun like this!
II
Well, I resume from where I left before ... One who hears this story up to that moment what does he think? He thinks that the following day they go to bed together! ... But no! Do you know what he does? ... - and come on, I'm telling you soon ... - he goes into crisis, but just in a crazy way, and doesn’t even tell me anything ... just abruptly disappears! I call him on his cell phone and he doesn’t answer me, I send him a lot of text messages and he doesn’t answer me. I send him 20 e-mails a day and he doesn’t answer me ... he made me feel really bad this (omissis), it's better for me to forget it! In short, he was seized by a crisis of conscience ... exactly! It's not that he didn’t feel attracted, maybe if he had not felt attracted, perhaps repressing himself could have been something thinkable ... No! He felt attracted to me ... but he just couldn’t bear this fact - "I gay? It’s impossible! ... yes, a fantasy happens ... but only that ... " - ... Let's say that maybe he had also got used to the idea that he liked the guys ... but in his own way! ... - Yes ... and come on! - ... He looked at guys and thought about them ... thought a lot about them! Did you understand!?... that is,... but who is the gay guy who if he sees a guy whom he likes, in the end, does not masturbate fantasizing above him? ... But he does not! He never did it! ... or almost never ... when he did it, it seemed to him that he had killed someone ... he went to confession, told the priest only that he had masturbated ... but that he was thinking of a guy he didn’t tell him anything at all ... So, when it happened to him, the thing died there ... because they were all fancy stuff ... but I was there ... well, for all the time we counted down to the exams, in the library, he was looking at me, but not so much, he had put in his mind that the love he felt for me he did not have to dirty it with sex! ... That's it! ... in short, he for the entire period we had spent together, if I can say so, before the story of the hug out of the car, they would have been twenty days at least, he had never masturbated thinking of me! Yes, it is! ... I instead ... obviously ... I was always there ... but he thought that doing the same he could offend me, he thought that masturbating thinking of me meant that he didn’t love me ... and other stupidities like that! Oh well I didn’t even know it ... and how could such a thing have crossed my mind ... Now I tell you what happened ... because he would never tell you himself ... the evening of the hug he came back home and masturbated thinking of me! ... And he liked it as well! ... and then ... - he told me about it, and he was serious ... - he felt like a dishonest ... he didn’t feel worthy of me ... damn it, if he knew what I did! ... Anyway ... I went under his house ... day and night! ... I thought of everything ... that he had had an accident ... maybe that his parents had seen us from the window ... but I would never have thought things like they really were ... He makes me wait under his house two days and two whole nights ... - then he told me he saw me from behind a window and he knew I was there - ... well, on the third day he felt sorry for me ... he said: "If I don’t do something ... I find him embalmed here below "... in short, he went down the street ... I was in the car in the cold, half-frozen ... he knocks on the glass and makes me sign that he wants to get in the car ... it didn’t seem true to me ... I thought: "He has taken his decision!" ... I was upset a bit from sleep, a bit from the cold but also from happiness ... He sits, serious, I would have beaten him ... and tells me all the things I told you before. I thought, "Is he really out of mind or is he pretending? But this guy must be sent by some serious psychologist!" He went on to tell me what he had to tell, with the face of one who would be buried by shame and never looked at my face, I don’t say a smile, for heaven's sake. I said to myself: "What am I doing here with this guy? ... and I was under his house two days and two nights! ... But I send him instantly to get fucked ...! ". And I said to him: "Listen to me, I don’t really care about all these stupid things, come get out and go away!" But he didn’t want to go out and I was getting angry badly! At that moment I would have beaten him ... but he started crying and completely turned the omelette, he told me that he would do anything for me, that he felt stupid, and so on ... then tells me that if I wanted to, he could make love with me as well immediately. And do you know what I told him? "My dear, but you are crazy! ... so, later, if you throw yourself under the train, the fault is also mine!"... He felt uncomfortable, he was crying desperately ... then I started the engine and we went for a ride. I swear to you, I didn’t know what to do, I would never have wanted one like him, but he had glued to me and I liked such a situation ... you know, you say: "I’ll wean this guy ... he has never been with anyone"... in short, it’s not a small thing ... Oh, well, we go out of town, I didn’t know what to do ... No! ... seriously! I thought: "This one I violate him!" ... but not for me, just for him! Look, I really thought so ... but, well, given the type, the reaction a little scared me ... But I wanted him to melt a little ... In short, we were all day around ... He was happy! ... and well! ... and then he tells me: "I'm happy because you didn’t try other things!" ... then he looked at me and told me: "Don’t be angry ... today I was fine ..." and he even fleshed me a smile, that when he smiles ... well ... in short , it was worth it ... So I asked him: "Do you feel attracted to me?" He began to answer philosophical things and I told him. "No! Wait up! ... I want to know if you feel attracted to me sexually ... " He became red like a pepper and said: " ... even sexually ... yes "... then I told him: "So then today you have to masturbate thinking of me ... " He reacted very badly to my final comment, not for the thing itself but because he thought I was making fun of him, his eyes were red and he told me: "You cannot understand these things ... you don’t have to tease me I'm making a terrible effort to adapt to you and you don’t even understand it!" I apologized in the most sincere way and I felt as if I had betrayed him. He told me: "The excuses are not necessary ... I know that you love me." At that moment I thought: "I really love this guy! I’ll dedicate all my life to him!" I wanted to ask him something about his life, I wanted to understand something more than those things “that I could not understand" but it was not the moment ... He had understood that I loved him but I didn’t know if he would give me another date, I did not know whether to ask him, I was afraid to go too fast ... by now I would have adapted to its rhythms anyway ... In short ... all the way up to his house I wondered how I should have said bye, that is at what level ... in short, if I could take his hand or I could caress him. When we arrived under his house I felt frozen ... he made a gesture that I never expected, he took my right hand in his and kissed it ... then he said: "See you tomorrow at university ... " and told me not to get out of the car.
III
The other time we had finished with the afternoon spent in the car when he had given me the appointment at the university ... In short, you have understood who Chicco is ... The next day I go at the university ... well, I expected him to melt completely, that is, I don’t say too much, but I waited at least a bit of complicity, I honestly wanted a lot more ... I thought: “Chicco is melting and then I can enjoy him properly!” Oh! Nothing absurd eh! I love Chicco ... but a tender thing, oh well, I knew it was impossible, but you know, fantasy sometimes came back and then I wondered if he would have masturbate thinking of me, I said to myself: “Certainly not!” But then the brain was always there again and again! He was so ashamed, yes ... but in the end it's not that it takes a lot, and I imagined that while I was doing it he did it too and then we did it together ... for me being in love with Frederick was like that ... that is, how can you fall in love with a guy without thinking of him in terms of sex? ... No! It’s impossible! ... Well now these were only my fantasies ... from him, given the type, I didn’t know what to expect – Chicco, it is useless for you to make me sign to shut up and become red! ... if we have to tell him everything we must tell things how they really are - Okay ... I wait for him at the end of the lesson and he dodges me, I follow him wagging my tail and he pretends not to see me ... I insist and put a hand on his shoulder and he looks at me as if he wanted to electrocute me, I withdraw my hand ... but I don’t give up and he goes to the parking lot, he has the car there, makes me sign to get in the car and starts one of his rants, says that it was all a mistake, that he thought about it, that he doesn’t want to make me suffer because in any case he can never fall in love with anyone, he apologizes a hundred times and tells me that our story has no future. Apparently it seems determined, I'm embarrassed. I tell him: “Give me a serious reason, just one!” He doesn’t know what to say, he repeats that he doesn’t feel it but in the speech he sometimes lets himself go to flashes about his life that doesn’t seem casual and escaped by distraction, they are things desired and often told with a visible embarrassment, that is the speech that he tries to do is serious and he commits himself very strongly. While I'm talking, I look at him and he stares at the empty space in front of him. He tells me that he’s very religious and that for him to feel at peace with his own conscience is fundamental, then he adds a whole story about the fact that he knows very well the positions of the church on gays "and he accepts them!" ... Yes, you understood correctly: he accepts them! ... so he said! ... I said to myself: "What does this guy say? But I choke him!" But he had prepared his little speech accurately and he was acting everything to me ... just like a well packaged script ... Oh ... I liked Chicco and a lot ... but when one plays such a scene, you give him up! You certainly cannot become crazy with him ... What had I to do? Two plus two is four and I say that I'm sorry for everything that happened and I open the door to go down. He turns to me and says: "No! Please! Please! Don’t go!" I closed the door and told him: " Listen Frederick ... but you're telling me that I have to go!" He tells me it's not true, he doesn’t want me to leave but he doesn’t even want a good friendship like ours to be ruined by "other things" ... Other things?! ... At that moment he made me angry but he made me feel sorry too, I saw that he was holding back in a frightening way, almost raped himself to self-control, we were at the university parking lot, and in the morning and there were people, but I had the precise feeling that if we were alone and I had kissed him he would abandon himself completely ... but it could not be done. I didn’t know what to do ... I made him talk ... but he said a lot of stupid things that in the end I couldn’t bear anymore and I told him. "Frederick, you didn’t understand anything about life!" And he looked at me, red eyes, little tear, and told me: "I think you're right ... I would like to live like you ... but I can’t do it, I just can’t." We sent to hell all the morning and afternoon lessons and we left the city, two sandwiches and something to drink and then always talking and we talked about sex, he told me that the day before he had masturbated again thinking of me and then he hadn’t felt guilty. Because for him, after masturbation, you "must" feel guilty! I told him that I had masturbated too, imagining that we did it at the same time and I told him that I had fantasized about the fact that we could do it together and he replied that it was a beautiful thought and that the same evening he would masturbate thinking of me and dreaming of doing it with me. I would not have dreamed of something like this from Frederick neither after twenty years of gay marriage! I was upset ... in the morning he tells me that he has the scruples of conscience and in the afternoon he gives me speeches like that. I say to myself: "What am I doing? Have I to try?" In the end I take his hand, first he lets me do it but does not participate, then shakes my hand, caressing it. My hand is dry and warm, his is cold and wet, almost insensibly I try to feel the pulse: it is very frequent, he’s anxious. I think I'm doing well and I say to him: "Frederick, come on, now I'll take you home", he looks at me upset: "But why? What did I do? ... I'm letting myself go now but it costs me a lot ... we're here, please ... don’t bring me home ... I want to be with you ... Please Sandro, don’t freeze me like that! If it’s necessary, insist on me, I'm not used to these things but I want them, I swear I want them and I don’t want to ruin everything ... I don’t want to ruin everything ... hug me, please, hug me! Why don’t you do that? Why don’t you understand that I need it?" We sat in the back seat of the car and I hugged him tightly, I didn’t even think about kissing him. I held him to me and my Chicco trembled, trembled and chattered his teeth, he didn’t say a word. I was shocked, I had my adventures but I had never seen a guy who had a physical need to be embraced by me as violent as that of Frederick. He was stressed out. I caressed his hair but I didn’t kiss him. After a few minutes I looked him in the eyes and I said: "Chicco ... I love you!" He told me: "Now, if you want, we can go." We passed on the front seats and I drove to his house, he told me that he had feared that I would refuse him and that he loved me because I had understood that he needed time. I told him: "Only for this?" And he replied: "For this even more!" Every so often while I was driving I passed my hand through his hair and he said to me: "Come on, come on ... don’t do that." but he said it with a very sweet voice ... Along the way I asked him a thousand times how he was and he said:" Good! Sandro, good!" Then I ventured a more difficult speech, I told him: "I have to tell you something ... I'm embarrassed a lot but I have to tell you ... when we hugged, I wanted you ... I went really hard, I thought I couldn’t hold it back." He told me: "Yes, I noticed ... ". I ask him the explicit question: "Does it bother you?". He replies: "No ... it happened to me too ..." ... Chicco, but you don’t say anything? – “And what have I to say? You have already said everything ... but I've got a fear ... that if this story ends up on the internet I can be considered just like a total imbecile ... anyway I'd like to know how the readers of our story will take it, they should be all gays ... Wow! That is bad! ... well, but I think that nobody will read it!
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| GAYS AND SCHOOL OF PREJUDICES |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-09-2018, 02:11 PM - Forum: Gay guys
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Hi Project,
I am a guy 19 years old, I will soon take my final exams and leave the school. I cannot wait! Because for me it was a negative experience under too many points of view. I state that I have always had good results, not excellent but certainly good and I like studying, but at school I felt like I was in prison, in an environment where I had to pretend and be an acrobat not to end up in ridicule and marginalization.
I'm a normal guy, but I'm gay, I've never gone after girls and when girls come after me I feel uncomfortable and I don’t know how to get rid of them and they feel rejected and it's unpleasant for both of us.
Today I read the planning document of the school for the next year (I will not be here!), a series of films is expected to be shown on alcohol, drugs, homosexuality and violence among young people. They put homosexuality in the middle between drugs and violence! For them, however, gays are deviant and are very similar to alcoholic and violent people. You can see the prejudices even in these things.
Then the lessons, a grotesque thing, the teacher of Italian who knows the book by heart and is passionate of D'Annunzio, has exalted him in all the sauces, we did so much literature even recent but not Gadda, not Pasolini, not Bassani (writers related to homosexuality), fortunately I had read them on my own and perhaps it’s better that she didn’t treat them, in Latin she’s passionate of Ovid, mah! When she spoke of Petronius, she presented him as if Petronius were a sort of implicit moralist whipping homosexuality and the book, chosen by her, mentions homosexuality in Petronius in a single line and in terms of hypothesis! Or our teacher and the scientist who wrote the book have never read Petronius, what I don’t believe, or the need to censor is such that they must lower just to consciously falsify things for quiet living and to present Petronius as a half priest!
The teacher of Science, I say of Science not of Philosophy, takes for granted that being gay is a mental illness and that people become gay and therefore we must be careful! Her words! It is almost unbelievable that a person who in many other things has his own serious competence, at least for what I can understand, on issues that touch homosexuality is completely dominated by absurd preconceptions.
The teacher of Mathematics, when it happened to talk about these things, immediately put them aside saying that he still had so much to do with the program and that he could not "waste time".
The teacher of Philosophy is a bit better but she also flies over certain topics, at least she doesn’t say that gays are abnormal and, given the environment of my school, that’s already something.
I also attend Religion lessons, above all to see how they turn it over, the teacher is a young, slightly sticky priest, who always does the funny guy with the students, everybody's friend, but he gives me the impression of one who plays a part. With him once happened to talk about homosexuality, he said that the church cannot accept those who confuse the “sacrament of marriage” (referred to hetero people) with "having fun" (referred to gays), that the church understands the problems of gays, doesn’t judge them and respects them "as all the people must be respected", this specification has enraged me! Then he started talking about family and the gay talk ended up here!
At school there is a balance of fear on these things, each one is limited to saying only obvious things, things that can be accepted by everyone. It is the fair of the obvious, of the great principles that are so general and abstract that they no longer mean anything.
Politics is also a totally taboo subject and all taboo subjects are carefully avoided by everyone. The priest of religion does not talk about homosexuality and politics, there is no possibility of discussion, others have programs, exams, etc. etc., but if you read the papers provided by the school, they talk about "integral formation of the person", which is not only ridiculous but grotesque.
But basically I can even understand the point of view of teachers, no one wants trouble, they only care about bringing their salary home! For them it makes no sense to open discussions on matters of principle to defend gays! Too risky and not really worth it! Because if someone tried to do otherwise students and parents would immediately stop them or they would end up in ridicule.
But what makes me angry are mainly the students; I am absolutely certain that if some teacher would try to do a less stupid lesson speaking "even" of homosexuality in an honest way, he/she would immediately be labeled as gay by his/her own students with all that such a fact entails and I think it can be a real form of blackmailing and persecution, because I see some of my comrades and above all girls who make hallucinatory comments, who are ready for lynching because for them it is only a game that affirms their superiority.
The teacher of Philosophy herself has repeatedly pretended not to hear such comments and this is shameful. But, I wonder, if she had intervened what would she have got? They would have considered her at best as a stupid woman who has time to waste.
So school goes, at least mine. I want to leave my region, I don’t say Italy, but I want to go to a civil country, where respect is something real, where a guy can be what he really is without having to resort to various tricks to avoid the gay label with everything that comes with it. I read about schools in the north where things are very different, obviously there are still two Italies and I find myself in the less civilized one. I read about guys who attend schools where they can even come out with classmates and find a boyfriend. For me these things are on the other side of the moon.
If you want, publish the email, but remove the last part.
An angry student!
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| CATHOLIC CHURCH AND GAYS AT THE TIME OF POPE FRANCIS |
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Posted by: gayprojectforum - 02-08-2018, 09:06 PM - Forum: Gays and religion
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I have not written about the relationship between the Catholic Church and Gays for a long time. Pope Francis undoubtedly didn’t fuel crusades against homosexuals as his predecessor Benedict XVI had done many times, and this fact ignited hopes for a hypothetical change of course of the Catholic Church on the issue of homosexuality and hypothetical openings of Pope Francis himself towards the gays. I say hypothetical because, before becoming Pope, as Archbishop of Buenos Aires he expressed himself with very clear words against the legal recognition of homosexual unions (http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-...omosexuals), and also the Synod on the Family, had resolved in a fire of straw and in a substantial reaffirmation of the "magisterium" of Benedict XVI in the matter of homosexuality. I don’t believe that Pope Francis has ever had real openings towards gays, but admitted and not granted that he had them, what is certain is that, as it was absolutely obvious to expect, in fact, nothing has changed. The Catechism, as was obvious, has not been modified and the so-called openings have manifested themselves for what they were, that is, as attempts to save face.
I have always been amazed by the insistence with which the homosexual Catholics have sought the approval of the Church, an essentially impossible approval, which would require a profound revision of doctrine and the renunciation of the Church to the dogmatic claim to be the infallible interpreter of the will to God. The Church is a historical reality that of the message of Christ has often made litter and that, like all historical realities, is deeply conditioned by its own tradition that ends up overlapping the Gospel message and becoming confused with it, obscuring it.
I would like to propose to your reading a document signed by the Archbishop of Turin, with which the Archbishop suspends a seminar that is part of the "pastoral care of homosexuals" because its meaning would have been misunderstood. I don’t go into the fact that the meaning has been misunderstood or not, but I want to emphasize that the document is a clear proof that nothing has changed in the Church and nothing will change on the subject of homosexuality.
Below you can read the text of the message from the Archbishop of Turin, as published by the Diocese website
"Pastoral care of homosexuals: intervention by Msgr. Nosiglia
Statement by the Archbishop of Turin on 5 February 2018
Below is the declaration by the Archbishop of Turin, Msgr. Cesare Nosiglia, of 5 February 2018, regarding the pastoral care of homosexuals and the interventions that have appeared in recent days on some media:
Regarding some media interventions on the pastoral commitment of Father Gianluca Carrega, priest of the Diocese of Turin in charge of the pastoral care of homosexuals, it is appropriate to clarify some points.
The Diocese of Turin has for several years promoted a pastoral service of spiritual, biblical and prayer accompaniment for homosexual believers who meet with a priest and reflect together, starting from the Word of God, on their state of life and their choices in subject of sexuality.
This is a service that has proved useful and appreciated and that corresponds to what the Apostolic Exhortation "Amoris Laetitia" of Pope Francis affirms and invites us to do: " We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence. Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives. "(No. 250).
This is the purpose of the spiritual journey of accompaniment and discernment proposed in the Diocese. It therefore wants to help homosexual persons to understand and fully realize God's plan for each one of them. This does not mean approving homosexual behaviors or unions, which remain for the Church morally unacceptable choices: because such choices are far from expressing that project of unity between man and woman expressed by the will of God the Creator (Gen. 1-2) as a mutual and fruitful gift. But this does not mean not taking care of homosexual believers and their request for faith.
This is why the path that the Diocese has undertaken does not in any way legitimize civil unions or even same-sex marriage on which the "Amoris Laetitia" clearly states that "there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family "(No. 251). Some publications have provided, in these days, different interpretations - often superficial, sometimes biased - that make it necessary to clarify the characteristics and limits of work in this pastoral context. Since we are dealing with people in research who live delicate and even painful situations, it is essential that the information that is published corresponds to the truth and to a correct understanding of what is proposed, with a spirit of profound evangelical charity and faithfulness to teaching of the Church in matter. For this reason I believe, together with Father Gianluca Carrega of which I appreciate the work, that it is opportune to suspend the initiative of the retreat, in order to carry out an adequate discernment.
Mons. Cesare Nosiglia Archbishop of Turin"
Someone was amazed at what was written by the Archbishop of Turin, but it should be emphasized that the Archbishop's document merely refers to the Amoris laetitia of Pope Francis, who deals in a very short way with homosexuality only in two points, which literally you can read below:
“250. The Church makes her own the attitude of the Lord Jesus, who offers his boundless love to each person without exception.[275] During the Synod, we discussed the situation of families whose members include persons who experience same-sex attraction, a situation not easy either for parents or for children. We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided,[276] particularly any form of aggression and violence. Such families should be given respectful pastoral guidance, so that those who manifest a homosexual orientation can receive the assistance they need to understand and fully carry out God’s will in their lives.[277]
251. In discussing the dignity and mission of the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as for proposals to place unions between homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage and family”. It is unacceptable “that local Churches should be subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies should make financial aid to poor countries dependent on the introduction of laws to establish ‘marriage’ between persons of the same sex”.[278]
[275] Cf. Bull Misericordiae Vultus, 12: AAS 107 (2015), 407.
[276] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2358; cf. Relatio Finalis 2015, 76.
[277] Ibid.
[278] Relatio Finalis 2015, 76; cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons (3 June 2003), 4.”
The document of Pope Francis refers to the Bull of Indiction of the Jubilee of Mercy, to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and to the Final Report of the Synod of Bishops on the Family of 2015, which in turn dedicates to homosexuality only n. 76:
“76. The Church’s attitude is like that of her Master, who offers his boundless love to every person without exception (cf. MV, 12). To families with homosexual members, the Church reiterates that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his/her dignity and received with respect, while carefully avoiding “every sign of unjust discrimination” (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons, 4). Specific attention is given to guiding families with homosexual members. Regarding proposals to place unions of homosexual persons on the same level as marriage, “there are absolutely no grounds for considering homosexual unions to be in any way similar or even remotely analogous to God's plan for marriage and family” (ibid). In every way, the Synod maintains as completely unacceptable that local Churches be subjected to pressure in this matter and that international bodies link financial aid to poor countries to the introduction of laws to establish “marriage” between people of the same sex.”
The Final Report of the Synod of Bishops explicitly mentions the " Considerations Regarding Proposals To Give Legal Recognition To Unions Between Homosexual Persons " of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, of 3 June 2003, signed by the then cardinal Prefect Joseph Ratzinger (http://gayprojectforum.altervista.org/T-...man-rights). The Church's doctrine on homosexuality therefore remains exactly the one sanctioned by Benedict XVI.
I wonder how, today, homosexual Catholics can maintain an attitude of subjection that involves the subordination of individual conscience to a "magisterium" which in substance has nothing evangelical and does nothing but perpetuate claims of pure prejudice in stark contrast with the scientific truth and with the daily experience of homosexuals.
I have been dealing with homosexuals for many years and I know many homosexuals and many homosexual couples, frankly, to think that God's plan for these people involves the obligation of chastity seems to me a truly obscene statement.
If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear!
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