So I just now finished watching my favourite show on the planet, 'Dead Like Me', and I just saw my favourite episode. It involves the death of a transexual man, who dies tragically in his plastic surgeon's office, awaiting his first consultation on the procedure to become a woman. "No... for the way I lived"
I was just taken aback by how true that statement is and how often I've felt it in my life. Daisy does the very catholic thing and tells him to pray and get ready to be forgiven, when the transsexual says "I'll be ready to be forgiven, when He says sorry to me"
At that point a rock is hurled through the stained glass window (by some punk kids) and the transsexual takes this as an apology from God and "moves on".
The whole point? I'm really getting tired of being told how to live. Not saying I'm a transsexual and this is my big coming out post to everyone; but the episode's message speaks volumes to people that don't live the straight and narrow lifestyle.
That poor man must have contemplated suicide more than anyone could possibly imagine because, according to catholic teaching, God gave him a life that God was sure he (the transsexual) could survive and overcome. And if you claim that by getting a sex-change was the way the transsexual could overcome his internal hell, well you're wrong, because the Church means through natural means can he overcome his internal hell. ARGH!
So this is dedicated to anyone whose felt that God has fucked them over but were too scared to believe it. You were right, He probably did.
Below is a little rant I wrote shortly after I came out to my mother, don't worry, my blog will back to it's random funniness soon (I'm thinking of a post that deals with vegans and goths, just trying to tie the two together somehow...)
Why religion is evil.
“A family that prays together stays together”. Simple saying I’m sure a lot of people have heard it. First time I heard it was from my best friend Jen, after she was having a small dilemma with her faith and family. I can’t really remember the details of what was going on, but it was resolved quickly. I look back on this saying and see how cold it feels; how wrong it feels to say it. I wonder how many people that claim to live by this saying (don’t worry jenga, not saying you do) know what it’s like to come out to their family?
Lemme make something perfectly clear here, I am a momma’s boy. My mom tells me jump, I not only say how high, I would ask with how many legs. She is my best friend in the entire world and thought she thought the same of me. Another thing I need to explain to anyone who reads this (maybe more than Janey and Jen this time? LOL) is that most gay males are momma’s boys, I would guess somewhere in the 80% of gay men are closer to their mothers than their fathers. We do not give two shits if our fathers beat the hell out of us after we come out to them, if our fathers kick us out of the house or if they make living in their house a living hell – all we care about is that our mothers will look at us exactly as they did when we were born after we utter “Mom, I’m gay” to them; perfect. There is such a thing as perfection, my mom told me I was perfect and that’s why it’s so hard to accept that I’m gay.
Hope. A VERY strong part of religion. Hope there’s an afterlife, hope that a shitty life wont be so shitty, hope that this plan of your life turns out to kick ass. It’s also that sneaky conniving little bitch that ruins lives. It’s that small glimmer of hope that every gay man has that puts his logic, intelligence and common sense on hold. It’s your mom asking you to help prepare the meal or to accompany her shopping because she trusts your fashion sense or to ask you which actor you think is the most attractive. It’s these and a number of things that makes any gay man think “SHE KNOWS!! SHE HAS TO KNOW! WHY ELSE?! AND IF SHE KNOWS, SHE MUST NOT CARE!!” because you’re still in your home, right? Your mom is not degrading you, right? This hope grows despite all the other things you’ve heard, “gays are just greedy” or “I don’t know what I would do if one of you turned out to be gay”. But those don’t matter, hope gives you that strength to push onward, it will bring an atheist to his knees praying to a god he doesn’t believe in, begging him to make his mother not care, because he’s gonna get up and walk down those stairs, and tell his mom he’s gay. Hope is a lie.
So where is religion in all of this? Why is it evil? Surely my opinion is biased. Nope, it’s not. My mom, being the mother she was, seeing how distraught I was seconds before I uttered those three words that would change our lives, asked me first “whose pregnant?” followed by “or are you sick?” Up to the millisecond, my mom was a total mother, looking out for me, making sure I was ok. But the moment I said,“Mama, I’m gay” followed by me convulsing, nearly collapsing, followed by me asking “do you still love me?” she sat down and said “of course I do, but this is something we’re just gonna have to deal with”. It’s her religion that prevents her from seeing me as that dark hair baby, her last child that she would ever have, and instead sees her child as sick. It’s religion that prevented her from stopping me ask that ridiculous question “do you still love me?” and embracing me with the strongest hug she could muster, and telling me, without me asking, that she loves me. It’s religion that holds that prejudice in her heart, the same heart that I would hear and use to drown out any noise while she fed me as an infant. It’s religion that has masked my mother’s eyes and told her I’m not allowed to be happy. It’s religion that tells her I’m someone different now. It’s religion that causes her to forget that I was once inside her, that I was physically a part of her. It’s religion that has taken my mother from me and now with hope gone, and my logic and intelligence coming back to me – it’s religion that’s evil not us.
