…that love is unconditional. There’s nothing you can do that would make me write a letter like this.
“James: This is a difficult but necessary letter to write. I hope your telephone call was not to receive my blessing for the degrading of your lifestyle. I have fond memories of our times together, but that is all in the past.
Don’t expect any further conversations with me. No communications at all. I will not come to visit, nor do I want you in my house.
You’ve made your choice though wrong it may be. God did not intend for this unnatural lifestyle.
If you choose not to attend my funeral, my friends and family will understand.
Have a good birthday and good life. No present exchanges will be accepted.
Goodbye, Dad.”
They could even become a sanctimonious, life-hating Christian, and while it would break my heart, I wouldn’t write a letter like that.
I think the subheading on the linked post says it all:
“This biological parent is most assuredly not a father.”
This revolting scum was a sperm donor, nothing more.
I hope the son isn’t blaming himself for this. he is so much better off not having such a disgusting hate-monger in his life.
that is absolutely heartbreaking.
More details here:
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/08/07/gay-man-publishes-fathers-letter-disowning-him/
And the text of the letter, for image-impaired:
The son follows up:
I’m glad the son’s doing well and think that ultimately any father who would say something like this to his kid is doing the kid a favor by getting out of his life, but man, that’s got to hurt horribly!
Oh now I would write a letter like this if my (currently toddling) son made the wrong lifestyle choice.
For example, if he became a homoeopath or an archbishop. Perhaps an itinerant pastor selling snake oil to rubes or an internet psychic. Especially if he became a creationist.
Even those I might be able to forgive. I might even go so far as to forgive Insurance Company Executive. But becoming the next Piers Morgan? He might as well be dead to me.
Louis
P.S. Yes I know I make light of a terrible piece of hateful bigotry. There’s no excuse for people like this father, what he has done is abhorrent on so many levels. My fragile little mind just reacts to hate like this with anger and humour. I have to mock it lest I rise up and slay things.
It was shellfish, right? He ate shellfish in front of his father.
What, just because his son’s a lawyer? That’s a bit rough.
…y’know, all you parent types; y’all could always write your kids a letter of unconditional support *now*. Even if they’re too young to read, or too old for it to be an issue anymore. I bet they keep THAT letter forever, too.
Many thanks for the link; may I say this is one of the worst things I have seen in many years of legal practice.
For those interested, I invite you to have a read of the comments thread on that post, and also a longer essay on homophobia and same sex marriage by another of our writers, Lorenzo. It, too, has a really outstanding and thoughtful comments thread:
http://skepticlawyer.com.au/2012/08/07/none-so-blind/
The only people Jesus castigated were the Pharisees, those who insisted on the letter of the law over the spirit of the law. Jesus himself spent his time with “sinners and tax collectors”, and broke the “rules” all the time.
Sadly, his example is lost on many of those who claim to follow him.
And yet he signs it “Dad”. How bizarre.
From the comments:
Indeed. I’m fairly sure all Biblebelieving Christians are supposed to take their disobedient children to the citygate and have them stoned. Shunning is pretty liberal.
#10 Doug Hudson
Yeah, funny, ain’t it. Xtianity says we are ALL sinners “in thought, word and deed”. There is NO sin which cannot be forgiven, except denial of the holy spirit (never quite figured out what that was).
Does this pious man cut off all the other sinners in his life – the divorced and remarried (Jesus called them adulterers), those who steal, lie, fornicate (i.e. all unmarried non-virgins), those who follow false or no religions?
I bet not, because homosexuality is the worst sine of all. Except that the bible says it is no worse than any other sins, including being born with original sin.
This hypocrisy is why I KNOW these fuckers are using the bible to justify their homophobia.
I understand that Madelyn Murray O’hair disowned her son when he had himself baptized.
I wonder if the Father will ever come to regret his stupidity and cruelty?
I have to say that writing this sort of letter is lose-lose for the parent. What is he expecting to get out of it? The only possible outcome is loss of interaction with his kid and loss of the possibility of ever seeing his grandkids (bio or otherwise.) Not to mention loss of someone who might otherwise have cared for him in old age and illness, comforted him during times of loss, amused him when he was bored, etc.
This letter reminds me of a family story from (I think) my great-great-grandparents’ time. My great-great-grandmother announced to her (wealthy WASP) parents that she was going to marry this nice (Irish Catholic) guy she met. They said, “If you do this, darken our door no more.” She was said to have said that after this threat, “I SLAMMED the door on my way out!” According to their grandchildren, from whom I heard the story, they lived happily together for the rest of their lives and she never regreted the decision. Her parents, OTOH, eventually regreted not being able to meet their grandchildren or have their daughter around when they became old and ill.
Dads, don’t do this. You have far more to lose than your kid does.
I wonder if that father ever thinks of this letter, five years on. It must have broken his heart to write. Isn’t it horrible and depraved that Christianity tears families apart like this?
I’m the black sheep of my family, being the only atheist amongst my parents, and sibling; they’re all church-goers. When I was 20 years old I came out as bisexual and told them I was in a same-sex relationship. A couple of months ago I came out again to them – I told them I was trans and wanted to change my gender. In each case they confirmed that they loved me as a person and as family, unconditionally, and irrespective of who I wanted as a lover or whether I wanted to be a man or a woman (that bit’s uhh… complicated). So Christian people *can* do better and treat family members better than this man’s father has treated his gay son. Summary: that father is not a decent human being, and his adherence to a supposedly loving religion is a sham.
The son is still the better man… if this letter had come to me, and if I had decided to share it with the internet, I would have written my father’s name, so that this letter would show up for anyone googling him.
Parents who do stuff like this really do show how they cherry pick the Bible to suit themselves (all Christians do, just some choose to cherry pick the good parts about forgiveness or loving thy neighbor and some the hateful bits).
I would point to the parable of the Prodigal Son as an example of how to treat a child who’s actions you disagree with. How despite the fact that his son went out into the world and did things the father thought were sinful when he came back home the father welcomed him with open arms and threw a feast. A Christian who chose the love and forgiveness angle might use that parable as an example of why they should still love and accept their child instead of cutting them off.
Religion serves to give you cover and justification for what you choose to do. You can use it to justify doing good (the churches which are declaring themselves Open and Affirming for example) or for being cruel (like this father). I wish the former was universal, I can live with those Christians and agree to disagree.
Hang on. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to make such absolutes about the unconditionality of love, because then the implication is that homosexuality is “just as okay” as whatever is the worst thing you can imagine your kids becoming (for example, a dictator). Of course if I had children I would love them no matter what job/religion/whatever path they followed, but only within the bounds of ethical human behavior. (Admittedly I might not be able to “stop loving them on cue”, but I would try to maintain a clear head about it, for example, I wouldn’t defend a George-Zimmerman type person no matter the familial connection.)
Am I unusual in this? Or is it an “exception that proves the rule” because such circumstances are so absurdly extreme?
Errr, where did that come from? Did he mean that, because the rest of his letter didn’t show any charity? What a creep!
The Christers have a holy book that is homophobic, so that’s probably what is responsible for this guy’s distorted outlook. It doesn’t have to be that way.
I have a half-sister that I didn’t know existed until I was 10 and didn’t meet until I was 15. I’m still not very well in touch with her and I suspect she’s washed her hands of my side of the family. Why? Because she’s gay and my dad objects. He’s atheist, too — just goes to show you being atheist doesn’t make you perfect.
I miss her. At one of our few meetings when I was in college, she gave me the digital camera that got me started on a hobby I enjoy pursuing today.
Chris Morrow, if someone I loved and who I was intimately related to committed a morally indefensible act, I would be horrified and would wish them to do everything they possibly could do make amends, if possible. (Obviously some things that fall under that rubric are possibly far beyond making amends.)
Would such an act make me stop loving them, and wish to ostracise them for the rest of my life? No. I think that such a shunning would merely demonstrate I didn’t actually know or love them in the first place.
Chrismorrow:
My mom has always maintained that she would love us even if we were in prison for murder and I suspect that many parents would tell you the same thing. I don’t necessarily think that parental love is the most rational thing out there. ;)
Although I like the idea of writing a letter to DarkFetus letting her know that she will be loved no matter what, I hope I don’t need to. I hope that I will be able to raise her in a family that puts love and acceptance above all else.
Another obedient Christian willing to sacrifice his son on the alter. I’ve no doubt that in this father’s community of Christian peers, among those, if any, who are aware of his situation, there will much head shaking and sadness at his misfortune at having such a wayward child, but they will understand his decision and why he had to do it. After all, worship of God and appeasement of his wrath comes first, and it is to be hoped that perhaps after being cast out, his son will return to righteousness as the prodigal son. One can only pray.
Religion fucks people up.
Sadly, this letter does not surprise me at all. The sheer amount of homeless LGBT teens should be a testament to how many parents disown their queer children.
A few years ago when Barb a regular here, she struck me as being like the person who wrote this letter, that she would disown any child she had that came old as being queer. So any thread that she showed up in, I asked her what she would do if her child was queer. When she finally answered me, she basically claimed that I must have been sexually molested as a child.
This attitude shown in this letter is not at all uncommon. It is good that the son did not come out to his father when he was a teen. It would have been much more catastrophic for him. And it was bad enough that he was raised in a home that was filled with such “christian love”.
It pisses me off that the father’s actions is one that is being defended by the social conservatives in the US. This is why I will not be kind and reasonable with them. They have destroyed too many lives. I cannot be reasonable with that.
I’m getting really sick of seeing otherwise intelligent people say things like this. Just like every other Biblical figure that’s supposedly a great guy, Jesus has at least as much of the Bible devoted to how much of a prick he was as to how nice he was to prostitutes. Trying to argue that “You should do X because Jesus did X” is just enabling their horseshit.
Just, read this and stop trying to fight fire with gasoline. Please.
This too. Comments like this just provide a bubble to shield the Bible and Christianity from all the criticism it deserves. The simple fact is that a lot of people are homophobes because of the Bible and are not just using their religion to justify pre-existing homophobia. Yes, they don’t follow all the other rules of the Bible, but people aren’t always consistent and this says absolutely nothing about their character. Someone can try to follow the strictures of their religion without perfectly understanding them or without perfectly succeeding in the attempt.
Someone can be convinced that some group is evil for really, horribly bad reasons. That does not make them malicious, and it does not mean that they are actively seeking justification for their bigotry. Denying the existence and influence of social pressures on these people only serves to obfuscate. Denying the fact that a lot of bigots would be good people if they weren’t trapped by bad ideology only serves to shield the ideology.
There is no evidence that this man was looking for a reason to disown his son. There’s plenty of evidence that his religion and his society told him to. Criticize the man for giving in, certainly, but don’t give the culture a free pass.
The really sad part about Christian homophobia is that it isn’t necessary. There is nothing in Jesus’ teachings, explicit or implicit, that says gays are to be treated differently than anybody else–he doesn’t even talk about gays! Whereas he does talk about loving one’s neighbor, and not judging, and so forth.
There are many progressive Christians, and many of them do engage the homophobic branch of the faith, but it’s hard to get through to them.
I remember once, I had a discussion with a Christian who opposed homosexuality. She was a very intelligent woman, and she conceded that the reference in Leviticus was a very weak basis for opposing homosexuality (since Christians ignored most everything else in Leviticus). She also acknowledged that Jesus himself never mentioned homosexuality, and that Paul’s references were both vague and contradictory to Jesus’ teachings. Finally, she admitted that she didn’t really have a religious reason to oppose homosexuality, but that it was just “icky” (her word).
I think for a lot of homophobic Christians, the Bible is merely an excuse for hating something that they don’t understand / fear.
@28, I’m pretty familiar with the Gospels, and I’m not familiar with Jesus being a prick (except to the poor fig tree–I don’t know what THAT was about).
I guess if you read it literally, his “I come not to bring peace, but a sword” line is pretty dickish, but considering that virtually everything Jesus said was a parable or metaphor, I find it hard to interpret it literally.
I’m not a Christian, I’m an Atheist, but I do think Jesus said some pretty cool stuff.
Now, once you get past the Gospels, all bets are off–the early Christians could be just as assholish as their modern day counterparts.
As a parent, this just sickens me. Why in the world is it so hard for people like this to understand that unconditional love is supposed to be (duh!) unconditional? Oh right, because they believe in a magical sky pixie who is just waiting for them to mess up so he can toss them in a lake of fire forever….
—
Pterryx:
I’ve written letters like that every year on my childrens’ birthdays (with additional statements of pride in the amazing people they are) since each one turned 18. This year, they surprised me on my birthday by sending similar letters (handwritten, by 20-somethings!).
—
dianne:
My grandmother was disowned and excommunicated in 1925 for marrying a divorced (gasp!) Methodist (horror!) with custody of his three daughters (lands!). She always said that, no matter how much it hurt to have her family shun her in public (they lived in the same town less than a mile apart for decades), she would always make the same choice because life without him wasn’t worth living. True to her word, she died less than two weeks after he did.
—
chrismorrow:
Perhaps it wasn’t the most motherly thing to say, but there have been times (like when I found out my oldest was arrested for DWI by reading it in the newspaper’s police briefs) that I have said to one or the other (or all) of my children, “I will always love you, but right now, I don’t like you very much.” You can disapprove of their behavior and actions, and demand they face the consequences, while still loving them. Unconditional love does not mean “unconditional cheerleading,” in my opinion.
Jesus was an utterly monstrous bigoted piece of shit. The idea that he is a great moral teacher is a myth. The things he said and did were far too inconsistent. For every love thy neighbor, there was an “I refuse to heal this little girl because she’s the wrong race.” Using the Bible to justify anything, at any time, in any way, just opens the door for justifying worse things.
Don’t do it.
I’d say Matthew 5.18 is implicit enough.
Also, apparently my link was broken. I’m too tired (Insomnia is horrible) and annoyed to give a damn about fixing it, but it was the Skeptic’s Annotated Bible section on intolerance in the New Testament.
To be clear, I don’t think you were implying the following.
That said, I feel compelled to say that this is not the same thing as disowning a child due to sexuality.
I’d disown a child who got into white supremacy. Because that’s something they chose. Disowning a child for how they were born is not at all the same thing.
Which one? We have at least five different conceptions of Jesus in the canonical texts.
Past the gospels? You mean the stuff that’s actually the damn foundation of the religion?
Religion is a reliable way to split families apart.
Routine, happens all the time.
Part of my friend’s family went fundie. “So how is that working out”.
“Who knows, the rest of the family no longer has much contact with them.”
When you leave a cult like Mormonism, JW’s, etc., you frequently leave all your friends and family behind.
@32, way off topic, so I’ll let it drop after this, but there is beauty and peace in many of the teachings of Jesus. Some of his followers may corrupt and twist his teachings to fit their own prejudices, but that doesn’t mean there is no value at all in them.
I’m rather fond of “as you judge, so shall you be judged”, and the whole “remove the beam in your own eye” thing, myself.
And the “cast the first stone” story, while not original to the Gospel of John, has an excellent moral.
Sure, it’s basically the Golden Rule, but frankly, not many religious leaders in that time period (or any period, really), were teaching the Golden Rule.
@36, True, but since I’m not claiming he was a God, inconsistencies in the account aren’t a huge problem; obviously, the authors of the Gospels modified the accounts to fit their own agendas.
The later parts of the New Testament are the foundation of Pauline Christianity, which is a rather nasty bit of work (though I’ve recently heard some scholars argue that Paul was badly misinterpreted by later Christians).
However, Pauline Christianity is hardly the only form of Christianity, just the predominant one.
Basically, if you extract the “good stuff” from the Gospels, you have a pretty good philosophy of life.
Its not like you have to take the whole thing at face value.
No you aren’t. You never read them for comprehension.
1. In one place, jesus gives instructions on how to beat your slaves, oblivious to the idea that there might be something wrong with being a slave.
2. In one passage jesus advises men to cut off their testicles if “they can bear it.”
3. In one major passage, jesus says when he comes back, he will kill everyone who didn’t believe he was god.
There is a lot more, go to google and read, in the unlikely event that you have any courage.
My biggest fear in “coming out” as a new non-believer to my very Southern Baptist dad was that he would respond like that. He didn’t. And we still have a solid relationship today, as long as we don’t talk about religion, politics, war,…
Heart hurts for that kid. No one deserves that. I can’t even imagine what that must feel like.
You could say that about any book, Das Capital, the Koran, 20,000 leagues under the sea, Star Trek.
You would have a lot thicker and better philosophy if you chery picked Lord of the Rings.
@22: Typical. Just watch as they end their hateful screeds with “Bless your heart”, as if not saying “fuck you” makes it any less fuck-you-y.
LOVE: U’RE DOING IT RONG.
@40, actually, I have cherry-picked many of the things you mentioned : ) In fact, one of my favorite bits of philosophy is from The Lord of the Rings, when Frodo complains that Bilbo should have killed Gollum. Gandalf responds, “Many who live deserve to die. And many who die deserve to live. Can you give it to them?”
I’ve also cherry-picked Buddhism, Taoism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, the precepts of the Jedi Order, and a bunch of other sources, to construct my personal philosophy.
Study all things, take what is good, and leave the rest.
Refusing to call judgment on people’s actions, no matter how shitty they might be, enables further shitty behavior. I don’t see how that’s a good thing to preach.
And they’ll understand if you do attend the funeral, just to make sure the old bastard is dead.
Ugh, some of the comments over on Skeptic Lawyer’s remind me why I mainly stick to FTB.
Inflection:
Oh, we know that. We’ve been dealing with misogynist atheists for more than a year now. (Note that misogyny is very tightly connected with homophobia.)
Xanthe:
Some people stop loving others because their relationships go sour for no reason in particular. That doesn’t mean the love was false to begin with. Emotions change.
As for loving people who commit morally egregious acts, while I won’t condemn, for example, parents who defend children who are murderers or rapists (so long as they aren’t victim-blamers), I think it’s also ridiculous to say that people who won’t defend such loved ones never loved them in the first place. Not all love is unconditional — nor should it be.
Janine:
This. People who demand said kindness and reasonableness have typically never been on the receiving end of that type of destruction or seen it happen to loved ones.
Doug Hudson, Jesus probably didn’t even exist. The “good” sayings attributed to him came from other sources.
luminata, Genie in the Beer Bottle
9 August 2012 at 9:26 am
“” I understand that Madelyn Murray O’hair disowned her son when he had himself baptized.””
“To be clear, I don’t think you were implying the following.
That said, I feel compelled to say that this is not the same thing as disowning a child due to sexuality.
I’d disown a child who got into white supremacy. Because that’s something they chose. Disowning a child for how they were born is not at all the same thing.”
I was assuming that Prof. Myers was asserting that an atheist would never disown his/her child. That doesn’t seem to be the
case.
i would imagine that if the son in the post confessed to his father that he had homosexual tendencies but was trying to resist them that, the father would still accept him. It might have been the son’s choosing to follow the homosexual life style that the he led him to disown the son. It wasn’t who he was, it was what was doing.
See what happened there? I put in some of the utterly reprehensible things that Jesus said (Could’ve found worse, but I’m still really exhausted and thus don’t want to work for it), and it didn’t change your argument at all. Saying that there is “value” to Jesus’ teachings and saying that they can be appropriately used as a normative guide to morality opens people up to acting on the awful things that Jesus said just as much as the good things. In fact, that’s a lot of how Christianity supports bigotry: Put “Kill the gays” next to “Love thy neighbor” and “Thou shalt not steal”, and you’ll trick a good chunk of the populace into thinking that they all fit together.
With a whole lot of really nasty baggage dragged along with it.
How about we find something else to get good philosophy from that doesn’t also support slavery, genocide, murder, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, willful gullibility, superstition, animal cruelty, child abuse…
Also, this times fifty.
I’m going to try to sleep and fail miserably now.
Doug:
This is feel-good nonsense that excuses the hateful and destructive content of whatever philosophies you cherry-pick.
And I have a special loathing for your last sentence, because “Take what you like and leave the rest” is one of the slogans in 12-step groups, which similarly serves to excuse them from promoting anti-intellectual quasi-xtian victim-blaming mind rot.
I posted this to my FB page yesterday: Dear Hypothetically Gay Son.
It kinda made me choke up a little bit.
nschuster:
Go fuck yourself, three-post rule be damned.
Well, he wasn’t.
UH.
Are you for real?
When people start to prate about the supposed goodness of Jesus, which they defend by pulling out selected Bible verses, I retaliate with a verse of my own. Here’s Luke 14:26:
Christians apologists scramble to explain this away by insisting that “hate” is not really “hate.” (Not a good time to be a Bible literalist. Pick whatever translation you like; they all agree on “hate.”) Apparently Jesus really meant that people should like him better than family and self. He was merely using a tiny bit of hyperbole.
Don’t you just hate it when they do that?
These people always talk about the centrality of family in our society and yet this man has just destroyed his own. How does mom feel? And siblings in the picture? What about grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins? What does he tell them? My son is gay and he’s dead to me? Did his son get run out of town and now lives in SF or some other oasis? As far as I’m concerned this ‘father’ doesn’t deserve a funeral. Cremate his corpse and dump the ashes down the sewer.
Which just goes to show what a stupid andor dishonest person you are, since there was no such implication in the OP whatsoever.
Because it would take too much effort and be too much of an act of compassion to try to understand his son. If only that selfish son would just stay in the closet, THERE WOULD BE NOT FUCKING CONFLICT!
@53, well, yeah, I’ve tried to develop a personal philosophy that makes me happy.
It’s pretty hard for me to be happy, when I see all the pain and suffering in the world, all the stupid shit that humans do to each and to the world.
And in fact, I think it is important to feel sad, to empathize with those who suffer. The letter in this column damn near made me cry, not just for the son, cut off from his father, but also for the Dad, blinded by his own beliefs into hurting his own son. Such pain, so unnecessary.
But at the same time, I find it important to remember that there is still beauty in the world.
Anyway, I’m sorry for my ill considered posts. This was NOT the post to discuss whether progressive Christianity has any value.
@nschuster #49
Really?
There’s no such thing as a homosexual life style. There are people who are homosexual. The end. That’s like saying there’s such a thing as a “straight life style”. It’s not who you are, it’s just what you’re doing. >_<
Mythbri, dontcha know that being queer is strictly a choose, or at least the end result of being molested as a child. Either way, it is best to shut up about it and act in the way your assumed gender dictates you should. Andthing else makes the big sky daddy and his horde of believers quite upset.
Doesn’t it, nschuster.
To which one obvious answer is:
(For clarification: I am an unequivocal opponent of the death penalty in all cases.)
@Doug Hudson #61
I like to cherry-pick ideas that I like, too. But I always try to remember the guideline about liking things that are problematic (and almost everything is problematic in one way or another):
Accept the criticism of the bad parts. Don’t try to minimize the harm they can and do cause by emphasizing the good parts. This is true of anything you’d care to take ideas from, whether it be the old school Greek philosophy, to The Lord of the Rings to those annoying “inspirational” posters you see people post on their Facebook pages.
nschusterL
Yes, because lying to yourself and your family is far more acceptable than being openly gay or bisexual. Of course. People are far more happy and successful living false lives and hiding their feelings just to make someone else happy. Of course.
Of course.
@65, I totally agree, in fact I never said that Christianity (or Jesus) wasn’t deeply problematic, just that he said a few things that I liked.
Unfortunately, this was the wrong thread to make that observation, given the vile display of Christianity in the OP.
Sorry for the name typo; “L” should have been “:”.
No, but why should that stop me giving those who deserve to die what they deserve?
Because they’re needed as a plot device later on. Plus, because killing people makes you a worse person and more vulnerable to corruption by the symbol of all things evil.
@69 Gollum wasn’t just a plot device! His struggle with his inner demons was one of the best parts of the book. And the scene where Sam is really mean to him, and Gollum gives up being Smeagol once and for all, is heartbreaking. Frodo was so close to redeeming Gollum, and Sam ruined it all.
(Sorry, I’m much more passionate about LOTR than the bible).
I have seen this before and even worse.
In college, my friend’s father read her journal and decided she was gay. He grabbed her by the neck and tried to strangle her. Her mother pulled him off or she might have ended up dead.
The irony here, is that…she isn’t a lesbian at all. Her problem was being too boy crazy if anything.
That was the end of her contact with her family.
What usually happens, after a decade or two, you just no longer care. Very few people are going to worry about someone like this forever.
I found out a few months before my father died that the reason my older half-brother had never come around is because he came out as gay, and my father did not approve of that lifestyle. My brother had later stated that it was a lie and he had never really been gay (instead, he was just willingly celibate) when he was wasting away from cancer so that he could mend their relationship.
Aside from that, even though he had been a Southern Baptist deacon, my father was very much a live and let live type of person. It came as a huge shock to me. I still haven’t completely sorted through my feelings about it.
Two quick thoughts:
First: That homosexuality is not a choice is mostly irrelevant to the morality of homophobia. It’s not right to shun people for, say, speaking Korean. Nor do we give free reign to alcoholics because of the (possile) genetic component to alcohilism. The problem with constantly refraining the fact that it’s not a choice is the implication that it would otherwise be a good thing to condemn or prevent it. But that’s silly. If my hypothetical straight daughter kisses a woman in a play or something, what’s wrong with that? Nothing.
Second: of course it’s okay to “cherry-pick” books for their wisdom. Even seriously evil people have said truthful things occasionally. (Like Stalin’s observation, though probabiy not original to him, that in many people’s minds one death is a tragedy and a million are a statistic.) The only problem with applying this to Jesus is the whole “omniscient and omnibenevolent” thing. Christianity itself has made Jesus into all-or-nothing, and I’d rather not cede much ground there. That leads to “lord, liar or lunatic” (can we pick two?) ,among other issues. (Although it can be helpful to raise the point that one or two kernels of wisdom do not make up for numerous tidbits of hate.)
That made me cry.
Fucking hell that letter tore a ragged hole in me. I’m a dad, and SO proud of my little kids. I couldn’t imagine anything that would make me stop loving them; more to the point, I couldn’t imagine deliberately ABANDONING them because of who they are, at whatever age.
A friend once said something that I thought was so right, and so profound in its simplicity. His son at the age of 20 came out as trans (I hope I used the term right), and identified as a woman. She had the operation, etc. and now lives life as who she really is. He was asked by a colleague: “How did you become so supportive of your son changing into a woman?” His reply: “My choices were clear. I could either have a living, happy daughter or a dead son.” YES. A THOUSAND TIMES YES.
Our kids deserve unconditional love. They want our attention, not the latest X-Box game.
The worst thing I could think of would be, becoming a fundie xian, Mormon, or Moonie.
Role playing, I would just shrug my shoulders and deal with it any way I can. Once the kids are adults, it’s their life, and their right to live it any way they want.
Those are Paul.
And what Doug seems to don’t get is that Paul is the founder of Christianity. The gospels postdate him by decades.
And he cannot talk about what Jesus said exactly because he only knows that from the gospels. He can talk about what Mark said, what Matthew said, what Luke said and what John said. These are very different authors with very different agendas. Trying to ascribe any of there statements to Jesus is no different from claiming Voltaire would defend to the death your right to disagree with him.
No. Although Paul said similar things.
Google it, it is the godman himself.
mythbri
9 August 2012 at 9:59 am
@nschuster #49
i would imagine that if the son in the post confessed to his father that he had homosexual tendencies but was trying to resist them that, the father would still accept him. It might have been the son’s choosing to follow the homosexual life style that the he led him to disown the son. It wasn’t who he was, it was what was doing.
Really?
There’s no such thing as a homosexual life style. There are people who are homosexual. The end. That’s like saying there’s such a thing as a “straight life style”. It’s not who you are, it’s just what you’re doing. >_<
I mentioned the fact that a person might have homosexual tendencies. I guess that means that the person is homosexual. When I said a homosexual lifestyle, I meant that the person is acting on them. This might be what the father was objecting to.
@77, I’ve already apologized for bringing up the subject, quite some time ago, you didn’t need to keep belaboring the point. Especially by discussing me in the third person, as if I wasn’t here.
But on the other hand, you’ve contributed to my general sense of misanthropy, so there’s that.
It isn’t. Atheists are no more or no less susceptible to assholery. Tragically, atheism is not a talisman against assholery.
Possibly, but is that really a healthy way for the son to live? Crucifying (pun intended) himself for his father’s delusions? Frankly, not having the dad in his life is healthier.
I’m going to assume that you don’t mean “choosing” as in “choosing to be gay”, but “choosing” to mean “choosing not to crucify himself for being gay”. If that’s correct, then yes, you’re probably right. Which just makes the dad that much more of an asshole. You don’t ‘choose’ to be gay, though you can ‘chose’ to not stuff yourself deep into the closet and live an uncomfortable lie for your entire life.
If my father would disown me for something about me that is intrinsic to me, he could go fuck himself too. And I say that as a 100% Daddy’s Girl.
To which the response is: It doesn’t fucking matter. It’s just as bigoted and wrong, and you are a fucking sleazeball if you think otherwise.
Christians think pre-marital sex is a sin too, and yet rarely ever “object” in the same way when their kids mention that they have engaged in it and/or intend on engaging in it. They might a stern finger wagging, but they won’t get disowned. And yet if they mention anything that even hints at the possibility of past or future gay sex, the shit hits the fan. Don’t even make fucking excuses. It’s bigotry all the way down.
Point taken. Sorry.
(Not that Doug cares, but again, those views cannot be ascribed to the supposed Godman – only to his evangelists. I’m still out on whether he existed in any sense, but I doubt much if anything of what he is claimed to have said can actually be traced to a specific itinerant, apocalyptic preacher in 1st C Palaestine.)
@nschuster #79
And what I’m saying is that the way you’re framing your comments reflects a misunderstanding of the reality of the situation. You come off as a “hate the sin, love the sinner” type. If you’re merely trying to gain insight into the father’s state of mind, I urge you to be more clear about your intentions. Because right now, you seem to be perpetuating the kind of hate that would cause a father to disown his child.
Chris Morrow:
Sure, but that’s not the same thing as cobbling together a personal philosophy of elements taken from seriously reality-challenged worldviews. It’s not just xtianity that’s such or even just monotheisms, it’s religions in general.
nschuster:
No shit, Sherlock. Why shouldn’t the son “act on” them? Should he be celibate his entire life, or subject both himself and some poor woman to a sham of an existence, just to satisfy his bigoted father?
Same-sex sexual behavior isn’t wrong. There’s no need to “not practice” it. And, again, there’s no such thing as a “homosexual lifestyle.” That’s a bigoted dogwhistle. Don’t use it.
Oh, and while you’re at it, drop the “homosexual” too. The preferred terms are “gay” and “lesbian.” The people who say “homosexual” these days are mostly bigots.
Having myself been subjected to a constant stream of name-calling, bullying, borderline physical abuse from my dear ole dad even after I was grown until the old bastard dropped dead of a heart attack, I’d say this “dad” did his kid a favor. Nothing like that 3am call to inform you that everyone knows you’re a whore and stupid and why aren’t you sending me money, fuck your kids they’re probably bastards, etc etc etc.
Ms Daisy Cutter, #86,
Really? I never knew that. I just used “homosexual” as a more inclusive phrase. I’ll make a note!
Louis
From reading the OP, this James is probably way better off without this monster dad in his life.
Some people look at their kids as their possessions. And get upset when the toys turn out to have minds and lives of their own.
I’m sure dad just didn’t suddenly turn into a monster, probably been one his whole life.
The weirdest part about this is his mentioning that, if the son doesn’t attend dad’s funeral, HIS friends and family “will understand”.
Making it clear that dad thinks everyone in the family and social circle will disown the son. And I wonder if that was true.
But, it also kinda sounds almost passive-aggressive. Like dad is trying to shame Son into attending his funeral preemptively.
Sili@83, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have been snide. But I do care about the point you’re making, I really do. I realize that there is no evidence that Jesus even existed, much less said the things attributed to him. I was just making some observations about the statements themselves, out of historical context.
In this particular thread, that was a thoughtless mistake, and I am sorry about that.
Or even better – both ;-)
@ #49 Nschuster says:
Homosexual tendencies? Excuse me! Did you just arrive on a time machine from 1952?
Let me ask: do you have heterosexual “tendencies”? If so, please stay well away from me; I don’t want to catch your cooties.
Louis, no problem. The preferred current “umbrella” term is GLBT or LGBT. Because more and more initials tend to get added to the acronym, giving us twee terms such as “QUILTBAG,” others have suggested GSM for “gender/sexual minority.” I kind of hope it catches on.
CT and Raven, I agree with you that this man did his son a favor, as wrenching as it was at the time.
this letter shows what much of religion and often parent child relationships are about.
It is about control! Control of others and control of self.
The parent owns the child and the child must do what they are told to do when and how they are told to do it. They are to think and act as they are taught and like what they are told to like. They are not listened to or asked who they are. Not asked what their experience of being a life on earth is all about. It is the same with the religious mind. It is applied to others as well as the self it is driven by fear and internal conflict and it is generational and irrational and saddest of all futile.
uncle frogy
Heck, if your kids turned out to be homicidal maniac serial killers, you’d at least visit them in prison.
the only redeeming part of coming across this the other day for me was that someone pointed me in the direction of this reddit comment in reply
As an adoptive dad myself, I simply could not agree more
Speaking only for myself, that would entirely depend on WHY Child became such.
I haven’t had contact with my mother for 15 years because of anti-semitic, racist, and crazy-making behavior (seriously, you’re blaming me for experiencing sexual abuse and being angry for how I acted when I was three?). It’s incredibly painful, especially when the marriage that led to the anti-semitic/racist stuff goes through a rough patch and I could use some maternal support. As much as the recipient of this letter says he’s fine and sends a “fuck you” to his father, I know it hurts horribly and long-term and wish him comfort.
On a totally separate note, yes, this was the wrong thread to bring up cherry-picking the Bible, but I’m not willing to throw out the Bible or the Epic of Gilgamesh or Greek myths just because religion has been incredibly destructive. People who came up with religions were often (not always, but often) people struggling with the same how-to-be-human questions that I face. I can take bits of their experience and wisdom without deciding to adopt their world view wholesale. Just like I can take parts of Newton without the alchemical woo stuff, or read Dawkins without cheering for His Dear Muslima post, or enjoy Dostoyevsky without becoming a nihilistic murderer or a Christian mystic. And I can fight woo-soaked evangelical Protestant 12-step stupidity without having to ignore the shreds of good ideas from 12 step program writings.
Cherry picking from human intellectual history is a good thing. We should do it, explicitly and proudly.
As a parent, I cannot understand how anyone could write such a letter. I mean, I know they *do* this shit, but I just can’t grok it at all.
And I have to wonder, how does ‘Mom’ feel about this? Because in the impossible scenario where my husband disowned one of our brats, he would find himself very uncomfortably situated thereafter. Very. Uncomfortably.
As an aside, I can’t help but wonder – what exactly is this ‘homosexual lifestyle’ some people keep going on about? What do they mean? Decorating everything in purple? Quietly living in the suburbs with your partner and two adopted kids? Working in musical theatre? Working as an accountant and going to clubs at night to pick up hotties? Touring with Queen and taking your boyfriend along? What? Because none of those is exclusively ‘homosexual lifestyle’ behaviour (except, perhaps, that last one, but it’s an awfully small sample).
Mattir – sounds like your mom and my mom should start a bowling league together. Though, instead of “just” constant bigotry, my mother loves to play the “Pity the Poor Martyr” game, wherein NO ONE on the face of the planet suffers more than her. So, not only are blacks and gays “just whining”, they’re also taking the focus away from the REAL victim – HER!
And, the last time she told me never to call her again, I didn’t. Now I hear through the familial grap vine that she’s whining that I never come by. The mind boggles at the douchery.
Which is the first thing I thought when I read this: to how many people is ‘dad’ now complaining that Son isn’t part of his life.
@illuminata- my mother plays the pity the martyr game too. She’s had quite a number of horrid things happen to her in her 74 years, but they’ve completely blinded her to the painful experiences of any other human being on the planet.
That’s the thing, though, my mother hasn’t. her big complaint is that life’s so hard as a wife and mother and she should just run away and let everyone fend for themselves .. . . . when we all already do. No one asks her for anything, yet, magically, she’s the overused and abused pitiful slave to the family.
Except, if you try to offer her any help, she ‘doesn’t need any help!’.
because, accepting help means no more playing the poor, poor martyr.
In case it’s not clear yet, she’s exactly the reason I’m child-free. I’m absoultely terrified of becoming her.
Being a different kind of parent is a fabulous revenge for a whole variety of fuckery… I actually feel pretty sorry that my mother has missed out on the sort of relationships I have with the Spawns.
The “homosexual lifestyle” is when you have romantic relationships with members of the same sex and don’t try to hide them.
oh yes, dear old dad missed this but it is my revenge. And when my 11 yr old called me from the beach to tell me that my mother called my 8 yr old a bunch of names and that he wanted me to do somethign about it, I was horrified — and also so very fucking happy that my 11 yr old knew that was just freaking wrong. Of course, then getting my 60 something yr old mother to apologize to a 11 yr old and 8 yr old was like pulling teeth out of a condor because she had never heard of such a thing as apologizing to children!!11eleventy.
@pensnest #100
It’s a codephrase for “man-on-man buttsecks.” I think that’s what ultimately really freaks out the bigots.
I call bullshit.
My mother didn’t disown me but I cut off contact with her over 10 years ago. I know it was the right decision. I know only wishful thinking will ever make her a healthy person to have in my life. But it hurts almost every time I think about her.
You don’t leave behind someone you shared your childhood years with, all that family history, without it pulling at you. Even when some of the family history is incredibly toxic. It’s still where you came from and that means something. It doesn’t stop mattering. I never stopped caring.
This letter really brought back memories for me.
I was raised by a very abusive single mother. She wasn’t a religious wing-nut, so at least I was spared that.
However, she did have a list of things that if I were to do them, I would be disowned – marry someone of a different race, like girls or get pregnant before marriage are a few that I can remember.
Also, any time that I misbehaved, she would threaten to “put me up for adoption” and “to make sure that I went to live with the dirtiest, meanest family in town”. I’ve teared up when I’ve read Libby Ann’s descriptions of being raised quiverfull, because I lived through the same sort of abuse, minus the crazy xtian stuff.
I met my husband in college, did one of those unspeakable things (got pregnant with the child who is now a neurobiologist) and eloped. I had no contact at all with my mother for a while, but later we saw her occasionally. When she died, I took care of things out of a sense of duty, but there was certainly no mourning in our family. It was more a sense of relief.
As Mattir mentioned, being the opposite sort of parent has been my best revenge. We’ve raised five happy, loving human beings, and we’re now enjoying the real reward – grandchildren. People like the father in this letter and my mother miss out on so much when they miss out on the joys of grandchildren and a strong friendship with their adult children.
In my personal experience, Christianity prevents love because it prevents knowing the other person, and in that gap of ‘not knowing,’ all the contempt and superiority and judgment and hatred which is both implicit and explicit in Christianity has room to affect even the most well-intended Christians.
And, for the record, you can love someone who you cannot have contact with. The desire for the love of your family does not fade or go away, it surges and fades, even when they have utterly and legally rejected you, and tried to ruin your life.
It exists, that love. It’s just that sometimes you hate them, sometimes you’re happy to forget them, sometimes you’re enraged at them, and sometimes you don’t think about them at all.
It says nothing bad about you if you hate them, or are enraged at them, or choose to never speak to them again. The failure is not in the child.
I’ve told my kids I’ll love them even if they decide to be conservative Christians, even though I’ll worry about them. I also told them that no matter where they were, I’d find a way to come rescue them if they get into trouble. Love is and isn’t a choice: I choose to act on my love for them, to the extent I can, but that affection will always be there, and always has been (even though I admit sometimes I want to bugger off and have some alone time.)
Mattir:
Accepting and enjoying the good works from certain human beings while distancing oneself from their (inevitable) failures is not the same thing as cherry-picking the good scraps out of what is, on the whole, a detestable worldview.
Pensnest:
She’s a who submits totally unto her Lord & Master, so she has no real say in the matter.
Illuminata:
A few years ago, the NYT ran an article about adults who cut their parents out of their lives. The article was overly sympathetic to the parents, not taking into account that the grown children might have good reasons for doing so. Many commenters took the author to task for it… but other commenters were parents who had been cut off by their kids, and their remarks made it rather obvious why their kids didn’t talk to them anymore.
Whatever. There are good and useful ideas in the Bible, 12 step writings, and the bottle of Dr. Bronner soap in my shower. I’ll take the good stuff out of the rubbish and not pretend that I found it somewhere else. The real dangers, I think, come when one figures that a particular set of words contains all the good and useful ideas one needs and that none of the ideas in that particular set of words are harmful nonsense. YMMV.
Obviously, that’s a matter of YMMV.
Schisms and estrangements are a matter of course in my family. My older sisters experience the pulling you talk about, but I’ve been broken past the point of caring. None of his children had seen my father in the years before his death though I was the only one who didn’t attend his funeral. My mom is back to her old games, and I don’t know if I’ll see her again.
Frankly, I’m tired of people insisting that somewhere, deep down, that there’s this family-shaped hole in my heart.
Some of us can walk away, never look back, and never feel a pang of regret.
Now I see I have another form of privilege. I had a loving relationship with my parents (I’m very glad that the last time I saw my father I told him I loved him and he said he loved me). Sure, there were some disagreements from time to time but nothing permanent.
I think I’ll tell my daughter I love her.
Brownian: No judgment was intended, and I am sincerely sorry for any frustration that I might have caused.
Whatever. I believe you.
But you should realize that not everyone thinks like you.
I’ve seen people raised by mentally ill and abusive parents. It’s unfortunately common enough that we’ve all seen it multiple times. Some of the people on this thread are examples.
People deal with it in their own ways. Some of the people I’ve seen just moved on and were too busy living life to worry about it. The rule is, no one bleeds forever. It’s not true for everyone though.
But maybe it should be.
I didn’t feel judged, mouthyb, not by you nor kristinc.
I just wanted to point out that it’s not the case that every estranged child pines for their parents.
Brownian: No problem. Just didn’t want to stick someone where it hurts (well, unintentionally.)
Interesting.
I cut off contact with my mother when my children were small too. There were a couple of attempts at bridge-building, but ultimately her narcissism broke them*.
It hurt for a long time. It hurt too, that her pull/ability to engender fear/lying meant that the entire extended family went with her. Now, I pretty much don’t give a flying fuck. My sister, with whom I’m still in contact, says she can’t wait for her to die. It doesn’t mean a thing to me either way.
I don’t buy the “unconditional love” bullshit either. Sure, if it’s a three year old, but someone who’s what, 40-something? Also, if the opposite is love with conditions – is that love? It’s a silly concept spawned by new-agers in the eighties. It should die in the same fire as leg-warmers.
Oh, and arsehole Dad who wrote that pompous-ass cruelty doc? My daughter at uni. rang home to speak to her Dad. Wanted his advice on how to ask a girl out. See how that’s done?
*Before anyone tells me how painful the experiences are that lead to narcissism, I know OK? I get it. She’s still a horror.
I kno w that my mother’s life has been a horror, but she’s never taken responsibility for working on fixing it, just bounced from one borderline personality disorder relationship to another. And when I saw her ascribing rage to SonSpawn, who was 4 months old and uncomfortable because his diaper was off and he had a lot of sensory issues, and later when he was 10 months old and at the height of stranger anxiety, I heard that she’d grabbed him from our au pair despite the fact that he was arching his back in fear and wailing, then she grabbed my sunglasses and told him that it was ok, now she looked like his mama, I was pretty damn sure that she’d break my kids if I let her, so I didn’t.
There’s a small part of me, that I keep well controlled, that thinks that if only I could be a better/different daughter, she’d love me finally. I’m proficient at telling this part of me that this is how abused kids think and that it’s not true. There’s a much bigger part of me that’s sad that I will never have the relationship with her that DaughterSpawn has with me – that’s sad for me and for my mother both. But my relationship with my Spawn is wonderful, and most of the time I din’t even think of what I don’t have.
This. I had many people suggest I would have separation issues when my mother died. I didn’t, at least not in the sense that something was missing from me as a result. Not everyone attaches the same, not everyone seeks to do so.
What part of unconditional love do you not motherfucking understand, you festering boil on the ass of humanity ?
I have no children. It’s probably just as well that I don’t. I’m poor, an asocial loner and something of a misanthrope. Not good parenting material at all. But even I know that the fellow who wrote that letter deserves to die old, bitter and friendless.
fuckit. I’m done for now. too pissed to talk rational.
I hope the father blames himself.
Don’t get me wrong. I know there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way god made the son; that’s not what I mean.
But the father, from his POV, believes there is something wrong with it. And I hope he blames himself for it.
I hope the father obsesses every day about the son he’s lost through his own stupidity, reads every mention of his son on the internet (including this post and comments) and regrets his actions every waking minute and in his dreams.
I don’t know about everyone else, but I was never arguing that they should be thrown out. I was arguing that they should not be used as justification. If you find morality in the Bible, congratulations. Just don’t use “The Bible said X” as an argument, as some people do. The problem isn’t that people are recognizing that Jesus said a few good things, it’s that they’re saying you should listen to those good things because Jesus said them.
“Well, Mr. Fundie, Jesus actually wanted you to be a nice guy” is a shitty way to argue that only serves to enable the delusion that listening to Jesus is a good idea. We need to unequivocally state that morality needs to be based on the rational application of empathy, not the demands of long-dead and possibly never-living carpenters. Once everyone realizes that Jesus’ words are only as valuable as secular ethics makes them, then we can start appreciating his good ideas. Until then, we should not enable the idea that “Because Jesus” is a good reason to do anything.
@nschuster #49
By “follow the homosexual life style” I presume you mean “have gay sex”, yes? Because that’t the only thing the “homosexual life style” involves that the “heterosexual life style” does not (usually) involve. And you know, as a parent I can agree that thinking about my kid having sex is uncomfortable. So I don’t think about it! Easy as that, no acceptance or tolerance required. Mental barriers around other people’s sex lives are really not that difficult to erect, we do it all the time. The “homosexual life style” is not the problem here – some unfortunate man’s father’s bigotry and reflexive hatred life style is the problem.
Fuck the three-post-rule. Fuck you.
I hope the father blames himself for alienating his son and causing him immeasurable hurt throughout his life and through this act, not for believing that he somehow did something so utterly ‘horrible’ to his son as make him gay.
And he probably does, in some way, blame himself for not being the right kind of father, for not making his son do enough sports, for not manning him up properly or whatever the fuck these sick assholes think. And that’s not right and it’s a sickness of society that anyone should think like that. It’s just also not going to hurt this man that he blames himself. He’s cut out the wound; he’s disowned his own son. Whatever his perceived failing is, he’s not hurt by that, he’s hurt by the fact that his son is gay. And I can only hope that he one day realises what he did and that it hurts so that he might learn some fucking compassion and some goddamned sympathy.
And god didn’t make that man, this asshole’s son. Do you even know where you’re posting?
This reminded me of how warmly my own father welcomed both my first AND second husbands into his life. I look forward to meeting the future partners of my sons. And I can no more imagine writing a letter like this than I can imagine biting the back of my head.
1) Promoting sexism, to pick one example being a dick to his own mother because he is a man and she is subserviant as a woman
2) promoting racism, refusing to heal someone of the wrong race, and the “Good Samaritan” relies on racist assumptions
3) slavery
4) Fig tree
5) beating people with a whip for the crime of being merchants
6) inciting a riot
7) dismissing charity for self indulgence “the poor will always be with you”
8) breaking apart families and all that
9) etcetcetc
Well there’s your problem
raven, #89:
Some people look at their kids as their possessions. And get upset when the toys turn out to have minds and lives of their own.
This. For me, loving someone means accepting who they are. Not understanding this is why I am estranged from most of my family.
That letter is truly heartbreaking…
But what if they started living a degrading lifestyle other than Christianity?