Usually the ones loudest about the gay thing are in the closet. It's because they feel a certain way when they think about it. Then they feel shame because of their backwards ass religion and overcompensate with a bunch of other in the closet religious nuts.

I actually had a friend sorta like this! He never went gay bashing or anything or he wouldn't be my friend but if anybody asked if he was gay or made any inkling he'd freak tf out! He'd also be super weird and uncomfortable if there was anybody gay around when most of us really didn't give a shit one way or the other. I'm not talking about somebody hitting on him, just "this person is gay" and he'd get all uncomfortable and weird. This was middle school to highschool btw so maturity levels should be taken into account.

Years later he came out as bi. Good on him for working on his inner demons I guess.

So, he got the gay cure after all

I got a fever, and the only cure, is more gay!

I was trying to find an article to verify this info and this was in the top results:

https://sfl.media/former-gay-cure-ministry-leader-arrested-after-allegedly-trying-to-meet-14-year-old-boy-in-florida-sting/

This is the article I could find about a "gay cure" pastor having a gay marriage:

https://gay.blog.br/en/gay-en/former-pastor-who-preached-gay-cure-now-lives-in-marriage-with-another-man/

It might be a different pastor tho?

there’s a great documentary about a case like this called ‘this is what love in action looks like’

wikipedia

I think both articles are different people. It appears this guys name is John Smid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smid

Looks like it, thanks for the assist!

I didn't think the first article was him, but it is just another instance of a "beacon of morality (Christian pastor)" trying to commit one of the greatest evils. Great documentation to show people who think "secularism" indicates a lack of morality.

I’ve found that what I’m most critical of other people is what I’m most critical of in myself.

And this was learned behavior from insecurities of the people around me while I was growing up.

Apology not accepted, happy for you tho

Did they renounce their cult and do anything at all to help the victims?

Or are they pretending "progressive christian" is a valid ideology, forgiving themselves and moving on without actually fixing any of the root problems?

Pastors are not good people. They make their living lying to people and almost never face accountability for it. They just shift the lie to suit their needs at the time, at everyone's expense.

I wonder if the people who suffered for his bigotry will forgive him

if this is true, then why am I not genocidal against people who can’t get none

Conversion therapy is a form of torture.
It's as stupid as expecting someone to change their blue eyes, to green eyes.
You can't blame people for genetics, and you cannot just decide, as a blue eyed person, that you are now a green eyed person.
It's not a decision, there is no therapy or medication or surgery to "fix" what is not broken.
It's just abuse.

We have already been through this with Left Handers. Being left handed is normal. Gay people are normal.
Religion does not exist to help people, it's purpose is to control people.

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk.

Do we allow him at pride?

Part of me wants to say yes but like also I feel like the fucker needs to repent.

💯

Fuck that guy

Finally, a Ted Talk that didn't suck.

Growing up in the USSR they forced everyone to write with our right hand. You get beaten if you don't. Was really hard for my cousin because he's left handed. He just learned to fake it for the teachers.

I think it means like on a personal level

The hate in these comments is abhorrent. This guy was literally a victim of gay conversion therapy before he preached it. He renounced all of it in 2008 and has been married to a man for 12 years now. People change y'all, and this guy changed for the better. Celebrate that

My theory is they assume everyone else has gay thoughts like they do, so every man married to a woman resisted the urge to go balls deep in their homies, instead choosing to get married to a woman they aren't attracted to and have children as their show of devotion to God. Because they're so sexually repressed, and only talk about how gay their thoughts are while getting fucked by their other gay religious friends, they never put 2 and 2 together that most people actually don't have an attraction to the same sex the way they do.

What has he done to reconcile all the lives he's ruined

Only if he does actual work to undo the bad stuff and makes it his mission to spread gay acceptance within his religion, and I doubt that's the case.

I agree that it's a form of torture, but someone can't ever have eyes be a different color because of the trauma. People do act like and belive they're straight because of the trauma forced upon them from conversation therapy.
They also often gain hatred of those who are like they "used to be", and there's no real mirror for that in eye color.
And just to be clear, I say none of this to minimise the horrors of conversation therapy.

A monk decided to meditate alone, away from his monastery.

He took his boat out to the middle of the lake, moored it there, closed his eyes and began meditating. After a few hours of undisturbed silence, he suddenly felt the bump of another boat colliding with his own.

With his eyes still closed, he felt his anger rising, and by the time he opened his eyes, he was ready to scream at the boatman who had so carelessly disturbed his meditation. But when he opened his eyes, he was surprised to find that it was an empty boat that had struck his own. It had probably gotten untethered and floated to the middle of the lake.

At that moment, the monk had a great realization.

This is my new favorite way to say "Google it lmao"

If you count Apollo Robbin's and that guy with the spam mail rant (which really is quite fun) that brings the count up to... three?

I don't think that homophobes have to be closeted to be envious of queer folk who are being true to themselves and not living a life of conformity. Of course some of them are though.

I would say demonstrating he was wrong publicly every day for the last 12 years is a fucking solid service to society

This was common globally (yes, even the US and Europe) until frankly frighteningly recently

It happened to me and I'm not even 40 yet, and yes I'm from Europe

That is the cool thing about propaganda. It keeps ruining lives long after you changed your opinion.

that he was gonna have to go launch a whole investigation to find out who the boat belonged to and who didn't tie it up securely so that he could yell at the correct person?

I hope he reached out as much as possible to all the people he preached to tell them how wrong he was and apologized. No he didn't? Oh well, at least he looks happy.

How did he fake being right-handed?

I'm naturally right-handed and I've tried to do things left-handed before and it is insanely difficult, maddening really.

The gays got to him!

Developing ambidextrous talent I guess. I remember when they are watching he'd use right, then switch to left for the rest and homework.

Most internet summations don't include the realization I read elsewhere, so I just left it as an the exercise for the reader.

Basically, it's this: You know how sometimes you have a bad day and are being a jerk? It's not "you" exactly, it's just all the shit you have to deal with. You just have to shift those bad days to your childhood, and have a lot more of them, and they have to be worse, and you have a person who is permanently a jerk. But, in the metaphor the boat, is that person any more an empty boat than you are on a bad day?

We're all, to a large degree, empty boats bumping into each other, pushed together by the many different currents of reality, so don't take so many things personally.

In this case, the priest is just a result of how he was raised, or whatever influences pushed him into this horrible life of gay conversion; and the good thing, of getting out, was also probably a result of influences pulling him away from it. So, also, don't get hopped up on people's ability to control their lives from some objective moral vantage point that does not exist.

He realized that new interns were starting next month and he should have them build an island in the middle of the lake for him to meditate on, big enough that a bit of flotsam bouncing against the shore would not disturb his meditation.

Also see: brother comment.

It's never possible to undo all the damage you have made throughout your life. But honestly, it's not what ultimately matters. What matters is who you are now and what do you plan on doing going forward.

Gay the Pray Away

The gay cured him

But now he's got even more of both!

Simply put on these uncomfortable green contact lenses every day. Problem solved, just endure the increasing ocular irritation.

See, I took the metaphor as: don't get irked by every event (boat bump) that affects you if you don't understand where it came from. Don't assume a human is controlling it when it could be an accident if you would just open your eyes and investigate. In this case I was assuming that maybe the pastor had atoned for his past by donating to or starting a charity or something.

So this interpretation of the empty boat being a metaphor for people in general is fine. It's an exercise in an aspect of stoicism (don't worry about people you can't control, you don't know what someone has been through etc.)

But to extend it to moral subjectivity is bizarre. I think you hide behind metaphor but the clear implications in the context of this discussion is that a closeted gay pastor who abused children can't be held morally accountable for their past because they had too many bad days in their childhood. What it boils down to is a platitude (I.e. that almost everyone is a good person in their own personal story), but the guy harmed other human beings.

I hope I don't have to spell out why it's heinous to imagine a world where everyone walks around not judging actions because they think all morality is subjective. It gives license to atrocious behavior.

You still can hold people accountable for their actions even if those actions were inevitable given their history.

But people obsessed with punishment like things to be simple. Bad people are born to bad things, etc.

Right, so the reaction doesn't make sense given the context. The person asked if the pastor had atoned for their actions by reconciling with the people who's lives they've ruined, which is perfectly in line with holding someone accountable for their actions.

Ah, yes, once again I replied to the wrong comment. Good catch. Sorry for the confusion.

I replied on a work break without a KB so my reply was briefer than I would have fully liked.

So, there's this problem of free will... I kind of don't believe in it, but I think I personally need and we socially need the concept of personal accountability to function, at the very least because social sanctions and social repercussion DO effect behavior.

At the same time, though, we do make allowances for intent and circumstances. A drunk driver will more likely get manslaughter than murder because the intent is there. An wife may get a lighter sentence for killing an abusive husband. I think we keep extending the totality of the circumstances to the persons entire life, we would be aiming more for rehabilitation than punishment, and I don't see anything wrong with that. However, if someone is not rehabilitated and resocialized and can't be trusted not to commit heinous crimes, then it makes sense to keep them locked up.

No they didn't