How to Leave the Gay Life Behind

[Tigg]

I’ve noticed that the last few threads on this subject have been (thankfully) closed by the mods. I just received this in an e-mail and am posting it more for information and in hopes that it will be of help to someone.

New Film Shows How to Leave the Gay Life Behind

The modern day LGBT movement wants you to believe that the people featured in the new documentary “Desire of the Everlasting Hills” really don’t exist. They are figments of the fevered imaginations of the Christian right.

Meet Dan, Rilene and Paul, all refugees from deep enmeshment in the LGBT life, each finding a home in sexual sobriety and, not incidentally, the Catholic Church.

It is impossible to watch this important documentary without tears, and not sad tears either, but happy ones, tears that come from a joyful movement of the spirit.

These are people who have been deeply wounded by the choices they have made and who have struggled through to a profound peace.

The documentary makes its world premier this weekend at the annual conference of the Courage apostolate in Philadelphia. Courage is the Church-approved movement of same-sex attracted men and women who have decided to step away from that life and to reengage with who they really are and were meant to be.

crisismagazine.com/2014/bounty-everlasting-hills-leaving-gay-life-behind

**TRAILER HERE: **
everlastinghills.org/trailer/

 

[Linusthe2nd]

I’ve noticed that the last few threads on this subject have been (thankfully) closed by the mods. I just received this in an e-mail and am posting it more for information and in hopes that it will be of help to someone.

New Film Shows How to Leave the Gay Life Behind

The modern day LGBT movement wants you to believe that the people featured in the new documentary “Desire of the Everlasting Hills” really don’t exist. They are figments of the fevered imaginations of the Christian right.

Meet Dan, Rilene and Paul, all refugees from deep enmeshment in the LGBT life, each finding a home in sexual sobriety and, not incidentally, the Catholic Church.

It is impossible to watch this important documentary without tears, and not sad tears either, but happy ones, tears that come from a joyful movement of the spirit.

These are people who have been deeply wounded by the choices they have made and who have struggled through to a profound peace.

The documentary makes its world premier this weekend at the annual conference of the Courage apostolate in Philadelphia. Courage is the Church-approved movement of same-sex attracted men and women who have decided to step away from that life and to reengage with who they really are and were meant to be.

crisismagazine.com/2014/bounty-everlasting-hills-leaving-gay-life-behind

**TRAILER HERE: **
everlastinghills.org/trailer/

Courage is an excellent organization. Many Bishops support them, ours does.

Linus2nd

 

[Joe_5859]

Thanks for this. I have also heard good things about the new film “The Third Way” from Blackstone Films.

blackstonefilms.org/films/the-third-way/

It is good to see this stuff coming out. We need many more resources like this and will continue to do so in the coming years.

 

[TARRAT]

 

[ashtonh2001]

All they can do is be celibate. They are still gay or bi. If you truly are gay you cant “pray the gay away”.

 

[shalria]

Incredible! Hoping that I can see this film at some point…

 

[edwest2]

I also suggest: pfox.org/about-us/what-we-do/

Peace,
Ed

 

[PutresOmega]

All they can do is be celibate. They are still gay or bi. If you truly are gay you cant “pray the gay away”.

For most this is accurate. For some, getting treatment for sexual addiction or an abuse history is a good idea and something worth pursuing. Unfortunately, in the politics of this situation, the LGBT community sometimes tries to open the umbrella over actual compulsions and things that need treatment, not encouragement. Reading the Crisis Magazine article, it sounds like this is the case with at least two of them who Ruse goes into detail over. While I consider the author Ruse a foe due to his history of articles that insist on dehumanizing and excluding celibate gay Catholics for his own ends, he does seem to have been given inside information on the stars of this series and their stories.

The unfortunate thing is that people will get hurt as both sides play politics with these situations. The pro-gay side will open wide the umbrella over harmful disorders leading many to not get treatment and the anti-gay side will attempt to extrapolate these three stories to be ubiquitous of all LGBT people claiming that this proves they can all be cured, giving many parents, family, and friends false hope and a very real sense of shame and inadequacy if they attempt to be cured and fail.

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

For most this is accurate. For some, getting treatment for sexual addiction or an abuse history is a good idea and something worth pursuing. Unfortunately, in the politics of this situation, the LGBT community sometimes tries to open the umbrella over actual compulsions and things that need treatment, not encouragement. Reading the Crisis Magazine article, it sounds like this is the case with at least two of them who Ruse goes into detail over. While I consider the author Ruse a foe due to his history of articles that insist on dehumanizing and excluding celibate gay Catholics for his own ends, he does seem to have been given inside information on the stars of this series and their stories.

I don’t actually think I’ve ever heard any mainstream LGBT group be against treatment for sex addiction. Amongst lesbians fidelity is huge and casual sex is seriously frowned upon.

The unfortunate thing is that people will get hurt as both sides play politics with these situations. The pro-gay side will open wide the umbrella over harmful disorders leading many to not get treatment and the anti-gay side will attempt to extrapolate these three stories to be ubiquitous of all LGBT people claiming that this proves they can all be cured, giving many parents, family, and friends false hope and a very real sense of shame and inadequacy if they attempt to be cured and fail.

I think that that sense of shame and inadequacy is the major danger of reparative therapy as false hopes is basically what it is and those feelings after “failing” at orientation change can destroy people on the inside turning them against God.

 

[oneofmany]

everlastinghills.org/movie/

You can watch it here. I just wish they had included younger people. My friend’s son is gay and she is hoping he comes out of it someday like these people. I see they are older and sex wains as we get older. It can’t be as hard as we get older, even straight people aren’t as interested in sexual activity when we get older, as I have experienced.

Most of my straight friends don’t even sleep in the same bedroom with their mate anymore. No sex so why share a bed when they want different light and temp in the room?

 

[Prodigal_Son]

The anti-gay side will attempt to extrapolate these three stories to be ubiquitous of all LGBT people claiming that this proves they can all be cured, giving many parents, family, and friends false hope and a very real sense of shame and inadequacy if they attempt to be cured and fail.

The film, and the group Courage, does not claim that gay people can be “cured”. They do claim that gay people can stop sinning.

 

[edwest2]

Self-control, whether you are heterosexual or homosexual. I am very attracted to women but I believe sex outside of marriage and watching porn are things I can control if I ask God for the strength and if needed, go to groups that will help me control myself. I, not my bodily urges, should be in charge. Self-control is possible even if you have Same-Sex Attraction or Opposite-Sex Attraction.

But the media constantly models the ‘sex with anyone whenever’ idea. ‘Go ahead, do it. It feels good.’ What about right and wrong? What about our souls? We will not be here forever.

Peace,
Ed

 

[LongingSoul]

everlastinghills.org/movie/

You can watch it here. I just wish they had included younger people. My friend’s son is gay and she is hoping he comes out of it someday like these people. I see they are older and sex wains as we get older. It can’t be as hard as we get older, even straight people aren’t as interested in sexual activity when we get older, as I have experienced.

Most of my straight friends don’t even sleep in the same bedroom with their mate anymore. No sex so why share a bed when they want different light and temp in the room?

I agree with you that the temptation to sexual sin is less intense as we age. Where I think this wonderful documentary is powerful though… is the important witness to the wisdom of age. It’s a quite modern thing to reject the wisdom of age which is probably due to technological revolution, but it is still valid and will be impressed upon some of the young.

I was really impressed with the humility and genuinness of all three people but I found Paul to be a beautiful soul with a very deep pool of wisdom. It broke my heart to hear that he had been seduced into the lifestyle as 15! 15!!! That is a baby and I wonder what influences in his life sent him there. But to be so deeply influenced by ‘the pirate nun’, Sr. Angelica really showed the openness to truth that I think will have a huge impact on young lads that might watch it.

 

[PutresOmega]

Joie de Vivre;12191274:

I don’t actually think I’ve ever heard any mainstream LGBT group be against treatment for sex addiction. Amongst lesbians fidelity is huge and casual sex is seriously frowned upon.

A fair point. I operate with a sense of bias due to being male and my own experience…

Amongst some of the younger I have befriended, the sexual aspects of themselves they see as being liberating are actually things that do violence to their relationships to others. For example, I befriended a guy shortly after coming out who has attempted and still does attempt to get me into a sexual situation with him. He does this with all of his gay friends and, because sex usually happenes, he doesn’t have any purely nonsexual relationships with other men beyond the one with me. I worry about that impulse in him, but he has accepted this aspect of himself as part of who he is along with his orientation and has recoiled at the idea of getting help for it. Perhaps this is less common than it seems in my area, however.

I think that that sense of shame and inadequacy is the major danger of reparative therapy as false hopes is basically what it is and those feelings after “failing” at orientation change can destroy people on the inside turning them against God.

Agreed. Additionally, it also establishes an unhealthy relationship to God where prayer and intercessions are seen as a means to an end. I have been in a hospice and know how many children die in such places. It is self centered to demand that God take away your own troubles while expecting those less fortunate to carry the full weight of their own crosses. Even if I was convinced it was a sin I would still be against demanding such petty, selfish contrivance while other more deserving suffer.

The film, and the group Courage, does not claim that gay people can be “cured”. They do claim that gay people can stop sinning.

I had looked for the film, initially, when seeing this post but had not seen anything about it beyond what the Crisis article speaks to and that article speaks to people who have left the orientation behind. Perhaps I have misread or misunderstood the article, though. My response was to what the article mentioned but I will look into it directly now that it has been linked.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

I had looked for the film, initially, when seeing this post but had not seen anything about it beyond what the Crisis article speaks to and that article speaks to people who have left the orientation behind. Perhaps I have misread or misunderstood the article, though. My response was to what the article mentioned but I will look into it directly now that it has been linked.

The Crisis article is written by Austin Ruse, who has an ax to grind. The movie has to do with leaving homosexual sex behind, but it doesn’t frown on close relationships between gay people – actually, it tends in the opposite direction.

As for leaving orientations behind, the movie doesn’t comment either way on whether such a thing is possible – and that question, after all, is complicated by the various way people experience “orientations”.

 

[oneofmany]

crisismagazine.com/2014/hearts-restless

This is a wonderful article on the whole sexual revolution. I like his description of a one night stand as a wedding and divorce in one night. It’s so true. How sad. No wonder we have so many lonely people now.

 

[edwest2]

The whole point of the Sexual (without love) Revolution was to separate marital love and commitment from the sex act. It took 40 years of the media pushing this and self-described Hippies and anarchists living in our neighborhoods spreading the “gospel” of this sex with anyone anywhere lifestyle. The goal was to destroy the family and replace it with sex like relieving yourself in the restroom. Love? Commitment? Relationships? Messy, inconvenient and a waste of time. Just have lots of sex and go on to the next.

This constant, decade after decade, very gradual increase in portraying, in the media, immoral sexual activity as fun, good and “Hey. What’s the big deal?” means a lot of people who were looking for real friendship, real trust and a compatible marriage partner made it more difficult as the decades passed. The other problem was the viciously anti-family, anti-men radical feminists who sowed their seeds of hatred of family life in the 1970s. Today, a legal fiction called gay marriage was created primarily by politicians and judges and that is the outcome of a vote taken by the American Psychiatric Association in 1973. Years of research and published articles were ignored due to pressure by radical gay activists and closeted gays in the APA. So what was a disorder the day before, became not a disorder after the vote.

We are called to chastity, Straight, LGBT or whatever. No sex without marriage. Period. And that includes porn. If one reads the gay press, the goal is not privacy. The goal is “accept my sexual activity.”

Peace,
Ed

 

[Magdalena59]

All they can do is be celibate. They are still gay or bi. If you truly are gay you cant “pray the gay away”.

God is our refuge and our strength and if he brings you to it, he can bring you through it. You CAN pray the gay away because prayer is about a conversation with a friend who will guide you into all truth and that truth can help with any problem.

Through prayer God will lead that person to the right places and right people, so they can be free of same sex attractions or any other sexual impurity.

 

[Prodigal_Son]

God is our refuge and our strength and if he brings you to it, he can bring you through it. You CAN pray the gay away because prayer is about a conversation with a friend who will guide you into all truth and that truth can help with any problem.

Through prayer God will lead that person to the right places and right people, so they can be free of same sex attractions or any other sexual impurity.

Sodomy is a sexual impurity. Same-sex attraction is not. Was Augustine sexually impure, in his later years, if he was tempted by some explicit dream of non-procreative sex?

 

[Joe_5859]

God is our refuge and our strength and if he brings you to it, he can bring you through it. You CAN pray the gay away because prayer is about a conversation with a friend who will guide you into all truth and that truth can help with any problem.

Through prayer God will lead that person to the right places and right people, so they can be free of same sex attractions or any other sexual impurity.

With respect, I think saying such things as “pray the gay away” can be unintentionally demoralizing for someone who is experiencing same sex attraction.

Of course, all things are possible with God. And it is certainly possible that God would grant someone complete freedom from their inclinations and from any temptations towards sexual impurity. But I don’t think that’s the way it works for most.

By way of example, a lot of men struggle with pornography. I have heard stories from some guys who experienced a profound conversion whereby God took away that addiction literally in an instant. But then there are a lot of guys for whom it is a longer struggle.

If we set the expectation that all someone has to do is pray about it and it will all go away, then we risk alienating them once they try it and it doesn’t work out that way for them. The Cross is part of our lot in life. Sometimes we have to struggle under its weight. It is better for us to put the emphasis on the fact that Jesus always is there to help us carry our cross rather than set the expectation that Jesus will remove that cross if we pray hard enough.