The Homosexuality Debate

[MidnightSun12]

During my time as a transgender, I had constantly prayed. Repeating the same hope. Although I do not pray as much now, and even feel strained, I sometimes wonder if it was even real at all. If so, was I lead out?

Eury, you have to keep praying! I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but prayer invariably gives you peace, resistance to sin, and clear diretion in your life. Test it out… sometime when you feel especially confused about life and whether you are truly on the path to heaven, pray a rosary and see how you feel afterwards. While it often takes a lot of effort to pray (since the devil would much rather that you did not), the pay-off is huge. I resolved to pray all 5 decades of the rosary each day, and I can observe a marked difference in my personal holiness before I pray the rosary versus afterwards. It’s key to absolutely mechanically commit to daily prayer, however, and make it a habit that is of the same level of importance as brushing your teeth, etc… Think of praying the rosary like anchoring your boat to a dock during a hurricane, the devil will attack from all directions but as long as you hang on to that daily rosary you will not get washed away.

The more I allowed transgenderism into my life, the more I used my own body and weared it out. But I found that nothing was satisfying a need I had inside.

I don’t fully understand my time as through transgenderism and homosexuality, but I do remember something strange. I remember one day, I had gotten up and realized something. I realized I was not a female, I am a male. I realized that I was damaging my body trying to make it female, trying to use it as a female.

The easiest way to explain it was as though I came back to life. Because I know I was dead during that time. If my soul were a fire, I was out and wet, there was nothing left but the stones and mud. And then it felt like a small smoke came out of me. I was literally dead inside, I was miles below ground. Something inside knew that this body did not belong to her. Something made me want to live again.

I also came into the faith from a very sexually immoral past. I remember the feelings of disgust with how I was living my life. I remember desiring to hide it away but also being driven by addiction to seek more and more of it. I remember the burning in my chest on those days when I was forced to sit down and confront my own thoughts about where my life was heading.

When God came into my life in the form of an innocent conversation with some religious friends over dinner one night, my life completely changed. It was as if a light came on in my head and I finally learned what love was. Love is a desire to give myself fully to God with my whole heart, mind and soul. Once I experienced this desire to love God, I knew activities such as extra-marital sex had to go. It was tough getting there, however, and for a time I resisted my call to conversion. It was at that point that I learned just how empty the promises of the “sexual revolution” really were. I tried to justify to myself that pre-marital sex really wasn’t “that bad” (my definition of “bad” being pedophilia, prostitution, etc…). Of course, a serial killer might think that what he is doing isn’t that bad in comparison to Hitler, either, so these relativistic arguments were really quite weak once God had given me the desire to stop.

Fear not, Eury, God has led you to the one true faith. The Catholic Church is your path to heaven and you just need to stay close to Him and His Church, especially when you feel the least desire to do so. I sincerely ask that you consider praying a daily rosary… God clearly has miraculously brought your soul back to life and given you an absolutely remarkable opportunity to become a Saint! It’s very possible that He has tremendous plans for your life (I recommend reading about the early life of Saint Augustine), but you are going to have to pray often if you are going to stay with Him and remain on the narrow path. Like me, it sounds like you have a number of sexual sins in your past and these will be a heavy cross to carry for the rest of your life. Sexual sins are incredibly tempting and you will need to have a very strong prayer life in order to avoid giving Satan a chance to separate you from God yet again through past addictions, etc…

God bless. My prayers are with you!

 

[EuryTheWithheld]

Eury, you have to keep praying! I know it doesn’t always seem that way, but prayer invariably gives you peace, resistance to sin, and clear diretion in your life. Test it out… sometime when you feel especially confused about life and whether you are truly on the path to heaven, pray a rosary and see how you feel afterwards. While it often takes a lot of effort to pray (since the devil would much rather that you did not), the pay-off is huge. I resolved to pray all 5 decades of the rosary each day, and I can observe a marked difference in my personal holiness before I pray the rosary versus afterwards. It’s key to absolutely mechanically commit to daily prayer, however, and make it a habit that is of the same level of importance as brushing your teeth, etc… Think of praying the rosary like anchoring your boat to a dock during a hurricane, the devil will attack from all directions but as long as you hang on to that daily rosary you will not get washed away.

I also came into the faith from a very sexually immoral past. I remember the feelings of disgust with how I was living my life. I remember desiring to hide it away but also being driven by addiction to seek more and more of it. I remember the burning in my chest on those days when I was forced to sit down and confront my own thoughts about where my life was heading.

When God came into my life in the form of an innocent conversation with some religious friends over dinner one night, my life completely changed. It was as if a light came on in my head and I finally learned what love was. Love is a desire to give myself fully to God with my whole heart, mind and soul. Once I experienced this desire to love God, I knew activities such as extra-marital sex had to go. It was tough getting there, however, and for a time I resisted my call to conversion. It was at that point that I learned just how empty the promises of the “sexual revolution” really were. I tried to justify to myself that pre-marital sex really wasn’t “that bad” (my definition of “bad” being pedophilia, prostitution, etc…). Of course, a serial killer might think that what he is doing isn’t that bad in comparison to Hitler, either, so these relativistic arguments were really quite weak once God had given me the desire to stop.

Fear not, Eury, God has led you to the one true faith. The Catholic Church is your path to heaven and you just need to stay close to Him and His Church, especially when you feel the least desire to do so. I sincerely ask that you consider praying a daily rosary… God clearly has miraculously brought your soul back to life and given you an absolutely remarkable opportunity to become a Saint! It’s very possible that He has tremendous plans for your life (I recommend reading about the early life of Saint Augustine), but you are going to have to pray often if you are going to stay with Him and remain on the narrow path. Like me, it sounds like you have a number of sexual sins in your past and these will be a heavy cross to carry for the rest of your life. Sexual sins are incredibly tempting and you will need to have a very strong prayer life in order to avoid giving Satan a chance to separate you from God yet again through past addictions, etc…

God bless. My prayers are with you!

Well I was Catholic before I started developing sexual tendencies. I think I was just moving more apart from church inorder to fit transgenderism and homosexuality into my life.

I never really did sexual incounters with people. I knew that once I started, there was no coming back. But I still always questioned the status of my own virginity due to a really great confusion I’ve had from my past. I can’t really state it, it’s really explicit. All I can say is it wasn’t with humans and at the time I had OCD. The most similar picture I can paint would be that of Jeffery Dalmer’s childhood.

Medically, I had recieved a status of OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. It was a branch from sexuality which gave me thoughts of sexual desires on all genders, ages, animals and so on. Of course the doctors said it doesn’t become a reality, for me it did. So I just really felt like a danger to others, which shut me down and prevented me from ever being with people.

My movement back into Catholism was based on partly my experience which made me realize what I was doing to myself. But also an atheist girl who I had met, who is currently my girlfriend. Before I just knew I was in the wrong place, but after meeting her I knew I had to make a future for her. This was the need that made me stay Catholic and want to try harder. I just keep stumbling, wondering what I should be doing.

Also, I did not come from an “ex gay theropy group.” I did everything on my own, with God’s help. Or maybe God just threw me out of it all together. But I just wish I wasn’t taught that we had to accept homosexuality or transgenderism. I honestly wish I had a choice. But instead it feels like the choices were withheld from me. I just want our lives back.

But I don’t think I could ever be a saint. Maybe someone who works for one, if I’m lucky. Or maybe get to see one, if I’m really lucky. But a saint I am not. Thanks for your comment MidnightSun12. Being open about things in GBLT groups usually ends up as a contest to shut one up.

 

[Biblepoe]

Convert07, however you choose to respond to this Facebook friend, I recommend that you keep in mind that supporting a ban on gay civil marriage – and keep in mind that it is a definition of a civil marriage, not a religious marriage that is being expanded – does have significant real-life effects on gay couples. It is not just that they dislike people not recognizing gay couples as married – although that may also fuel their zeal as activists – but that there are benefits offered to every other couple except them.

Here is a hypothetical scenario which may help you empathize with the other side: Your spouse is sick in a hospital for some time, becomes incapacitated while a medical decisions needs to be made on the spouse’s behalf, and eventually dies. In the process, you receive no more visitation rights than your spouse’s coworkers, you are not permitted to have any sort of (name removed by moderator)ut on the medical decision that needs to be made on your spouse’s behalf while your spouse in incapacitated, and after your spouse dies, you half to pay taxes on your spouse’s house being gifted to you (instead of it automatically being yours), and since you cannot afford to pay those taxes in part because your spouse’s employer will not give you pension benefits that are given to other couples in similar circumstances, you lose your home.

Let us suppose that all of the above happen because you live in a Muslim-majority country in which they don’t give civil marriage licenses to Catholic couples because their religion defines marriage as a union between Muslims. You would be rightly outraged at that. Additionally, you would be personally hurt that your friends would be in favor of you going through all of that if your spouse get sick and dies. However, a gay couple could experience the exact same thing in the United States even though most Catholics support giving such benefits to many other marriages that the Catholic Church doesn’t consider valid (for example, neither party is baptized). It is also noteworthy that on this site people have expressed joy that pension benefits be denied to gay couples under the above circumstances. Wouldn’t you be outraged if others were happy that you were denied such benefits that are given to all other couples and ended up losing your home?

So I recommend that when you respond you keep in mind that your support of banning gay civil marriage (if passed into law) will put someone in the situation described above.

 

[Marie5890]

How would I respond?

“Thank you so much for taking the time and sharing your thoughts with me. Please pray for me as I pray for you”

And leave it there.
Getting into a debates isnt helpful. Grace is needed for conversion, and that comes by prayer.