One of the truly tragic things about Christianity is its propensity to label behaviors it arbitrarily decides are wrong as “sins”. This has caused all kinds of misery for individuals with a sexual orientation different from the majority of us. Gay Christians are often haunted by the idea that their sexual attraction to someone of the same gender is putting their “souls” (another childish concept we can’t seem to shake off) in imminent danger. Their solution, often times, is to deny the very fiber of their being, constructing elaborate justification for living a crazy lie.

One such poor bastard is Josh Weed, a proud Mormon who runs a site called “The Weed”. He’s recently come out of the closet, and he wrote a confused letter about his decision to stay married. While at first glance the letter may seem sweet and even charming, the underlying message is a hodgepodge of confusion and terrible advice.

sex is about more than just visual attraction and lust and it is about more than just passion and infatuation. I won’t get into the boring details of the research here, but basically when sex is done right, at its deepest level it is about intimacy. It is about one human being connecting with another human being they love. It is a beautiful physical manifestation of two people being connected in a truly vulnerable, intimate manner because they love each other profoundly. It is bodies connecting and souls connecting. It is beautiful and rich and fulfilling and spiritual and amazing.

This sounds like it’s taken straight from the Tom Cruise playbook: focus on the intimacy of sex, in order to ignore the fact that you aren’t actually attracted to the person sucking you off. Hey, I agree that sex does have that element, but it’s also a dirty, raunchy affair that’s best enjoyed with someone who naturally gets your dick hard.

Many people never get to this point in their sex lives because it requires incredible communication, trust, vulnerability, and connection. And Lolly and I have had that from day one, mostly because we weren’t distracted by the powerful chemicals of infatuation and obsession that usually bring a couple together

The passion may dwindle, but you might be hard pressed to find anyone willing TO SKIP OVER THIS PART. I would venture to guess that the guy has never actually been laid by a dude before, and his dismissing this important part of a relationship goes to show how little he knows about sex.

One of the sad truths about being homosexual is that no matter what you decide for your future, you have to sacrifice something. It’s very sad, but it is true… with homosexuality, the choices seem to be a little bit more mutually exclusive. If you are Mormon and you choose to live your religion, you are sacrificing the ability to have a romantic relationship with a same-sex partner. If you choose a same-sex partner, you are sacrificing the ability to have a biological family with the one you love.

This obsession with biology infuriates me, but it’s a consequence of religion’s insistence on humans to reproduce like wild bunnies. No doubt they long ago realized that to build a following, the quickest way to accomplish this is to ensure your acolytes have a bevy of kids. They usually end up just as fucked as their parents, ensuring generation after generation of people believe in utter nonsense. To pretend as though there are no options for having a family and being gay is both disingenuous and ignorant.

This whole article smacks of a profound ignorance on the issue of homosexuality. While Weed is correct in pointing to the fundamental incompatibility between his religion and his sexuality, their compromise seems to be “give up on your desires in order to have a family”. While such self sacrifice may appear noble, in truth it merely encourages others in similar situations to continue to deny a part of themselves, for no other reason than Joseph Smith’s twisted ideas on love and marriage.

In any case, I came out of this feeling sorry for Josh. He’s clearly a sweet man, but this living a lie thing has him spouting all kinds of dangerous nonsense. No one should be forced to deny their sexual attractions, least of all for purely biological reasons. I think this guy needs a cock up his ass, stat.

The key to spreading a message is to keep it simple, stupid. The reason is simple: most minds are only interested in confirming their pre-existing belief, and if your message requires a lot of introspection or even thinking, it’s just not going to make it big. This might be one of the reasons why actually educating someone’s position is infinitely more difficult. Brains dislike the hard work of coming to conclusions on their own. They usually like someone else doing it for them.

One group that seems to have mastered the “keep it simple” unsurprisingly comes from a land of Biblically educated cretins. They effortlessly give their hoards of unthinking masses plenty of talking points that sound, at least to them, somewhat compelling. Take Caiden Cowger, a 14 year old kid who hosts his own podcast. He recently published a show claiming homosexuality was a choice (and a sinful one at that) and President Obama and Biden were “making kids gay”. It doesn’t take very long to realize this kid doesn’t really have any opinions of his own: he’s just repeating the hateful bullshit he’s been hearing all his life. But because he lives in a world where no one bothers to scrutinize what you say, he’s free to continue to spread the hateful message of the religious right. It’s easy: all you have to do is repeat verbatim all the dumb shit you hear from your local preacher, or perhaps your conservative radio host.

Caiden doesn’t need to learn about biology, or psychology to have an opinion on homosexuality. He’s free to simply take whatever hateful message he hears coming out of other “conservatives” and rebroadcast it so the rest of the world can lament the waste of another human being lost in their own bigoted world view.

(Update: Caiden now writes for “The Family Council“)