Thoughts for you and for others
Submitted by Adam TBK on June 09 1999 at 14:05:37
In reply to Reversal Submitted by Ben on June 07 1999 at 07:43:36
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Hi Ben, I don't drop by here often, hoping not to upset anyone here, but I just thought I'd say hi. Drop me a line sometime. About what I've written below, I'd love to hear comments from the others here. The background here, for those of you who don't know, is (in short) that I was loved by a man, a Christian fundamentalist, when I was a boy--but that the relationship was torn apart by his religion. So I guess I'm discussing the influence of the religion on real man-boy relationships. You confirm two of my theories about fundamentalist Christianity. One is that it is all about the social life that comes along with it. The other is that man-boy relationships survive within it, to a certain extent, and perhaps according to certain patterns that resemble the larger pattern. That is, the apparently natural mechanism behind many man-boy relationships is one in which the boy uses the relationship to become something else--to change and to grow. The normal changing and growing during adolescence have counterparts within the adoption of a fundamentalist Christian life, and when the two coincide they reinforce each other. Human bonding becomes heavily cloaked in religious terms, but it is often, or I would hold it is almost never the purely religious motives that bring about the bonds. Two people who think they know something that the rest of the world doesn't--they have a powerful bond. In my experience, living within a fundamentalist social group allows incredible access to many boys and a shield of protection from parental concern, and even more so when cloaked in the homophobia of religious fundamentalism. Actually, I think there is often a dual latent homophilia-overt homophobia phenomenon among many men within fundamentalist Christian circles. Your sacrifice of "sexual habits" is interesting. I know just how much you were crazily into boys in general. I guess the pendulum is swinging? Perhaps that's a feature of the dramatic instability of having gone through aversion therapy--the violent and uncontrollable swings. Have fun with your boys, but if you get heavily involved in intimate situations with them, I'd advise you along two lines of thought. Your personal resolution to leave the ultimate expression of love out of the question may come around to hurt one of your boys someday. Also, the very bond that the religion allows also encourages the continuation of an adolescent's belief in the religion. Few boys, if left to their own volition, would choose to believe the doctrines of modern fundamentalist Christianity. I would not have if it hadn't been for my older friend. I believe that the stated goals of fundamentalist Christianity are not constructive, nor are the lifestyles of many of those who believe in them. I wasn't destroyed by it, though at the time I was going through the effects of the experience on my life, I felt destroyed. If there is any good that comes out of it, it is in the unplanned way that social relationships are sometimes enhanced by it, in my opinion. The way I feel about being involved in Christianity as a boy is, on the surface, the same way Finkelhor and company feel about man-boy sexuality--i.e. though it might have been positive at the time, it was negative later. Surely, I have not fully met my own past. So I guess the conflict is--is it better to mix the relationship with the religion or to keep them separate?--and my gut instinct looking back is to have kept them separate. Any thoughts? Adam P.S. Masturbation is with a u rather than an e :) |