Newbie with a question

Dacara
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Newbie with a question

Hi Everyone.

 I'm so glad to have found this forum. I've been craving a place where I can speak freely about these things. Just to let you know, despite the feminine sound to the name Dacara I am actually male. Dacara is sort of an alter ego of mine.

 

Anyway, the problem I'm having is with my extended family. I'm gay, 25 years old, and have been out for about 7 years now, but only recently I've had issues with extended family members trying to 'convert me' to christianity. They insist that by becoming christian I will become straight. Funny thing is, I don't want to be straight, I'm happy as I am. And I certainly don't want to be christian! But one particular uncle of mine is schizophrenic and incredibly religious, particularly when he's off his meds. He's been harassing me with txt messages telling me i'm a walking disease and spreading my sin wherever I go. I know he's wrong, but it still hurts coming from someone who was there all through my childhood and used to only have positive things to say about me.

 

The reason I'm posting this is to ask if anyone has suggestions on how to deal with this situation. Am I better to completely ignore him and cut him out of my life? I've tried reasoning with him and it's like talking to a wall covered in scripture quotes.


Tarpan
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Sadly reason rarely works in

Sadly reason rarely works in these situations.  This is why I strongly consider my "Family" to be those that I am close to and can trust rather than those that just happen to share a similar bloodline to me.


Brian37
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Gay people exist? Crap,

Gay people exist? Crap, next thing you'll tell me is that atheists exist too.

OH NO, dont tell me you're a gay atheist?

69 Mets exist too, "A myth and a hoax" to quote Moonlighting(TV show). 

You have cooties for being gay AND you have cooties for not believing. I bet if you convinced Bush that stem cell research would cure both, he'd fund it.Tongue out

Welcome to the forums BTW.

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


Brian37
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In all seriousness, many

In all seriousness, many here deal with severly religious family members. I had to cut off my relationship with my biological brother because of his constant religious harrassment every time I was around him.

I get along with my adoptive mom fine and she is Catholic, although not a church goer.

There is no patient answer for what you are going through. It all depends apon cost benifit. In laymens terms, if you see something within someone worth tollerating the "BS", then do so. But if they merely suck the life out of you and wont let you be you, you shouldnt allow yourself to be emotionally drained. No matter what, dont let someone else's baggage become yours. Their hangups dont have to be your problem.

I am not saying cut them off. I dont know your situation and I am not you. I am merely saying that your mental health above all else should take a priority in order to deal with any advirsity of any issue, be it family, work related, or friends. 

Be you and be happy with you and if you are, any differances you have with family, or society in general, you'll find that you can cope much better. 

"We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and nonbelievers."Obama
Check out my poetry here on Rational Responders Like my poetry thread on Facebook under Brian James Rational Poet, @Brianrrs37 on Twitter and my blog at www.brianjamesrationalpoet.blog


Blind_Chance
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First next ignore him, if

First next ignore him, if you have to change phone number or just add him to black list ( if you have good phone).

Ecrasez l'infame!


RickRebel
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I agree with Blind_Chance.

I agree with Blind_Chance. Ignore him. Your uncle suffers from a delusional disorder. He believes in invisible things that aren't there. Unless you can help him, and I don't believe you can, then you probably should just ignore him.

Welcome to the forum.

Frosty's coming back someday. Will you be ready?


Zombie
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I doubt you`ll be able to

I doubt you`ll be able to change his mind, my suggestion to you is to do what a lot of other gays and lesbians I have met have said."You make your own family in this life." Move on and good luck dude.

Morte alla tyrannus et dei


Subdi Visions
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Greetings Dacara

Greetings Dacara

In regards to your family, I'd change my phone number to an unlisted one and only give it to those you trust to not condemn you. If your uncle gets it I'd change it again and give it to only one person for emergencies only. If they aren't up to letting you live your own life then fuckem.

 

R/

Lenny

www.kaosium.org

 

edited to catch a misspelling 

Respectfully,
Lenny

"The righteous rise, With burning eyes, Of hatred and ill-will
Madmen fed on fear and lies, To beat and burn and kill"
Witch Hunt from the album Moving Pictures. Neal Pert, Rush


evilsatan
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Dacara, First of all, you

Dacara,

First of all, you are going to have a hard life I think, full of hard choices. I am not gay, but I am a closeted Atheist to my family. I think if they asked me I would tell the truth, but I'm not going to volunteer the information, at least not right now. I would say that you should be careful not to cut off too many people. After a while it becomes too easy and then you'll end up like me with only a few friends you can really count on and almost no emotions. I'm trying to come up with a way right now to gain my emotions back, but it is hard.

Do what you think is right and if it is a bad choice, you can aways do something different.


Thomathy
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I'm also gay and

I'm also gay and Atheist. Forgive me for the long story I'm about to write.

My immediate family was so accepting (my father, rather than ask me, told me he knew I was gay one day) and no one saw my 'coming out' as a surprise. My extended family found out (or rather it was confirmed) due to a bet that had been made earlier in my life. (My sexuality was obvious to everyone, even at a young age. I don't think that anyone actually lost the bet; they all went in on gay.) While most of my family participated in this, not all ended up being quite okay with my being gay. Fortunately, my quite Christian aunt and uncle had a daughter, older than me, who was also gay. This kind of set a precedent for me and actually made it easier to deal with them as they had already 'dealt' with it.

My cousin left the province to escape her parents and I presume my whole family. She's married now and has recently come back and she's incredibly Christian. Clearly, there's a disjoint between her and her parents. It would seem that she's somehow reconciled being gay with her religious convictions, but her parent's religious convictions don't allow them to do the same. Problematically, both claim to be Christians even though their beliefs are mutually exclusive. There's also a disjoint between her and me, because I see our sexuality and religious belief as being mutually exclusive.

I fit into this in that my entire immediate family is, if not explicitly Atheist, Atheistic -a point, I promise, which will become relevant soon. I've had my grandmother attempt to 'save' me as well as other members of the family. It's really a strange experience to have to go through. They all knew, after all, that I was gay before I was even comfortable admitting it to anybody and yet when I did I was told that I was a sinner and that I should really rather be straight and Christian. I never expected to be told either. Suddenly what hadn't been an issue for me my whole life -something I had completely taken for granted- was brought to the forefront, my Atheism (though I might not have know it as such my whole life). I was forthright about the way I saw things and there was a perceptible shift in my family's attitude toward me. They tried to 'save' me, oh yes, but not only, and not mostly, because I was gay.

I had never appreciated that they really believed and really were religious. I had thought the whole thing was funny and my experience with religion as a child was that church attendance was a boring necessity of community relation and involvement wherein I was asked (sometimes forcefully and sometimes with the coercion of scotch mints) to sit still and quiet for an hour or so and then to leave the adults alone while they gossipped. I often fell asleep during the service and the only time I was interested was when there was singing (I genuinely liked Anglican choral music). But, these people really believed in all that stuff that the Reverend said and in those fantastic stories written in that tomb of a book. Not only did they actually think I was a sinner, they found my lack of belief abhorrent, totally unacceptable. People I knew my whole life as loving and caring and as family I was now alienated from not because I was gay (they only hated the sin, after all and had already lost a member of the family due to playing that too strongly), though that had them on my case, but because I didn't believe in what I had always known as and been taught was just a story. Understandably my non-belief surprised them; you couldn't tell me a part from the other children in the family (except that I really was quite gay) because belief or lack thereof was not something that concerned children.

My non-belief, while it alienated me and at first had my family attempting to 'save' me, was actually helpful in the long term. My firm conviction in my non-belief, not accepting their arguments, starting the debate and closing communication if they thought they could change my mind got them to understand that my beliefs and my sexuality were not open for discussion or debate and that I would not tolerate attempts to convert or 'save' me. I see my family on Christmas and at funerals. We're all very happy to be polite with each other and I frankly don't see that I would want to be anything other than polite with these people. I certainly don't want relationships with them. They may have been 'family' when I was a child and it can quite nice to interact with them briefly, but in growing up, I apparently grew out of them.

I don't know how much help that story will be to you. I believe the point I am trying to make is that you should be open, upfront and persistent about your convictions and sexuality and how you don't need or want theirs and that it simply isn't acceptable to you for them to bring it up at all. It seems as though you value the relationships you had with your family and that you'd like to do your best to maintain them, but necessity may force you to change your relationships, to set new boundaries and to reevaluate how close the relationships will be. I can appreciate that you don't want to be totally alienated from them and it may be that you can maintain a high level of interaction with them if they're willing to meet you half way and accept that your interactions with them should not be predominated by your sexuality and your non-belief and that you are more than those two things just as they are more than their sexuality and belief to you. If they truly love you, they can further compartmentalize their beliefs in order to allow themselves to continue to love you as they have.

As for your uncle, it may be very difficult to reason with him, perhaps you can just lie to him. Do you think he'd really know the difference?

(Also, as a disclaimer, I've never ever dealt with anyone religious like they come in the Southern United States. My extended family may be quite Christian as I see it, but I know that they are orders of magnitude less Christian than even the average American, or at least they're a very different variety of Christian. Perhaps it is impossible to reason with people that religious and my lengthy anecdote was written for nought.)

BigUniverse wrote,

"Well the things that happen less often are more likely to be the result of the supper natural. A thing like loosing my keys in the morning is not likely supper natural, but finding a thousand dollars or meeting a celebrity might be."