STEPHEN FRY

This seems like a good explanation:-

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999
US physicist (1933 - )

My friend married a very good looking man, who was a strong catholic. She looked forward to a happy sex life. Ha! Once every few months if she was lucky. When she asked what was wrong he called her oversexed. it was in the late 1960s, but she did not have the knowledge or experience to guess the truth - that he was secretly gay but deeply ashamed. She left him after nearly two decades, and made up for lost time!! He is still single.

This is the other side of denial. The hetero spouse suffers a lot.

WannaBeLinguist said:
I can relate to this on a somewhat personal level. It hasn't happened to me directly but it has happened to people I know closely and here's why.

This man I know (who is too complicated to explain completely) was married for 23 years to a woman. The people who knew and worked with him knew a few things about this man: he was either bisexual or gay and did... I think BDSM? Not sure. These people were honestly shocked that he even got married. He did these sexual things behind his wife's back. But they kept mum about it and his wife did not know for over twenty years. I still remember when she found out-- I had never seen her cry before and I remember trying to comfort her.

They finally divorced around 2008; it was an odd mix of quiet and messy.
One thing I must admit now that I reflect on it; for as long as I have known these people, their marriage was a complete mess. He could be domineering and abusive and she was easily frustrated and constantly unhappy. It has affected their kids, especially their oldest daughter. Their divorce was for the best. He's still in the closet. I wish he will come out one day.

Now, this man had experienced anti-gay attitudes for a majority of his early life. He was born in a small town outside of St. Louis in the late 1950's and we all know how attitudes towards homosexuals were then. When he was just a little boy in the 60's, his grandfather owned a tavern. They had a piano player that worked in the tavern who was gay and, at one point, he was put into a psychiatric hospital by his family and given shock therapy to "cure him". His grandmother worked until the end of her life in 1969 to get him released.

Here's my theory: this man was aware that he was different at an early age or, when he finally realized what he was as a young man, he looked back on that piano player. Even as attitudes and laws changed towards the LGBTQ community changed and he really shouldn't have been afraid, I can understand, how that fear can remain with someone. This man is Catholic, but he is far from religious (he may just be still claiming Catholic, though, for his parents sake) so I don't think religion had anything to do with it.

Some people, especially older LGBTQ members in and out of the closet, still remember how people looked upon people like them back then; they remember the prostration, the violence, the lack of understanding, their own fear as well as the fear of people around them.

His ex-wife suffered greatly and had to get multiple tests taken for various STIs as well as HIV. It killed her and it destroyed her a little more once she found out her daughters knew about their father.

I blame society for doing this to her and her ex-husband. It makes me so very angry every time I think about it. They preach about wanting to keep the traditional family so much that they don't really give too much of a damn about the health and happiness of the people in it. It makes me sick. They want uniformity and the procreation of new citizens that they can just brainwash and I'm tired of it.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was ranting about. The cause isn't always religion but it very rarely helps the matter. It all comes down to the horrible things we, as a people, do to each other.

My partner for the last 6 years was married for 18 years. He only eventually divorced his wife because she'd been having an affair with another woman.

I also met a married man recently that isn't attracted to his wife and in fact prefers to have sex with men, although he wouldn't refer to himself as being gay. He is so concerned with what his wife, family, friends and church would think of him if he came out that he is determined to live this farce of a life/marriage that he is in. Even if it means he is never truly himself or happy.

It makes me sick inside.

I have to hold onto hope that my chidren's generation will have it better than mine and certainly better than my parents'. Of course any hate is scary and inexcuseable, but I see progress and I have to hope that the hateful voices get quieter and quieter.

I am wondering if the rant against society should actually be a rant against the structure that is in place that creates the society. We all function in a patriarchal structure tied into a state-sponsored capitalist viewpoint, and therefore this structure has within it deeply engrained patriarchal views that exemplify only the voices of the western, white, straight, wealthy male. Working within these parameters it could be said that religion is understandably hard pressed to teach anti-violent, peaceful and un-gendered truths.

Further, the religious traditions are deeply penetrated with violent language, thoughts and actions; all of which are over-spirtualised, all of which detract from love and flourishing. These are the narratives, rhetoric and doctrines that have a passion for death, a disregard of the body and earth, and focuses on the soul and ‘other worlds’ as a perfect conclusion to a wretched, painful and undesirable life on earth. This life, therefore, is nothing more than a testing ground where we must all act in a certain way before we can be saved (see Jantzen, 1998; MacFague, 1993; Grey, 1989; to name only a few who discuss this in detail). This is how sexuality is stifled, as the body is evil. (Personally, I think it is an obscenity that we talk about salvation in the next left, while all around there are people who can be saved with almost no effort (food, hygiene). We must start to imagine what flourishing could happen with extreme effort. But this is off topic really)

One way of approaching violence within these parameters (and this includes the violence of stifling sexuality)is through feminist theologies that promote a horizontal nature of authority and exposes the ingrained narratives that disperses hate within the erect structure of patriarchy. Feminist theology reveals the flaws in this hierarchical structure, how it encourages selfishness, violence, abuse and reward for very few ‘winners’.

Humans must be allowed to flourish. Suppressing only leads to metal trauma (and we all know that much devastation always follows from this). Maybe if we can stop asking "where is religion" when bad things happen; instead asking "what can religion do in the face of suppression (and oppression) of human flourishing" we can turn things around ourselves. I would like to give it a go I am sick of waiting for someone else to do it for us.