Gay Suicide and God

I have occasionally shared with you some intensely personal, private and intimate details of my life...but out of love -- not merely to be shocking.  I have written in detail about my struggles with depression and suicidal thinking, as well as about how I came to find God.  My faith helped me recover from alcoholism, depression and being a woman of loose morals...and my life, my marriage and my family have only benefitted. 

This recent rash of suicides by young gay people is a tragedy of epic proportions...one made even sadder with the blame that's been placed upon Christianity for these deaths.  There is NO evidence that religion of any kind had anything to do with the deaths of those young people. 

I've held myself back from writing too much about my faith because my faith is my business; I've held myself back from writing too much about my sexuality because it's my business...and frankly, a little extreme.  I've held myself back from writing too much about homosexuality because I REALLY DON'T CARE TO KNOW ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE'S SEXUALITY; indeed, PLEASE KEEP IT TO YOURSELF.   

I absolutely resent the blame that has been placed upon Christianity for these tragedies, as well as the Gazette's Mark Barna's revolting and relentless muckraking on this topic.  His column "The Pulpit"  -- which purports to be about religious and spiritual matters in Colorado Springs -- would be more accurately titled "The Gay Pagan." His daily diatribe in support of homosexuality and against Christianity is nothing more than inflammatory and offensive indoctrination.  And while he allows like-minded readers to spew vitriol against religion and Christianity unrestrained, he deletes comments from defenders of the faith...claiming he's being "attacked."  What a wimp; one would think that his strident, militant pro-homosexual stance would have helped him grow a thicker skin by now.

The gay community spreads plenty of hate and inspires plenty of confusion.  I posted the article below once before, and dedicate it to Mark, in hopes he might learn a thing or two; hateful though it may be, it was composed by a top writer...whereas Barna is most assuredly at the bottom.

* * * * * * * *

Michael Swift: "Gay Revolutionary"
from Gay Community News, Feb. 15-21, 1987
(reprinted from The Congressional Record, with preface restored)

---

In 1987, Michael Swift was asked to contribute an editorial piece to GCN, an important gay community magazine, although well to the left of most American gay and lesbian opinion. A decade later this text, printed in the Congressional Record is repeatedly cited, apparently verbatim, by the religious right as evidence of the "Gay Agenda". The video Gay Rights, Special Rights, put out by Lou Sheldon's Traditional Values Coalition cites it with ominous music and picture of children. But when the religious rights cites this text, they always omit, as does the Congressional record, the vital first line, which sets the context for the piece. In other words, every other version of this found on the net is part of the radical right's great lie about gay people. For a discussion of the whole "Gay vs. Religious Right" phenomenon see Chris Bull and John Gallagher: Perfect Enemies: The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s, (New York: Crown, 1996)
________________

This essay is an outré, madness, a tragic, cruel fantasy, an eruption of inner rage, on how the oppressed desperately dream of being the oppressor.

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your sports arenas, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater bathrooms, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, in your all male clubs, in your houses of Congress, wherever men are with men together. Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding. They will be recast in our image. They will come to crave and adore us.

Women, you cry for freedom. You say you are no longer satisfied with men; they make you unhappy. We, connoisseurs of the masculine face, the masculine physique, shall take your men from you then. We will amuse them; we will instruct them; we will embrace them when they weep. Women, you say you wish to live with each other instead of with men. Then go and be with each other. We shall give your men pleasures they have never known because we are foremost men too, and only one man knows how to truly please another man; only one man can understand the depth and feeling, the mind and body of another man.

All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men.

All homosexuals must stand together as brothers; we must be united artistically, philosophically, socially, politically and financially. We will triumph only when we present a common face to the vicious heterosexual enemy.

If you dare to cry faggot, fairy, queer, at us, we will stab you in your cowardly hearts and defile your dead, puny bodies.

We shall write poems of the love between men; we shall stage plays in which man openly caresses man; we shall make films about the love between heroic men which will replace the cheap, superficial, sentimental, insipid, juvenile, heterosexual infatuations presently dominating your cinema screens. We shall sculpt statues of beautiful young men, of bold athletes which will be placed in your parks, your squares, your plazas. The museums of the world will be filled only with paintings of graceful, naked lads.

Our writers and artists will make love between men fashionable and de rigueur, and we will succeed because we are adept at setting styles. We will eliminate heterosexual liaisons through usage of the devices of wit and ridicule, devices which we are skilled in employing.

We will unmask the powerful homosexuals who masquerade as heterosexuals. You will be shocked and frightened when you find that your presidents and their sons, your industrialists, your senators,your mayors, your generals, your athletes, your film stars, your television personalities, your civic leaders, your priests are not the safe, familiar, bourgeois, heterosexual figures you assumed them to be. We are everywhere; we have infiltrated your ranks. Be careful when you speak of homosexuals because we are always among you; we may be sitting across the desk from you; we may be sleeping in the same bed with you.

There will be no compromises. We are not middle-class weaklings. Highly intelligent, we are the natural aristocrats of the human race, and steely-minded aristocrats never settle for less. Those who oppose us will be exiled.

We shall raise vast private armies, as Mishima did, to defeat you. We shall conquer the world because warriors inspired by and banded together by homosexual love and honor are invincible as were the ancient Greek soldiers.

The family unit-spawning ground of lies, betrayals, mediocrity, hypocrisy and violence--will be abolished. The family unit, which only dampens imagination and curbs free will, must be eliminated. Perfect boys will be conceived and grown in the genetic laboratory. They will be bonded together in communal setting, under the control and instruction of homosexual savants.

All churches who condemn us will be closed. Our only gods are handsome young men. We adhere to a cult of beauty, moral and esthetic. All that is ugly and vulgar and banal will be annihilated. Since we are alienated from middle-class heterosexual conventions, we are free to live our lives according to the dictates of the pure imagination. For us too much is not enough.

The exquisite society to emerge will be governed by an elite comprised of gay poets. One of the major requirements for a position of power in the new society of homoeroticism will be indulgence in the Greek passion. Any man contaminated with heterosexual lust will be automatically barred from a position of influence. All males who insist on remaining stupidly heterosexual will be tried in homosexual courts of justice and will become invisible men.

"We shall rewrite history, history filled and debased with your heterosexual lies and distortions. We shall portray the homosexuality of the great leaders and thinkers who have shaped the world. We will demonstrate that homosexuality and intelligence and imagination are inextricably linked, and that homosexuality is a requirement for true nobility, true beauty in a man.

"We shall be victorious because we are fueled with the ferocious bitterness of the oppressed who have been forced to play seemingly bit parts in your dumb, heterosexual shows throughout the ages. We too are capable of firing guns and manning the barricades of the ultimate revolution.

Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks.

December

- 40 -

That Christmas morning, my mother dressed me in a sharp Chanel-style suit, white tights and black patent-leather mary-janes…my ponytails perfectly curled.

- 34 - 

My sister was born five days after Christmas, on my mother’s birthday.

- 25 - 

In my senior year, I started working at Record Bar at the Chapel Hills Mall. This was when they still made vinyl, and CDs were cutting edge. I loved that exposure to such a diversity of music. One album I came to know there and will always cherish is the hauntingly beautiful December, by the barefooted pianist George Winston.

- 24 - 

To this day, I don’t know which was worse – what I could remember, or what I couldn’t. The morning after would find me too hung over to even move; or with a twisted ankle; or with broken windows; or in jail. One Christmas Eve – which is when we usually open our presents – I was thoroughly blitzed, though I still remember the frowns of familial disapproval as I accidentally opened everyone else’s gifts and excitedly exclaimed things like “How did you know I wanted an Epilady?!” I laughed like hell at each blunder…but it was hardly funny.

- 22 - 

For a moment in time, I was flat-lined. They had to jump-start my heart, resuscitate me, pump my stomach…I’ll never forget the many mouthfuls of black carbon I spat out for several days afterward. It was a miracle when again my eyes opened and I rejoined the living. The first face I saw was my mother’s…my high school sweetheart/future husband standing behind her – both of them crying tears of sorrowful gladness and telling me how much they loved me.

- 19 - 

It was December when we brought our first born to the little house that was our home, the only year we had a “real” Christmas tree. When I close my eyes and think back, I can still smell the pine, and see the lights reflected in his eyes as I held him near, murmuring lullabies into the shell of his ear.

- 14 -

We set out for New York late that clear, cold December day. What started as flurries near Falcon was a whiteout blizzard just past Yoder; it was about then when the U-Haul’s governor gave out, and the truck would go no faster than 15 MPH. We crawled slowly through the middle of nowhere for hours that snowy night; and when FINALLY we reached the closest civilization of Goodland, Kansas…well yea, friend, and verily – that was good land, indeed.

- 11 -

Back in our old house and old jobs: my husband quickly secured employment with Compaq at the old Digital building, and I also returned to the giant building of my former employer, MCI. At one point, we were pulling in more than $100,000 annually; I had weekly manicures, bi-weekly pedicures, and my hair done every month.

- 8 -

Around this time, on Monday, Wednesday and Friday of the same week, I dreamed three amazing dreams; one day, I’ll tell you about them. For now, suffice it to say that thirty-plus years of staunch agnosticism came to a swift and certain end, and I found God.

- 7 -

Christmas that December was sparse. We applied and were approved for food stamps and TANF, but continued to struggle, falling behind on our bills and mortgage. I did everything I could to hold on to or sell the house, but to no avail; it was foreclosed. So, we put everything we owned into storage…and a week after the birth of our son, said goodbye to the house that had been our home for a decade.

- 6 -

I grew more desperate with each passing night – worried of quietly freezing to death; I’ve never felt quite so alone. The wood-burning stove was my only means of heat – to cook, to clean, to live. And so, I’d dress in black and wait until dusk; then, with bag in hand and knife in pocket, quickly skirt the streets of the Valley in search of fuel. I’d pick up twigs, sticks, boards – anything wood. There were times when I’d furtively slip a log from a neighbor’s stack, or walk up, knock and ask plaintively; if all else failed, I’d go outside and select a piece of our furniture to break: all, to feed that rapacious potbelly. Though I tried always to keep at least some embers burning, there were times when the fire simply died out; and when that happened in that darkest night, and I couldn’t find a lighter or a match, I’d cry and cry! in anguish and fear. I fell asleep that way once, in my shivering lament; and in the morning when I awoke, the tear drops were frozen on my cheeks.

- 4 -

I was staggered to discover I was pregnant at the age of 37; adoption and abortion were both out of the question, so we prayed it was some kind of blessing in disguise…which, of course, it was.

- now -

After so long, renaissance and renewal…and the miracle is that every moment before this led me to this moment now. This is a solstice wish for the time of the cold moon, and a prayer for those who find themselves suffering the dark night of the soul: endure, have hope, and believe that you are never truly alone.

in memoriam

RTM

AMK

and to all of those overtaken

your Creator now comforts you

and us

Chance

One would have thought I did have a hole in the roof of my mouth, or a hollow leg, or some unique, bovine stomach antechamber…the way I was able to put away alcohol at one point in my life.

How I loathe a drunk; how I love the same person when they’re sober. We’ve all seen a bad drunk; to be true, can there be a good one? I dunno. All I know for certain is that from the first time, to the last time, and so many, many times in between, I have been one lousy drunk.

I consider myself to be a very shy person, believe it or not. Up through high school, I tended to hide my introversion behind a book; once I turned 18, however, it was whole ‘nother story; I was funny, fearless and ferocious – so long as I had a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I worked for the weekend, and come Friday, loved nothing more than to dance the night away. Somehow, I’d make it home and sleep it off; and despite memory loss and crazy behavior, I’d do it all over again the following week.

I remember watching Animal House a zillion times before I ever even thought about college; I suppose I reached the conclusion that drinking was expected, and getting wasted was a requirement if you ever had hopes of fitting in, or being cool, or having fun. So, I fell for this lie – hook, line and sinker. Looking back, I have to wonder why we, as a society, have been and continue to be so forgiving and tolerant of alcohol.

If the signs of problem drinking in me were pronounced before I left for college, things went from bad to worse once I actually arrived. I knew no one at CSU – least of all, myself – and students were institutionally encouraged to drink. In spite of my intention to major in journalism and minor in classical voice, my focus quickly became the club scene – where I’d sing or dance or flirt…or at least think that I was…

Drinking got me into a lot of trouble.

There was a club in Fort Collins called Fort Ram, and as long as you showed your student i.d., you could drink gigantic long island iced teas for a buck apiece – which I did. Since I couldn’t remember the details my own damn self, I’d have a hard time believing people the next day when they related to me the things I’d done the night before…I figured they had to be exaggerating. But they weren’t – and if I’d understood that then, I’d likely be in a much different place now.

To this day, I don’t know which was worse – what I could remember, or what I couldn’t. The morning after would find me too hung over to even move; or with a twisted ankle; or with broken windows; or in jail. One Christmas Eve – which is when my family usually opens presents – I was thoroughly blitzed, though I still remember the frowns of familial disapproval as I accidentally opened everyone else’s gifts and excitedly exclaimed things like “How did you know I wanted an Epilady?!” I laughed like hell at each blunder…but it was hardly funny.

Not knowing what more she could do, my mother started saving the drunken messages I’d leave on her answering machine and later play them for me when I was sober. It was effectively torture to hear my own voice piercing through the pitch darkness of my blackout binge drinking, exposing the truth of my inner firewater monster.

(here’s a YouTube link of a stranger: it is chilling to hear her channel the same voice of the same drunk demonic hag who once inhabited me)


A screaming, angry, ranting and raving drunk…filled with hatred for and violence toward everyone and everything…and not until the room was spinning and I’d completely exhausted myself would I finally pass out. Upon waking to see whatever damage I’d done, I would become so sad – sad isn’t nearly an accurate enough word to describe how abject my desolation – and the same crazy drunk, hung over from the night before, would become positively suicidal.

I returned home from CSU in disgrace, and with considerably more baggage than with which I’d left.

After one particularly bad night – during which I cussed out my mother and hurled every one of my many belongings down the stairs and into the front room before passing out in a heap – I awoke with head throbbing, and the realization of what I’d done, and of what a total loser and utter failure I’d become. Combined with my complete absence of faith, it suddenly all became too much for me to bear; and at the tender age of 22, I downed about 90 of my mother’s amitryptiline tablets.

For a moment in time, I was flat-lined. They had to jump-start my heart, put me on a rescusitator, pump my stomach…I’ll never forget the many mouthfuls of black charcoal I spat out for several days afterward. It was a miracle when again my eyes opened and I rejoined the living. The first face I saw was my mother’s…my high school sweetheart/future husband standing behind her – both of them crying tears of sorrowful gladness and telling me how much they loved me.

I will always remember that dark moment 20 years ago…a lifetime ago; for that which we fail to remember, we are doomed to repeat.

Today, I’m able to take an occasional drink; but for the most part, God simply took the taste for alcohol right out of my mouth: for that, and so much more, I thank and praise Him. Hopefully, I won’t ever falter again, but I’ve also learned never to say never: several Thanksgivings ago, I found myself barefoot and bleeding at night on a snowy sidewalk, lost and unsure of which direction to take in order to find my way back home – this, after having gone a decade without the temptation for even so much as a sip of alcohol.

I’ve been very plain with my children about how alcohol can and has affected their mother; and warned them that they’re genetically predisposed to experiencing similar problems with alcohol, should they ever take it up. So far, they’ve shown no inclination for either drinking or smoking, which is a relief – but I am ever watchful.

Making whoopie with a stranger and dancing around with a lampshade on your head might be thrilling at that moment, but what comes next?  A moment is all that’s needed to make an irreversible misstep that could bring regret, heartbreak and pain to your family, your friends, and yourself for years and years to come.

Never underestimate how swift and deadly alcohol can be; it is the reason we still refer to it as spirits. Further, alcohol has a whole gang of lowlife friends in tow – anger, doubt, fear, low self-esteem, depression, aggression, hopelessness, et. al., – and together, they pick us apart, seeking out our human flaws and frailties for maximum exploit. What Satan has done and would do to destroy me – to destroy us all – if only we give him the chance!

By chance did I stand up my date with death; by choice have I come to accept and appreciate the loving grace of God.