homosexuality and your religion?

I believe in "do what feels good."
My religion, Hedonism.

 

Was brought up a catholic, but no longer practice

A friend of mine showed me a book her daughter got from school on sex education and religion... apparently God hates gay people and their sinning, and wishes they would give up their hateful ways... sheesh... I thought that god was all about love

 

I'm a Lutheran, but the are I live in is very open, so I'm not having any religious issues.

 

Believe in something akin to the force, I call it Vril.

 

When I was a child my parents and my religion taught me that masturbation was abnormal and a sin. So you can imagine what their feelings and beliefs would have been as far as homosexuality. Once I reached 18 and quit going to church and falling for all that religious brainwashing I didn't give one flying fuck as to what their feelings and beliefs were about homosexuality or masturbation!!!

 

In the Zen Precepts as I received them, in the 3rd Precept "I vow not to engage in inappropriate sexuality, but to be caring and responsible ". What is "inappropriate"? When you think of all the common answers; rape, coercion, pedophilia; they all have one thing in common; satisfying your needs at the expense of another; essentially masterbating using their body with no regard for their wants or needs; a complete lack of empathy. The central theme of Buddhist practice is ahimsa; "non-harming"; loving kindness and compassion are highly valued. Therefore, if my expression of my sexuality is compassionate, loving, and non-harmful; "caring and responsible", the 3rd Precept is upheld, and the gender of my lover is completely irrelevant.

 

Oh my God, I can't believe I came across this thread just now, and the last post is right up my alley with the turmoil I've been fighting for the last two weeks. Thank you, @Piobaire!!

I grew up Roman Catholic, but lost those beliefs in university. At 33 I found Buddhism, in a particular western tradition (though with its roots in Tibetan Buddhism) tailored towards our busy modern lives. It was only 2-3 years before this that gay desires and fantasies exploded in my mind, right after my first girlfriend broke up with me for the third time, and I had begun exploring the gay side of my bisexuality. But one year in, in this advanced class that I became part of, in which we were studying one of the texts, a major one, we got to the harmful actions against others (negative karma) section: it said homosexuality was part of sexual misconduct! I freaked out, as I was still looking forward to exploring even more that very thing, and in a bigger and bigger way. I went to one of my senior classmates, who had been a Buddhist teacher for a number of years as well, and he reassured me that one of our Tibetan Master's assistants helping him prepare the text that he wrote for us modern people, an ordained nun, slipped the homosexuality thing in. He said, in fact, a new printing was going to happen to remove it, which did happen. OMG, I felt so relieved, and over the last 30 years I've had tons of sex with men, and primarily men (hundreds of men (mostly orally) versus 3 women in my life).

Then after I broke it off with my last, second and final girlfriend just before Covid hit, from a very tumultuous three-year relationship in which she broke up with me many times, I felt so overjoyed and free to be able to finally live as a gay man, which I discovered I actually was. However, things have been slow sexually since then, but I've been very hopeful to ramp up my sex life, and even have romantic relationships with guys. I just have to lose my 30 extra pounds that I have accumulated since Covid.

Then I attended a vow ceremony two weeks ago, where we took, or retook in my case, the first 5 main Buddhist vows--no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, or taking intoxicants, which I actually already took at the end of my first year, 30 years ago. And then it happened: our local teacher told us homosexuality is included in sexual misconduct, but was removed from the text 30 years ago because of how much controversy in the west it would bring. I was floored! I was in total shock. I guess that senior teacher classmate told me that nun story because that was the cover story at the time perhaps. I haven't heard a single mention of homosexuality since. Our teacher two weeks ago said that homosexuality is a non-virtue, albeit a lesser one in that category that includes rape and pedophilia, because of its *cause*--I assume he's talking about the strong desirous attachment to (a.k.a. uncontrolled desire for) the penis and anus bisexual and homosexual men have (and whatever the female equivalent might be). But he said that love and compassion can "mitigate" (*lessen*, I guess) the non-virtue. In my mind that implied it doesn't take it away.

But over the next 20 minutes as he continued to teach, my mind was going a million miles an hour. Like you're saying, @Piobaire, non-virtue is about harming others, with an intention to harm, so how can homosexual activity harm anyone? But that strong desirous attachment is part of what keeps us stuck in our worldly ways, instead of striving for enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. But don't heterosexual people have strong desirous attachment for the person they're having sex with as well (I suppose more so in men towards the female body)? Plus I can also understand, though our teacher didn't mention it, that for some advance Buddhists (I'm not there yet myself, that's for sure), the final step in achieving full enlightenment involves having a very spiritual kind of sexual intercourse with a person of the opposite sex (which is where the corrupted idea of Tantric sex in our modern world comes from). Since Buddha said that the actual meaning of our human life is to achieve full enlightenment, where the only kind of reincarnation that will allow that to happen is as a human being, homosexuality goes against that. But when I'm having sex with someone it's more about my giving them pleasure than receiving pleasure from them, other than the fact that I get pleasure by giving pleasure. And I am definitely open to love with another man some day, and even without romantic love, I'm all about caring for my lovers. But I guess Buddha is saying it's wrong, harmful, i.e. leads to their and our own eventual suffering, when it's with others of the same sex as us? And I am definitely obsessed with cock and ass, in gay porn I'm jerking off to, and with the men that I have sex with. But I do love everything else about a guy's body, mind and soul, if you will, especially nowadays, unlike how I was in the first 20 years of sucking hundreds of cocks in bathhouses and other gay sex venues. And on and on, hundreds of arguments at light speed in my mind.

But then I forced myself to accept it, okay, homosexuality is negative karma (OMG, please help me) and so I retook the vows, I guess, with the intention to just stop all gay sex cold turkey, and stop gay porn which I've been addicted to for many years, and writing and reading gay stuff in this forum. Over the next week--last week--I fought like mad with my mind, pushing down any gay thought or desire like crazy, repressing, repressing, repressing. I was in agony. I was thinking about suicide--a much much much worse negative action than sucking and fucking another guy. Then I was together and alone with a couple female Buddhist friends in our spiritual centre last weekend, and was internally led into coming out to them all of a sudden, in order to be able to talk to someone about my struggles I guess. They were also senior students like me, except only Buddhist for 20 years instead of my 30. But they weirdly didn't really have any advice for me, though they were completely accepting of my bisexuality/homosexuality, and very loving and supportive.

But a couple of days later, earlier this week, as my struggles continued, as my torment continued, I came to the conclusion that this was untenable. I have been thinking not only that I had to give up sex with other guys, give up gay porn, give up reading and writing about gay sex or other gay issues, even give up masturbation and orgasm for the rest of my life (because I am unable to have an orgasm jerking off to naked female pictures on the Internet, in fact usually unable to even get hard, even when they're gorgeous, and I have no desire to have sex with an actual woman ever again)--not only all this--but I had to give up the large weekly gay men's social gatherings that I attend in these pub meetups, and platonically hanging out with my gay friends, which comprises most of my social life, and most of all, I had to repress my sexuality and the very identity that I have been fostering and finally fully accepting after decades of internalized homophobic repression preventing me from fully embracing my homosexuality, perhaps even finding love with another man.

Even though as an advanced Buddhist I work towards dropping my ordinary identity, and trying to identify as the enlightened mind, instead of ordinary me, I was still attached to my ordinary, worldly identity. No matter how I tried to deny it, that identity was partly as a gay man. I can't stop these feelings and who I am--at least worldly me. This is what brought me here again today. I haven't gone back to gay porn, though I did just login to my silverdaddies account and browsed some guys' profiles, including naked pictures of themselves--and stroking my very hard cock while doing so. And I just accepted an invitation to a large gay party at a friend's house this Saturday. It's not a sex party, though I just heard rumours of some guys planning to come just wearing jockstraps. And I'm sure I will eventually go back to having sex with guys. Back to being, in Christian vernacular, a sinner.

Overall, I'm still in turmoil, going back-and-forth on this. Right now I'm just thinking that I don't think I can do this--stop living my homosexuality. Oh God! ... um, Oh Buddha!