Dayton's Great World

It's a pretty good metric.

Dayton, I do hope you realize the irony in you having a meltdown over people accusing you of having a meltdown.

I'm not gay, but go off I guess

I was mistaken. I apologize.

It's cool. I post a lot of hot, nekkid anime boyz, so it's an easy mistake to make

Actually I don't think that is what prompted me to think that.

Hope of finding a boyfriend, I'd wager.

I just figured you liked hot nekkid boyz, so didn't send you a selfie.

@Dayton3 , why are you so desperate to push what you call "sexual deviants" into the closet? If sin offends you, shouldn't you be the one who pulls out your own eyes? Are you so unable to handle viewing sin that you must lock it away? That which cannot be seen cannot be scrubbed away. And didn't Jesus say to love your neighbor, since love makes all things bearable? Shouldn't we cherish what is rather than condemning what is flawed? Shouldn't we meet people with different views with open hearts and not locked doors?

No.

How very Christian of you.

You know what I like about your Church of Christ cult, @Dayton3 ? Its version of Christianity is efficient. You take out all that "eye of the needle" and "love thy neighbor" crap and just concentrate on White Jesus and his impending second coming in Revelation.

Be sure to let me know how the Kool-Aid tastes.

Seriously. What do you know about the Church of Christ? I've never been to a Church of Christ that spent much time (if any) on the Book of Revelation or other end times prophecies. Some skip over studying the Book of Revelation entirely.

And you can NOT "love thy neighbor" without trying to get them to repent of their sins. And you can't encourage people to repent of their sins without being willing to point out sins in the first place.

You cannot love thy neighbor and insist that they keep their "deviency" in the closet. Pointing out sin is one thing. Shaming the sinner is akin to casting stones.

And I have been to plenty of Church pf Christ churches. You guys are one delusion away from Jonestown.

Actually you are right. You cannot simply insist someone keep their "deviancy" in the closet. I was simply throwing them a bone. I said nothing about people being forced or even encouraged to give up their deviant behavior. But as I said I was throwing them a bone. When you get down to it the government should take an active role in discouraging such behavior just as it tries to discourage other behaviors like smoking.

And you how do you know you went to the kind of "Church of Christ" that I am? IIRC there are at least two or three distinctly different churches referred to as the Church of Christ.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Christ

This exchange and the following is beginning to explain a lot to me.

@Dayton3 I am coming to realise that you are very much a victim. I doubt you'll agree or appreciate my saying this, but bear in mind you've commented yourself on the fact I'm not entirely a typical "left winger" and I'm also someone who has largely shied away from the pile ons, the name calling, the references to your family, the "greatest hits" thread, etc and treated you with respect. Where I've been angry or annoyed with you I've said so and explained why rather than resorting to bullying tactics so please at the very least see this post as well intentioned.

This is me.

I'm Mark.

I was taken by social services at a fairly young age out of a sexually abusive family situation and spent a significant chunk of my childhood being raised in care settings and temporary foster homes. When I was eventually given a permanent adoptive home (for which I am deeply grateful) it was with a couple who were highly religious (Brethren) and grew up from there with my younger adoptive sister. I'm not a religion basher in the sense you might imagine. On the contrary the stability I got from that adoptive home made the rest of my life possible and much of the values I gained from the church I genuinely cherish to this day.

I learnt about this man called Jesus who showed almost infinite patience and kindness to those around him, someone who was better than any of us could ever be. He was an aspirational figure, one who didn't judge, who didn't impose his views, someone without ego who persuaded those around him gently to be the best versions of themselves they could be.

Those attributes are, I believe, very much ones we should strive for but I wasn't, and still am not, convinced they are ones which are necessarily shared by those who act in his name.

The church didn't consistently reflect those values. It was a very invasive and all pervasive thing, your value in society was based on the good will of other members of the church and any dissenting views resulted in being at the very least socially ostracised. People were placed in heirarchies based on their perceived worth, they were implicitly judged to be more or less worthy by their peers according to seemingly arbitrary values which weren't lifted from Jesus teachings. Throughout my teen years I began to question much of what I was being expected to stand for and whether I could really claim it was my own opinion and not one which was placed on me.

From an early age I was adventurous and promiscuous and that hasn't changed. I wanted to meet new people, hear new ideas, all the things inquisitive young people want to do as they are finding their own place in the world. When I went to university that continued. I variously spent a lot of time with people of many religions and backgrounds, I spent a year working in the US, volunteered in a prison over here and for various other groups and charities (including as an emergency medical technician), I took up boxing and learnt martial arts, travelled all across Europe, worked part time in various odd places from warehouses to factories, as a DJ and even a stripper for a while (judge away if you must). I had girlfriends and partners, I had lots of partners in fact including a Russian girl and a few polyamorous situations. I got engaged for the first time (but not the last) to a historian who took me on archeological tours and digs.

In short I lived. A lot.

I increasingly came to the conclusion that what divides there are in the world are largely of our own making. We create most of our own problems by virtue of not listening to each other, taking the path of least resistance to our inherent tribalism and calling that a virtue.

I came to realise it's amazing how many ways we have of rationalising hate and basing social structures on the worst aspects of humanity.

So, I graduated and fully intended to do a PhD in behavioural ecology then, my tutor, thesis and funding all in place. When that funding fell through I was left adrift and had several jobs culminating in a spell working in a legal firm negotiating after the fact costs between insurers and the legal reps in RTAs. That was when I realised for the first time that I had mental health problems as what I had previously thought was simply a tendency towards extremes began to manifest as something more serious, the downswing of a bipolar pattern.

I became suicidal, couldn't bring myself to face the day doing something I genuinely hated for its' lack of purpose beyond moving money around and when things began to settle I went back to uni and did an MSc in evolutionary psychology, then stayed on as a post grad researcher for several years. Eventually again funding became an issue and I was forced to find other employment which meant looking outside of academia. I was dating a nurse at the time and she put me in touch with some contacts which led soon enough to a shop floor job on a psychiatric ward (ironically a ward I have since managed). The NHS trust I was working for offered me full pay and funding to do a nursing degree so I took it and specialised in forensics given the overlap with my existing skill sets. It was (still is) a mixed evironment, one of the few jobs where you can be writing a paper in the morning, meeting with police and local authorities over lunch and wrestling with a drugged up violent offender in the afternoon because he decided to kill you.

I worked my way up through the service, acting in a pretty flexible role as clinician, manager and researcher, along the way getting married to the woman I'm still with (not the nurse, a charity colleague who is now ironically in the same biology department I worked at, but specialises in anatomy and physiology) and becoming a father three times over along the way. She shares a lot of my views on sexual freedom and though we've had ups and downs we do tend to see eye to eye on more than we disagree on.

This continued until the year before last when I was offered an opportunity which seemed too good to pass up. In short the secure hospital I am based in is due to be shut down and replaced by a larger service with an experimental new paradigm. It would offer a new secure service specifically for offenders with a dual diagnosis of learning disabilities and psychosis in order to protect more vulnerable patients from more predatory offenders. I was asked to spend an interim period helping to set this up, requalifying in LD nursing and acting as a liaison with an LD service we would be incorporating in order to make bring policies and procedures between disparate services into line. The end result would be a very senior position in the service and an eye watering salary.

This involved absurdly long hours, hundreds upon hundreds of miles travel a week, not to mention part of the deal with the university involved my having some academic duties teaching undergraduates whilst on campus.

I had a breakdown.

I started using stimulants and opiates in order to function, went for days at a time without sleeping, my marriage began to fall apart as I was barely ever home. I began to find myself in conflicts with aspects of the project and the people involved when I couldn't bring myself to make some of the compromises that would be required to bring it all together.

Eventually something had to give and I quit, going back to my old team and turning down the offer of a ward managers' role as a compromise.

Incidentally one of the most consistently supportive people in my life at that point is a poster here and on TBBS. You hate her guts, which is a shame because she's in many ways very much a Christian, a true one. She just doesn't call herself that or go to church.

So I spent a bit of time feeling sorry for myself and getting my life back together which is funnily enough around the time I started posting here and substituting you guys for real people



I know you'll probably react badly to this, but I'm hoping maybe laying it all out there will give you an idea of who I am and where I'm coming from. More to the point it might give you an idea of where my values stem from. I'm also hoping that might encourage you to ask a few quite healthy questions of the certainties you have, but that's up to you and I have no more place imposing my views on you than you do on me. In some ways I do still see myself as Christian, I'm just not sure it's one that many Christians would recognise. I'm someone who believes in the core values of Christianity and doesn't see a conflict with those and my more humanist tendencies. Jesus would, in fact, have had a lot in common with a humanist, a Buddhist or a Taoist. The labels are superfluous.

I don't believe in God, see no reason to. I don't know if Jesus was real, in fact I hope he wasn't because doubtless the reality wouldn't live up to the picture we have. I don't believe that much of what we view as Christian traditions, customs and festivals have their roots in the church, the evidence is very much in favour of them largely having existed for centuries or in some cases millenia as Pagan, Jewish, Druid, whatever, constructs pre Christianity. Religious traditions have always diverged, coalesced and cross pollinated so much throughout human history that it seems virtually pointless drawing the dividing lines, but draw them we do.

It's not, in my view, the place of society to decide what can or cannot happen in the bedroom or between whom, that's a fundamental point of human freedom far moreso than political speech or gun control. It's not the place of society to judge anything which does not harm or contribute to the harm of others. That road goes to some very dark places and if you have any doubts about that take a look at where that leads and has led in the real world.

The logical extension of that belief is the extreme of religious fundamentalism which right now has people imprisoned or even executed in parts of the world simply for kissing a friend or holding hands outside of marriage. God help (no pun intended) someone who had the misfortune to be born gay in Saudi Arabia or Medieval Europe, or a woman who was beaten by her husband and eventually sought solace with someone else. That's an extremely regressive scenario and has nothing to do with the message of Jesus as most of us understand it. It relies on someone cherry picking verses and aspects of the Bible to suit a pre determined version of Christianity.

Telling people they have a choice in who they sleep with is entirely the wrong way to approach someones' sexuality. It's damaging and unnecessary. Gay people, bisexual people, trans people, whoever aren't undermining society and the ironic thing is that the views of your particular church are very much in line with the Muslims and Russians you see as the enemy. Our values as advanced societies are supposed to be based in compassion, not cruelty. If someone finds happiness with a same sex partner, or in less conventional situations than that then I'm happy for them. I want them to make the most of who they are, not deny it to suit someone elses' opinions.

The same applies to someones' religion in so far as it is a private matter. If people wish to worship in a mosque, or a temple, or meditate alone, or practise t'ai chi, I'm fine with it. These things all lead to the same place in my view when they are done wisely. What I don't want is to see society shaped by one of those religions such that it rejects others or imposes itself on people.

That's me on a plate.

Take it or leave it.

Interesting. I would have figured that, as a Republican, you would be touting smaller government. Instead, here you are advocating for a larger governmental role in the personal lives of people. How would the government discourage such behavior in the same manner as smoking? And under what pretense would it be done? In theory, the government discourages smoking because smoking leads to cancer which increases the number of people on government assisted healthcare going to the hospital, which increases costs to taxpayers. Plus, cigarettes are a product that the Government has the right to regulate.

I made a decision recently, @Dayton3 and I wonder if you can tell me whether or not I made the right one. You might remember from the old TrekBBS days that I'm divorced and my ex took off to "find herself" leaving me with everything including our daughter who was 4 at the time and my step-daughter who was 6. My step-daughter's father was content to let me take care of her until he got married two years later and his wife wanted to unify their family. When my step-daughter came out as gay, all hell broke loose over there. I tried to intervene but was reminded that I didn't have any parental rights and that my "librul agenda ain't welcome here. This is a house of God. Hurrr hurrr durrr!".

My ex passed away two years ago due to a drug overdose despite several interventions from family members and several attempts to get clean. Six months ago, my former step-daughter came to me looking for a place to stay as she had turned 18 and had been thrown out by her father. He had said that since she was 18 he had no obligation to help her and he certainly wouldn't lend his shelter or money to a "sexual deviant" (his words). I took her in. I figured it'd be good for her and my daughter to spend some time together as they hadn't been able to see each other much over the years outside of the occasional family gathering. And, despite what happened with me and her mom, family doesn't abandon family.

So, Dayton, did I do the right thing? Or should I have put some ground rules down like "No girlfriends allowed! Go do that stuff elsewhere" or perhaps "You can stay here so long as you attend Church 3 times a week and repent your sins" or even "Once you finish a six month stint at Gay conversion camp, you can stay here. It'll be fun! It's like Summer Camp, but with shame, guilt and Jesus!"

What would you have done? What would you do if your own daughter came out as homosexual?

Probably the most eloquent thing that has ever been written on this board.

I would miss her a great deal. But that's her choice.

So, you would cast her out? Do you see this as justice? Hasn't it been said that mercy is more powerful than justice?

How do you reconcile this with the parable of the prodigal son?

The prodigal son repented of what he had done. Came home humbled and sorrowful. I have no problem welcoming someone back under those circumstances.

You miss the point. Yes, the son was remorseful. However, the just thing to do would have been to have the son re-enter as a servant per the son's request. Instead, he was welcome back with open arms. That's the merciful thing.

Do you prefer justice over mercy?

Strictly in my opinion you need equal measures of both. Justice tempered by mercy I believe is the way it goes.

So, your daughter turns 18, comes to you and says "I'm gay". What is the just thing to do? What is the merciful thing to do? What is your ultimate response?

Already answered. I express my disagreement with her lifestyle choice and the moral beliefs of Amy and I. If she wants to visit us that's fine but she couldn't bring a "girlfriend" along with her.

But my daughter is 19 now and hasn't lived with us for nearly a year. Since she started surgical tech training last summer.

Okay, let's go with that. She tells you she's gay. You express your disappointment. She notes your disappointment and disregards it. She needs to come and live with you. Do you allow it?

No.

What's with this incessant need to tell people to 'repent for their sins?' Whatever happened to just letting people live their lives in peace? The man who is always telling others how to live comes across as pretentious and feeble-minded.

We know @Dayton3 is gay because he is turned off by lesbians.