Month: November 2017

“Same Kind Of Different As Me”, A True Story Of Unconditional Love And Healing

“Same Kind of Different as Me” is a heart-felt 2017 film based upon the true story of the lives of a wealthy international art dealer named Ron Hall (played by Greg Kinnear) and his wife Deborah (played by Renee Zellweger) and how an angry homeless man named Denver Moore (played by Dijimon Hounsou) becomes the catalyst to not only saving their marriage, but also their spiritual lives as well.

When the film begins, the viewer is introduced to Ron and Deborah where it becomes quickly apparent how rocky their marriage has become after many years of being together. Ron has been caught cheating and is forced to admit the truth to his wife. Deborah is totally devastated when she is told, but isn’t ready to give up hope just yet in their relationship. In an attempt to save it, Deborah asks Ron to help her one day at the local food kitchen where she’s been volunteering for some time, Begrudgingly, Ron agrees to help just this once, although he makes it abundantly clear he doesn’t really want to be there. He, in fact, is one of those guys who have become so consumed with money and status that serving food to homeless people feels completely beneath him. But as they begin to serve meals that day, when a sudden violent outburst from a homeless man (Denver) startles Ron to the point of wanting to immediately leave a situation he never wanted to be in the first place, Deborah becomes more curious than afraid, because Denver is the very man she had a vision of in her dreams a few nights prior. Convinced that she and Ron are meant to help him somehow, Deborah sets out to befriend a man who makes it overly obvious from the onset he’s quite content in remaining friendless. Thus, begins Ron and Deborah’s spiritual journey of offering unconditional love not only towards a man who doesn’t know how to be loved, but also of rediscovering it with each other.

“Same Kind of Different as Me” really is one of those films that will make you laugh, cry, and get a lot of those feel-good tingly sensations while you watch it. To some, I’m sure it may feel like it’s too stocked with Christian symbolism, but to me, beneath the surface was an incredible movie that provided a great reminder of who I used to be and who I’m working on becoming.

I once was a lot like Ron Hall, consumed with the abundance of money that had been left to me by my parents. At the same time, I was always unwilling to do much of anything when it came to reaching out and lending a helping hand to anyone, unless it benefitted me somehow. In fact, pretty much everything that involved helping others usually felt beneath me, which in turn, made me become an extremely selfish and self-centered person. Other than donating money anonymously, I rarely got my hands “dirty” anywhere that might have befitted the less fortunate. But through a series of humbling health issues and financial failure in life, I began to reassess myself and asked God to transform me into a much more unconditionally loving human being.

Over the years ever since, my desire to help others has definitely changed. Now I am more than willing to reach out and help others, not just in my recovery from addiction-based life, but also outside those rooms as well. Case in point, I had a homeless man approach me outside one of my 12 Step meetings recently. There, he asked for something to eat, of which I promptly took him to a store nearby and bought him a meal.

There are so many people in the world like this homeless man and like Denver Moore who are worthy and deserving of God’s unconditional love, yet they so often get overlooked in life because of the way they look, or because of being homeless, or because they don’t fit into some safe box that many create around themselves. But because of people like Ron and Deborah Hall, who stepped outside that box by helping an angry homeless man named Denver Moore, God was able to save both a marriage and a lonely soul that was ultimately broken.

“Same Kind of Different as Me” truly is a spiritually uplifting film that portrays a great message of unconditional love and healing, one that is a great reminder of something I think we all should be offering a lot more of in life these days…especially to those less fortunate…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Kevin Spacey Sexual Allegations, Pedophiles And Child Molesters, And Being Gay

Anthony Rapp, a notable actor, recently came forward and claimed Kevin Spacey, another notable actor, sexually coerced him at the age of 14 when Spacey was 26. Unfortunately, Spacey sidestepped the allegation by seizing the moment to come out of the closet. This in turn has caused people to raise forth a long-standing judgment and stereotype that all homosexuals are nothing more than pedophiles and child molesters.

But for those who might not know, this assumption isn’t based upon any factual or statistical evidence. Ironically, I found it to be just the opposite through a little research I made on the Internet. In one specific study in fact, I discovered that 95 percent of convicted offenders labeled themselves as heterosexual, with the majority of them also being married. Yet somehow gay men get labeled far too often as pedophiles or child molesters anyway.

This ultimately is disheartening and one of the very reasons why I continue to struggle identifying myself openly as gay, even though I’ve accepted it’s who I was some two decades ago. And personally, having been molested by a heterosexual man myself when I was 12 years old, it sickens me with the thought of ever bringing harm like that to a child or teenager, or anyone for that matter really.

I spent much of my early adulthood going through hours of counseling to work through being molested and have now pledged to speak openly in my life about what I went through, to hopefully bring healing to those who too were molested, but never found that themselves. Because of this work, especially in the past year, I’ve met a few other gay men that were molested even more viciously during their childhood than I ever was. In their cases, the offenders were heterosexual and married men as well and they too are disgusted at the thought of ever bringing harm like that to any type of child.

But somehow, we as gay men continue to be labeled by far too many people as pedophiles or molesters of children, when indeed the majority of us would never, ever, do such a thing, and are horrified by the very thought of it.

And just so know, in my case, I’m rarely attracted to anyone younger than I, or even close to my age for that matter. As far back as I can remember, even in my own pre-pubescent years and before I was ever molested, I was constantly admiring men far older than I, which is the very thing my molester preyed upon when he saw me doing just that from a distance, long before I even knew what I was doing or knew what having an attraction even meant.

Nevertheless, because of Spacey’s comments about being gay arriving at the very moment he was accused of being a pedophile and child molester, it now pours a ton more fuel onto a fire that has been stoking for years by far too many racist people. And that is why I will continue to have to deal with this issue in my world, even though it’s something that isn’t true, not for me, and not for the majority of those who are gay either.

So, while I am extremely saddened at the thought of what happened to Anthony Rapp during his youth, I am just as dismayed at how someone I’ve often admired because of his acting skillset has now caused me and plenty of others even greater hardship, as we continue to battle the demons of prejudice, stereotypes, and judgments that unfortunately still exist against gay people in this world, and will keep on existing the more things like this happen.

Yet I have hope that one day, people will finally realize that not only are pedophiles and child molesters mostly heterosexual individuals who are very sick and needing treatment, but that homosexuals aren’t an evil on this planet that need to be purged and indeed are a part of God, just like I believe every single one of us are, no matter what our sexuality is…

Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson