Category: The Spiritual Side Of Sexuality

I’m not exactly sure who or what God is, but what I can say is that I’d stake my life on what God isn’t and that’s hate, which is exactly what I believe a preacher is spewing from his pulpit in Phoenix.

Quite reminiscent of now deceased Pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church is Pastor Steven Anderson of Faithful Word Baptist Church, who recently led an anti-homosexual sermon that said killing gays is the way to an AIDS-free world.

During his homily Leviticus 20:13 was cited as justification, which says, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” Anderson fully supported this passage by stating, “And that, my friend, is the cure for AIDS, it was right there in the Bible all along. Because if you executed the homos, like God recommends, you wouldn’t have all the AIDS running rampant.” He also went on to say that “all homos are pedophiles” and that “no queers or homos are allowed the church, and never will be as long as he’s pastor.”

What outright saddens me first and foremost is how his words have now made its way into nationwide news. I only happened to learn of this when I noticed a hatred-filled headline in USA Today that read, “Pastor calls for killing gays to end AIDS”, while looking for the latest movie reviews. Because of all the previous rejections I’ve received in the past to joining several churches due to my sexuality, I read the article in its entirety. And although I’m sure there will be plenty of people who end up feeling the same pain I did after reading it, there will sadly probably be just as many who will end up applauding and supporting Anderson’s beliefs as well.

Both Phelps and Anderson have stood for something that I can only compare to hate. Wishing, hoping, or calling for the death to all gay people is something I don’t believe God would ever advocate. So many pastors, preachers, and the like have cited this passage in Leviticus as a way to justify their hate.

“It’s in the Bible, so it’s coming from God and it must be true.” This is often what has been presented to me by several pastors and very opinionated religious people I’ve met over time. I remember this passage specifically being pointed out to me by a pastor back in Massachusetts when I sat at a table with him inquiring about joining his church.

It truly is no wonder why so many gays and lesbians get turned off to finding and developing a closer relationship to God when people like Phelps or Anderson are making nationwide news citing passages like this to support their claim that God hates gays. But the image I hold onto these days with who God is sits exactly on the opposite side of this spectrum. To me God is nothing but unconditional love.

I refuse to believe that God would want to have anyone be killed given that all religions seem to believe that God was also the one to create each of us in God’s image. So if that were the case, why would God create someone only to want him or her killed? If God created me just as I am, as a gay man with an open heart who’s here solely to bring equality, unconditional love, and hope for this entire planet, why would God also want me to be killed given I’m only doing what I feel God brought me here to do?

Ironically, each of the passages in the Bible that continue to be used by pastors such as Anderson to denounce my sexuality in some way always seem to overlook the other passages that condemn just about every single person on this planet. In the same area in Leviticus that Anderson uses for his AIDS argument, it speaks of banishing all men who have had sex with women during their period, or putting to death all men and women who commit adultery, or killing all people who curse their parents, and so on and so forth.

And although the statistics I read on AIDS.GOV shows the HIV and AIDS epidemic in the United States to be originating from a large percentage of unprotected sex between men, there is also just as much of a large percentage coming from heterosexual sex and needle use as well. This changes even more drastically on a global level, especially in poorer countries such as Africa, where the higher percentages of people with HIV OR AIDS are not coming from homosexuality at all.

Knowing all this I choose to look at Anderson’s preaching as just one man’s hateful rants and yet I still have compassion for him. Why? Because I know God would want me to, especially given that I know of plenty of men who were molested by an adult male at a very young age and grew up spewing hatred towards homosexuals because of it. In fact, I was once one of them.

So whatever Anderson’s inner demons are that drive him to preach in the name of God about killing millions of people I truly don’t know. But what I do know is that I really would stake my life on the sole existence of an unconditionally loving God who cares about all of us equally, regardless of sexual orientation, or any other trait that makes up our identity, because weren’t all of them just made in God’s image anyway?

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

I was born into a religious family and because of that, my first exposure to a Higher Power came solely through a religious perspective. I’ve been slowly trudging on a path though, over the course of my entire life since then, that continues to lead me away from being religious to that of being spiritual.

My religious path began in my Methodist family, as we were all devout members of the United Methodist Church in Poughkeepsie, NY during all my childhood years. One of the things I learned there very early on was how important it was to attend each Sunday’s worship service and to make sure I studied the Bible. It was often stressed that the Bible was the strict word of God and that everything in it was supposed to be obeyed. But frankly the Bible bored me, as did each church service back then. I usually did what I was told though, so I still attended those services each week and frequently read the Bible as well. By the time I left home and went off to college, I had 18 years of this religious upbringing and my idea of God was all about obeying rules and living in fear of breaking them.

It was in college that I began to face the fact that I might be gay, and unfortunately because of this strong religious upbringing, the notion of being a homosexual wasn’t sitting well within me. I kept remembering those few passages in the Bible that contradicted the sexual attractions I was feeling towards people of the same sex and it upset me greatly. So alcohol and drugs soon became my way of escaping all of my religious and sexuality worries. But that all changed when I fell in love with one of my closest friends during my senior year. It was then that I faced my first real religious crisis.

If “lying with a man, as a man lies with a woman” were immoral, why would God have created me only to fall in love with someone of the same sex? Was I really being immoral by loving a man with all my heart and soul? These were questions I didn’t have any answers for and my desire to find them was much in part why I became clean and sober. I knew I would never discover them so long as I kept myself inebriated or high, as that only left me in a constant state of being numb from whom I really was inside.

I spent the first few years of my newfound sobriety from alcohol and drugs going back to my childhood roots. I found a church I loved and began attending it, as well as regularly studying the Bible again. I began to utilize prayer as a way to asking God about my sexuality, but no answers came so I started living a double life because of it. On the one hand I tried to be a devout Christian by doing exactly as I was taught in my religious upbringing, but on the other hand I was supposedly going against what I was taught by being in same-sex relationships. This internal calamity led me to finally sit down with the leaders of this church to ask for some guidance. What I received from them didn’t help my dilemma though, as they only pointed to the Bible and said my actions were immoral.

I left that church only to spend the next seven years or so angry and confused. I couldn’t understand why God had made me the way I was if it was supposedly wrong, so I allowed this confusion to lead me into a living a life of promiscuity. It was almost as if this became my act of rebellion to the religious God I was brought up with. Thankfully, my discovery of meditation would change all this. It was through one of my earliest deep meditations one night that I finally received the answer from God that I so desperately had searched years for. During it, I was told it didn’t matter whether I was in a relationship with a man or a woman, so long as whoever it was with I’d love with all my body, mind, and soul. My entire life began to change after that because this spiritual experience went directly against the Bible and the “word of God” I was told all of it contained. If I had to label a single point in time where my path of spirituality truly began, it was after this meditation ended that night.

I immediately began to study the books and teachings of a bunch of other religions and attended several services of many of them as well soon after, only to find more rules and principles that just alienated people instead of embracing them. I ultimately realized that my religious upbringing and living a religious life wasn’t going to work for me anymore. But through daily prayer, meditation, and working the 12 Steps of recovery, I began to discover a more loving and accepting God who was able to show me more of the actual truths behind the words and beliefs I had read about or was taught in my religious upbringing. This led me to accept the fact that there was no religious book on this entire planet that could ever encompass every single word or truth of God. Instead, I began to believe that religion and all of its books only had a piece of truth in them, and it would take internal guidance and direction from my Higher Power to fully figure out what they were.

Nowadays I receive my communications from God not through the Bible, church services, or any other religious context. On the contrary, I receive them through the movement of my heart and soul and do my best to apply each of them to how I live my life everyday. I no longer allow anyone or anything to tell me what God’s words are, as to me this is what being religious was all about. Instead, I wait patiently upon God now for the answers to come from within, as I believe this is what spirituality truly is. So I guess it just took me having to walk that religious path to finally find the one I believe I was always meant to walk on…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Picture this scene for a moment. You’re on a date taking a walk in a beautiful park and you notice how breathtaking the sunset is in front of you. You can’t imagine yourself being there with anyone else other than the person you’re on this date with and suddenly you begin to feel a little romantic inside. Do you (a) show them a public display of affection (PDA) or (b) hold back and just say something nice to them instead? This is the dilemma that’s often faced when it comes to being in a gay relationship and going out on a date.

My partner’s and my answer to this question are quite opposite of each other at this present time. I’m truly a romantic person at heart who frequently feels moved to express that side of me when moments such as a breathtaking sunset appear may before me. My partner on the other hand is far more reserved. Unless we are surrounded completely with other gay people already showing affection, he usually feels extremely uncomfortable expressing any type of romanticism towards me. Yet he’s also a person who desperately wants gay people to be more accepted in this country and have equal rights, as do I. But I know to get there; it will take action and having to walk through fear of allowing the world to see whom we really are.

What I mean by this is that the world is never going to change and fully accept same-sex couples if we constantly live in fear and hide our feelings for each other. I should clarify that I’m not talking about “sucking face” or “groping” or doing any other type of PDA that tends to make most anyone feel uncomfortable. What I’m talking about is what you might commonly see between a heterosexual couple when they’re at a park, a mall, the movies, or at dinner. There they might hold hands, embrace, or offer a quick kiss on the lips to show their love for each other. But sadly, same-sex couples still live in a world that’s very anti-gay. This often leads so many of us to stay relatively in the closet and never openly express our love for each other in public at all.

I don’t want to be in the closet anymore on any level and keep living in fear. What I do want though is to be the change I wish to see in the world, as it was alleged Gandhi once said. If I remain in fear the rest of my life waiting for everyone else to change enough to where it becomes fully accepted of a same sex couple doing something such as holding hands in public, I may never see that day arrive. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t wait for his race to gain equal rights, he led them there by standing up to the oppression and inequality that existed all around him. I believe a similar type of movement must happen with those who are gay if we are ever going to see the day where the majority of people can fully accept same-sex couples.

So while the idea of PDA such as holding hands, kissing, or embracing in public may concern many gay people like my partner, I’m willing to walk through that fear today and do any of those things. It’s my hope in doing so, that I’m helping to usher in a new era, one where one’s sexual preference won’t really matter, and one where a little romantic PDA between a same-sex couple won’t have to be avoided in fear either.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson