WARNING! Adult Content Ahead! This might feel more like a series of rabies injections than Christmas Dinner with Martha Stewart. The level of vulnerability expressed could only be eclipsed if I ripped open my chest, cut out my heart and laid it on the table. I am not a fan of suffering in silence. This piece evolved from a simple question the Holy Spirit asked me.
“Why do you go to porn?”
Three people just stopped reading. Five others popped some popcorn. This blog is equal parts hurt, anger and frustration; a frantic tie-dyed tapestry of raw emotion. Normally, religiously, I abhor the use of the F word, but today I use it pointedly. If this one blog is the solitary lens by which you view me, you’ve missed the point. I am more than my struggle. More than the use of expletives to demonstrate emotion. I AM a child of God. I struggle with same sex attraction, but try my darndest to make it in a world where I am both maligned and misunderstood. Some will think I have lost my salvation and my mind. Some will cheer. Others will point out the fact that I still struggle with porn to discredit the redemptive work God has done in my life. I am about to go where most Christians never go, but so many Catholics are pleasantly familiar. Welcome, if you dare, to a time of confession.
The question. “Why do you go to porn?”
Because I envy the good-looking guys. I endlessly compare myself to them. Yet I am enticed by them simultaneously. I love the thought of being connected and intimate with another guy. I envy their hair, muscles, masculinity and confidence. I love that they appear to love who they are. I spend many days hating myself. The guys in the movies are fully surrendered and lost to everything. I love that they are surrendered fully to one another, if only for a collective moment. I know that porn is all about fantasy and a false sense of connectedness and intimacy, but these men are fully surrendered, open, honest and naked before one another. Nothing stands between them. That’s why porn is so alluring to a man who has been deprived of legitimate love and relationship with other men his entire life. Guys in porn appear as close as humanly possible, intertwined, committed for a moment.
Take away the sexual aspect of porn and the concept being bastardized is an intimate friendship between two men, comfortable being open, honest, close and connected with one another. Many straight men are afraid to relate, be emotional, share their true feelings or hug without employing the triple pat and release maneuver. They fear being called gay or having their masculinity called into question. This leaves the rest of us, who need healthy touch and connectedness, out in the cold settling for the “crumbs” that fall to the floor.
I know that porn is a caricature of what real relationship between men who love and care for one another as brothers should look like. Jonathan and David demonstrated a healthy connected male friendship. It’s a biblical relationship hijacked by the gay agenda and a relationship that many, straight men live out through the occasional, locker room butt slaps.
A guy at my church, who knows my story intimately endeavored to give me a longer hug than normal the other day. Another guy, standing nearby, asked him if he was thinking of joining the ministry I direct. I run a ministry for men who struggle with same sex attraction. A single, innocent act of refreshing loving-kindness that my heart needed from another man was derailed by the insecurities of an insecure bystander.
I don’t go to porn, because I am a pervert. I am not a pervert, because I go to porn. I don’t go to porn, because I am gay. I go to porn, because it seems that straight men are so fucking scared of truly open, emotional friendships with another man, that I am left to fantasize about what life would be like if the men in the church were open, honest and didn’t give a rip about what the world says. I could kick my porn habit easily. I could give up every false relationship, every nightly, unfulfilling porn session without a second thought. It would mean that church men would have to step up, love unconditionally, give up their position in the Halls of American Male-dom and descend into the caverns of my fear and shame and love me like Jesus. Contrary to popular belief, I don’t care about your penis. When you continually deny me access to your heart, I am relegated to lusting after the loins in my fantasy world.
Now you know what me and every other broken, gay man in the world needs: true, open, honest, realistic, give and take relationship. Will you still be okay avoiding eye contact? Will you continue to shake our hands as your Christian duty, while avoiding, at all costs engaging my heart? Deep down I know you’re just as broken and messed up as me. Yet, I don’t have the desire or the energy to hide my brokenness for one more day.
So I sit here on the outside of your castle walls, begging for scraps; leftovers from your table. There you sit on a throne of your own design: pompous and shallow. You have as great of a need for connection as I do, but I’ve lost the ability to perpetuate the façade covering my pain. Before you utter one, single word of condemnation, I urge you to consider the following statement.
It was my broken heart not my erect penis that led me to this lifestyle for which you feel such disdain.
I refuse to remain silent one more day about the hollow and often hurtful relationships I’ve had with Christian men. Why is it that every post, every confession of my heart is only answered by women or other sexually broken men? If you indeed have it all together, what gives you the right to hold that life giving, life altering treasure ransom?
There is a world of men finding solace in one another’s beds, because men of God refuse to act, pray, or hug. I beg of you to step down from your Ivory Tower of self-righteousness to give me a sip of water in the desert of my dysfunction. The bible says that if we know that we have the ability to do good for someone and we don’t do it, we can count that as sin.
I dare you to love me unashamedly. Better yet, I ask you. Love me. I have a need to be loved. The horrible reality of my circumstance is that I’ll meet that need with or without you. As much as you have led me to fear relationships with you, God has called me into your circles. He has called me to trust you with my desperate, broken heart.
Porn becomes a substitute for the love that you could easily provide. I continue to wait outside the wall of your heart. I am lucky. The others that once stood with me, grew tired of waiting. Bitterness, resentment and loneliness gripped their hearts. They continued down the path in an effort to find solace in the arms of another hurting and broken man, instead of in the gospel and The Jesus that you hold hostage.
I die a slow death every time log on as the delicious poison I look to cure my brokenness slowly eradicates the remaining shreds of hope. You have a cure for what ails me, man of God. If Jesus Christ gave to you so freely, why do you place such a high price on it to offer it to me?
I have long since stopped trying to reach the bar you’ve set too high. I have relegated myself to places where substitutions for love and sexuality quench my thirst for a moment, then leave me dead and dry once again. I beg of you. Step outside, beyond the gates of expectation, societal norms, convention and life as a red blooded American male. I have longed for you to step into my world, so that I could feel confident to begin my safe passage into yours.
Gay men may cast off all restraint in relationship, but you occupy the other end of the spectrum, vaccinated against viral emotions. Let us lay down our weapons, realize we are both broken and need one another. One difference between us is that I know my life depends on it. You have yet to be convinced.
The question remains. “How long can I go on living outside the shadow of your castle?” Better still, “How long will you let me?”