3 others give their thoughts on same sex attraction

Hello Tim and All!

I have nearly finished Mark Dowd’s book, and have laughed and cried through it. It is very well written. You may know that my daughter is gay, has just changed her job at Lordswood High to becoming a housemistress in the Upper Sixth House at Tudor Hall School in Banbury and is happily married to Laura. In all their jobs they have hardly ever experienced any homophobic attitudes, but I am not naive enough to think that homophobia has been eradicated, but it impacts on lives much less than it did. Surely we have moved on from this bigotry so far into the 21st Century, and I am sorry your church members in particular have expressed their regressive views in this way.

I find it it distressing that CHURCH people found Mark Dowd’s Presentation offensive - I think the one thing to ask them is ‘What view would Jesus Christ take? We all know the answer! I actually find THEIR views offensive. As for promoting his book, I feel that your church members would have accepted a ‘plug’ for a book from a heterosexual!! In other words the advertisement  was not the issue. I agree with  all you have said, but think that you don’t have to justify Mark and his sexuality to them. I agree that some of the kindest most compassionate people I have met have in fact been gay.

Do let me know if anything further transpires from your conversations.

All good wishes

Margaret

Hi Tim

Thanks for your email. I was quite shocked that you felt the need to apologise or explain anything about Mark’s orientation.

I assure you that I was not offended by anything that Mark said. In fact I bought his book and read it from cover to cover. It was really interesting, albeit giving perhaps too much detail in parts! I am passing it on to a friend who is homosexual and Catholic who also wants to read it.

I agree wholeheartedly that we should love one another and treat everyone as we would wish to be treated. 

I am really pleased I met Mark. He is doing a great job bringing people’s attention to the problems arising from global warming. I am on the lookout for his name now whenever the subject crops up on the television or radio.

Best wishes and thanks for getting him to come to the meeting.

Helen

Dear Tim

I thought this might happen and I know the person in question and saw his body language, knowing as I did that he left The Ecumenical Study Group for the same reason. 

I think it is quite amusing that you would think that I would be offended (can't wait to read the book, which Helen or Margaret are passing on to me. I did offer to pay half towards it!) because I believe that all creatures are held in God's care regardless of creed, color, orientation or dare I say Political views.

I do wonder how people can go to church and recite the Lord's Prayer and then speak in this unforgiving way.

Tim I thought it was a marvelous evening and thank you for arranging it. 

Happy and Blessed Christmas to you, Linda and the family.

Don't forget to vote Labour next year!!!!!!??

Anne

Thoughts on same sex attraction

I have been saddened by the reaction of some of my friends to those with same sex attraction.  I am disappointed by the suspicion and mistaken ideas about them.  There is too much judgement and not enough understanding and tolerance of same sex people.  There is even hostility towards minority genders and, for years, even an official hostile environment to migrants/foreigners.  Perhaps, most Brits are not familiar with the four freedoms of the EU.  Our ignorance has fueled our little Englander approach that insists that we know better than the European nations whom we have fought in wars for so many centuries.

In some Northern Ireland churches, in particular, same sex attraction is seen as promoting sodomy, of fostering immorality and deviant behaviour.  Yet, I now think that Gareth Jones, my housemate and best man at my wedding in 1983 may have been of same sex attraction.  My ignorance of homosexuality and other gender issues - and my misplaced jealousy on one occasion - I now realise, may well have contributed or even caused his suicide four months after my marriage to Linda.

The practice of same sex attraction was an imprisonable offence right up to the 1960s, I believe.  This was outrageous.  As is the ignorance, even today, of the loneliness, the discomfort, even fear of those who know they are a tiny minority in a heterosexual culture that is so dominant and domineering.

It is important that we understand the difficulties and problems that comes from finding you are born with an LGBT orientation.  To understand that the discrimination and dislike, the prejudice and abuse from the heterosexual majority is the biggest and best argument against the very wrong idea that the minority same sex community is in any way enticing or promoting the majority into their own sexual orientation.  Would any heterosexual really want to change gender and so have to endure so much of the wrong, the weird and wonderful attitudes and behaviour from opposite sex people like me?  Homosexuals are not promoting their orientation.  Some, simply encouraging the closet gay to come out.  Is not the most important value that whatever our orientation, we all live in loving, faithful and honest relationships with our partners?

This is why the majority gender community must get up to speed on the LGBT community to correct the false ideas and attitudes the majority have towards them.  Mark Dowd's brilliantly written 2017 book, 'Queer and Catholic' does that.  Never judge a book by its cover, however.  Open and read Mark's memoirs.  Read of the funny events and enjoy the frank and, perhaps, too candid trials, tribulations and even sins of this former Dominican friar and, today, freelance journalist and Radio 4 broadcaster.  Once begun, you will have difficulty putting the book down.

The best social worker I have ever encountered in my 35 years in the profession was the gay, the excellent, the wonderful Martin Wager.  He got more compliments and was more loved over the four or five years I knew him than I ever enjoyed in my career of social work.