And Isaac Saw The Knife In His Father’s Hand…
Emil Steiner at the Washington Post asks, "What’s going on in Colorado’s Evangelical community?" Well…here’s what’s going on, and not just in Colorado…
Sitting cross-legged in jeans and an open-collar shirt, Barnes spoke in his video about evolving feelings growing up in a firm moral family: from confused little boy to adolescent racked with self-loathing and guilt.
In their only talk about sex, Barnes said his father took him on a drive and talked about what he would do if a "fag" approached him.
Barnes thought, "’Is that how you’d feel about me?’ It was like a knife in my heart, and it made me feel even more closed."
I have a strong hunch that dad was having some thoughts about how manly his boy was, and decided to lay it on the line for him. It did it’s work. When Abraham took his son to the sacrificial altar, so the story goes, an angel stayed his hand just at the moment he was about to put the knife into his son. But I don’t think even an angel could stop some parents.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
That’s a very relevant point, Bruce… I hadn’t connected the dad’s initiation of that conversation with the common experience of gay sons being estranged from dads who recognized something different about them from early on.
The thing that gets me about this circumstance is that, if he’s being straight with his facts about sexual activity with guys being ‘infrequent’, it sounds like he’s being punished for his thoughts, feelings, attractions, not his infidelity.
December 12th, 2006 at 6:20 pm
Great conclusion, Bruce.
“In their only talk about sex, Barnes said his father took him on a drive and talked about what he would do if a “fag” approached him.
Barnes thought, “‘Is that how you’d feel about me?’ It was like a knife in my heart, and it made me feel even more closed.””
I read that this morning and I thought. PLEASE someone hear the insanity of what people are doing to their children!!!
December 12th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Steve: In the religious eco-system I was raised in, just thinking about sinning was as bad as doing it. Yeah. You could easily get yourself into a mindset where you are always punishing yourself for having wicked thoughts. To this day I’m not sure how it is that I managed to avoid getting sucked into that, except I once did a thought experiment after one such sermon, where I tried not to think of something completely innocuous. I remember selecting apples as my target. I would not think about apples for a whole day. Naturally every time I saw something red it reminded me of what I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about, and somewhere in the middle of the afternoon I thought “this is stupid” and I gave it up.
In 1981 the cartoonist Howard Cruse did a story for Gay Comics #2 Jerry Mack about a minister’s recollections of growing up with, as they like to say now, unwanted same sex attractions. He talks about his struggle with his feelings toward another, slightly younger boy, how he prayed God would take them away, how he eventually grew up and became a minister and married (“The Lord has blessed us with a large and loving family…”). His reminisces are provoked by seeing a picture of the boy he once felt attracted to, now a man, in a newspaper article about gay liberation comics (“How did the devil ever get a hold of such a fine young man?”). And then he notes his own youngest son is also showing some artistic talent, and as the boy walks past an open door with a cheerful “Mornin’ dad!” thinks “If he ever told me he was a queer I think I’d…” And then the last panel, actually a drawing in the panel margins almost, like the subtext lurking throughout the cartoon, is of his own younger self, his hands covering his eyes, his thoughts pleading “Oh Lord – forgive me for these THOUGHTS, these THOUGHTS…” It is a powerful cartoon.
Peterson: Yes! That was exactly my own gut level reaction. Just love your children. Just fucking love your children! Never, Never let them doubt for a second that you love them.
You just want to punch a wall some days. You just want to scream.