Around twenty years ago I was a proud gay man sitting in Denny’s with a few friends. One of whom, a female, was dating a young Muslim man we will call Roy. Roy is a native of Kuwait but last I heard he has been in the states since I met him.
When I first met him he was just learning English and not real hip to the whole gay thing. He wasn’t mean and was actually very kind but you knew that it was a subject he didn’t really want to know all the details about. He and the young lady I was friends with eventually married and they were still married after I became a Christian and had a change of heart concerning homosexuality. My friend told Roy about my rejecting a gay identity and abstaining from homosexual behavior and he grew concerned. He wasn’t concerned along the same lines of my gay friends at the time. He probably didn’t even think to be concerned that I might be repressing my true self. He was seriously concerned that now that I had “become a man” that I might hit on his wife!
Well, I was all kinds of angry with that statement. My two chief complaints were:
- I became a man, a gay man for a long time, well before I met him.
- My repentance from homosexual behavior wasn’t some insta-straight-commit-adultery-with-best-friend-against-her-husband change of heart
However, I didn’t push the issue with him. I had learned my lesson a few years before, at Denny’s drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, when he and his friends (all from the middle east) who really didn’t like me were asking questions. Being “out and proud” I actually dared them too. I had it in my head I was going to change their minds. One man from Lebanon said that one reason that Arab men looked on American men with disrespect was because we treated our men like women. I asked, “Like … sexually? I assure you that I don’t see my partners as women …” He said that was part of it but in a much larger perspective, that our celebrities and male models act like and are treated like women. My female friend, who ultimately married Roy, said, “They are saying that we sexually objectify men and they behave like women when they act or do modeling.”
I said, “What’s wrong with that? I could handle a lot more male sexuality on display!”
I was the only one laughing at that moment. It was awkward that night, 2.A.M, at Denny’s staring at four Middle Eastern men who just really didn’t like homosexuals.
Again, that was 20 years ago.
Nowadays, the wall of infotainment sound has been sexually objectifying women for so long that the industry standard is almost no longer recognizable as human and looks increasingly like synthetic Angelina Jolie clones with blond weaves. And men have become sexual objects as well and it is just getting worse for our culture as a whole. How ironic that today I wholeheartedly take back my flippant comment 20 years ago in Denny’s. Not only do I take that back, my heart literally breaks for how the Image of God, as shown through both male and female is being robbed, cheapened, exploited and sexualized for the endorphin rush of instant gratification.
That said, we all need to just keep our clothes on but instead our culture produces stories like this:
New era: Health authorities open brothels to male prostitutes
Men may now join the ranks of Nevada’s brothel prostitutes, after a unanimous decision today that added language to health codes so male sex workers could be tested for infectious diseases.
A brothel industry lobbyist — in what could be considered a befuddling double standard — bemoaned the change, comparing it to the industry’s “Pearl Harbor.” He managed to voice concerns about homosexual sex entering the industry without ever saying “gay sex” or “homosexual.
”Men were previously barred in Nevada from the oldest profession because codes specified that prostitutes must undergo “cervical” testing for sexually transmitted diseases, which ruled out men.
Bobbi Davis, owner of the Shady Lady Ranch, a small brothel near Beatty, wanted to add male prostitutes to her stable of sex workers.
And while there have been plans for brothels to hire men in the past, Davis made the first-ever request to have the Nevada State Board of Health add urethral exams to the guidelines. That allows male sex workers to be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
Davis has said the men could start working at her five-bed brothel starting in the New Year. The male prostitutes will decide for themselves whether to accept male or female clients, she said, just as the female prostitutes do now.
The health board approved the change in what an attorney from the ACLU, representing Davis, called “housekeeping.
”George Flint, the former Assemblies of God minister who has been lobbying for the Nevada Brothel Owners Association for 24 years, said he “reluctantly — and I underscore reluctantly” agrees to the change.
…
The survey, pictured above shows that, as of this post, a vast majority of people responding are in favor of paying for sex, treating human beings like animals to be added to the “stable” of sex workers, sexually objectifying strangers for instant gratification and cheapening a person’s life and well-being to “house-keeping.”
Sixty two people and I say that this is not cool.
And yes, I have held this view of prostitution ever since God showed me how marred His Image has become in the earth, how beauty has been hijacked for disgusting marketing and sexual branding, how the most glorious relational gift of God has been reduced to a bought commodity with total strangers using total strangers in the basest way out there.
It’s not possible to indulge in porn when you are heart-broken for the people who are actually in the pictures. They were meant for so much more. We were meant for so much more than that.
Two-sentence Snark Alert: Not that I have a strong opinion on the matter. I didn’t even get to my thoughts on the former minister … which could be a whole other post.
Regardless of your moral or spiritual stands concerning homosexuality, it is my hope that we would all be against the continued abuse the sex industry perpetrates on its workers and consumers. God’s grace empowers our ability to be able to love and bless those entrapped by that industry all the while standing against what that industry produces physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
Final thought: Of course Roy and his friends had an extreme view of homosexuality I found and still find reprehensible (unless they have come to a redemptive Christian point of view.) And, sadly, they were quite alright with sexualizing women.
But that night they had a point about our sexual objectification of men like women. That night I wished more of that sexual objectification of men would occur and now that memory is bittersweet.
Bitter in that my long ago wishes came true and brought more grief to a Great and Loving God, sweet in that they are no longer my wishes because of a Great and Loving God.
He met me where I was and brought me to where I needed to be.
MORE:
Porn – 3 Reasons to Stop Now by Joe Dallas
About Randy Thomas
I’m going to be really brief (don’t pass out, Randy).
I’m being deliberately exposed to images and words to exploit something that was intended by God to be a wonderful expression of the fullness of a righteous and blessed relationship with a wife. They are STEALING my attention and desire. The rabid over-sex in our society has some frightening consequences. But I’ll stop with this: “Vengeance is Mine. I will repay”
grateful thanks and praise for ever to our Great and Loving God who met each of us where we were.. and who can meet sex workers where they are and heal and restore them so that together we reflect His beauty and bring glory to His Name