OneByOne

For lunch I went to a ticketed meal with Mike sponsored by OneByOne, basically the opposite of More Light.
I wanted to hear both sides of the issues so I had signed up for both of them.

Earlier in the week I had visited their booth in the Exhibit Hall. The guy there tried to joke with me and I felt uncomfortable around him. This was before I found out which side of the debate they were on.

So today Mike and I walked to Bella Mia Restaurant and received a small box lunch at the door. It was a small crowd, about twenty. The weird guy from the booth was there and he recognized me. It's always a nice thing to be recognized, but then the rest of the time he kept coming over and refilling my drink and being awkward nice.
I mean, let's not let one weird guy ruin the organization for me, but to compare it to More Light, it was awkward, and though I most definitely fit in better with the OneByOne group in appearance and background, I felt far more comfortable at More Light, which was kind of ironic.

I tried to talk to a man at my table about the stances of OneByOne, mainly whether or not they thought homosexuality was a societal thing or a genetic one. He didn't really answer. I know this issue is one that takes a conversation to answer, but I was just looking for information. In the end he told me to go to there booth in the exhibit hall, even though I told him I'd been there before.

Last night we had a man from OneByOne come to speak at YAD caucus. (We have "mission groups"--special interest groups in disguise--come every night and talk to us for like two minutes each.) The man told us about how he has "suffered from same-sex attraction" before but that now he had found the church and was back with his wife. People are so picky with their words. "Same-sex attraction."
I felt sorry for the man. He never said that he loved his wife. He never said that he had found a way to get rid of the feelings. He had just gotten back to the societal norm of what was expected of him as a Christian husband and father. I think the poor guy was living a lie just to be accepted by Jesus. No one has to do that.
And what about his wife? Poor woman. She deserves the right to love someone that can love her back.

He didn't seem "healed." He seemed well-rehearsed.

The speaker at the lunch talked briefly about having a homosexual past, but then "reconciling" with his wife years later. He then found out he had AIDs. His whole speech then became about "suffering with others as Jesus tells us to." When he talked about having AIDs though, he never said anything about the fact that he was the one that gave himself AIDs. He compared himself to the African people a lot, which I thought was weird. Their story is completely different from his.

I did like his speech when I was listening to it, but coming out of it, I'm not really sure what he talked about, and he said nothing of the work that it took to stop being homosexual.

I think a homosexual, just like a heterosexual, can, over time, faithfully work with God to halt their sexual feelings into abstinence. I find it hard to believe that they can "switch back to the other side," but I do think that anyone, homo- or hetero- sexual can abstain from sex with Christ's help. Whether or not that abstinence is required by God is debatable, but the issue I am annoyed with is when people appear to have coaxed themselves into being genuinely attracted to something they were not previously attracted to.

I feel like you can wane out attraction, but you can't create it.

Anyway, I liked More Light better. They were truly friendly, and they answered all my questions with real answers.