You are most welcome, and thank you for your kind words.

For people like us who want to improve ourselves and develop into better people, it means we are more self-questioning. But this can result in being overly self-critical, which can lead you to beating yourself up. Remember that when you look at yourself, both the outside and inside of who you are, do so with compassion and understanding, just as you would do for others. When people would say they liked me or complimented me, I used to tell myself, "If only they knew who I really am inside." I looked at myself as a very flawed person, especially with my Autism and Gayness. I was holding myself to a standard that I never held anyone else to. There was a time when I hated myself.

I would look in the mirror and see only ugliness, yet girls were chasing me and I got positive comments from people about my looks. But the mirror doesn't lie does it? Actually, the mirror does not lie, but your brain does. Most of human vision takes place in the brain. The eye brings in a great deal of raw data, far too much. The brain greatly filters the data down, then INTERPRETS the data from the eyes, then renders it onto the screen in your mind. In this way, a lot can be going on around you visually, but you never notice. You can easily miss the pink elephant running through your room, or you may see a pink elephant running through your room that does not exist.

In this way, a person with anorexia looks in the mirror and sees fat, but there is no fat, just emaciation. When I looked in the mirror and saw nothing but ugliness, I was seeing a reflection of my own self-hatred.

Remember to recognize the beauty of who you are inside. We are all flawed, we all have problems. Some of us are determined to work on our shortfalls. I am a continuous work in progress. I am different from many people in a number of ways, and as a boy I saw being different as being bad, being autistic as bad, physical problems as bad, being Gay as bad. But now I embrace my differences and the things unique to me, because they are part of who I am, and I happen to like who I am, as imperfect as I may be.

When you look in the mirror, try to see the beauty of who you are, and be happy for it.

Thank you sir, I appreciate the kind words.

If you did not see it, there is a Gallery of my GLBTQ works here: [link]

All the best,

Matt

Hi John,

Thank you and welcome to DA. Yes, the church did everything it could to stamp-out paganism. At first, it did it by stealth, like changing Christian holidays to match that of Pagan holidays, and even incorporating some of the ceremony. Later the church committed atrocities against pagans, as well as other Christians who did not agree with the central church. The Catholic Church committed outright genocide twice.

Pagans have a spiritual connection to mother earth, to nature itself, to all of life and how it all connects together. Some pagans represent these things with Gods. The church was more interested in strict domination of all people to a central authority. There was little of spirituality in much of the Church for most of its history. Even now it is a political machine. TheChristian churches swept across our planet wiping out culture after culture.

When you look at LGBT history prior to Christianity and Islam, worldwide, homosexuality was generally accepted, and in most cases, actually revered. This can be seen in Australia aborigine cultures, some African one, the Americas, and so on, where Medicine men and Shamans were typically LGBT.

Early Christianity did not have a problem with Homosexuality. It was later translations of the New Testament where it suddenly becomes a big deal. The church regularly looked for scapegoats to focus fear and hate on, especially when church attendance and donations were dropping. This happened in the Little Ice Age of Europe, resulting in the Pope declaring that the horrible weather was due to witches, and set up a system to hunt them down, resulting in many thousands of innocent women and men being burned at the stake or crushed by stones. Generating fear and hate in people is a sure fire way to consolidate and increase central power.

Christianity and Islam marked the beginning of thousands of years of atrocities against homosexual people. Both religions represent a historical path of blood. Both raped, ravaged and pillaged, destroying cultures and imposing their belief systems on all they conquered.

Although they all did these things in the name of God and religion, it was really for person wealth and gain.

I am currently writing a deviation about homosexuality in the 1950's, '60's, and 7p's, when I was growing up. These are the years when homosexuals were imprisoned and thousands were lobotomized. These lobotomies were the kind where an ice pick like device when put the eye socket and into the brain, destroying part of the brain and turning the homosexual men and women into walking vegetables. It was felt that this cured sexual deviancy. Many homosexual men were castrated and Lesbians sterilized. Medical experiments were performed on them, such as a chemical version of waterboarding, a drug to simulate drowning.

AVERSION THERAPY was used by prisons, Mental Institutions (homosexuality was seen as a mental psychopathy), churches, and other groups, to supposedly cure homosexuality. Even today boys and young men were sent to Christian camps by their parents to be converted into straight people. There were and still are programs for this that are not directly linked to a church.

The favorite Aversion therapy was to hook electrodes to the penis, testicles and fingers of boys and men, they would then be shown photos or video of naked men and gay sex. When the observer would see the beginnings of an erection, he would apply a large current electrical shock to the boy, induing horrific pain. This was done daily, for months. Another favorite was using drugs that induce severe nausea and vomiting, administered while showing the person photos of naked men. These are just two of many techniques used, including Psychopharmacological drugs that are considered internationally to be instruments of torture.

Matthew