James Parker’s Testimony

It’s powerful stuff.

TransformI guess I became straight by accident. It was never a grand plan; the therapy was an attempt to resolve commitment issues, rather than sexual identity. I never had any desire to change my sexuality. But that’s what happened – in fact I changed everything.

Having had hundreds of homosexual partners, I eventually married a woman and had a child. And my whole outlook on life changed. I grew from a loud and arrogant person, trying desperately to mask my deep insecurities in group situations, into a strong, assertive guy who loved sports and war films. At the age of 46, I’ve never felt better in my own skin.

But before we get into the details of my conversion, let’s go back to the beginning.

I knew I was gay at about 10 or 11. My cousin himself had come out and I realised my own attractions were the same. At the age of 10 or 11 boys start getting interested in girls, but I was only interested in boys. I was definitely a number six on the Kinsey Scale – an exclusively homosexual male with no heterosexual desires whatsoever.

Teenage years were hell. I often thought of suicide, occasionally self-harmed and had a growing problem with alcohol and gay porn. I came out to my parents when I was 17, in floods of tears. But mum and dad were amazing; they said they had known I was gay and then affirmed their unconditional love for me. My mates at school also told me they had known for some time and supported me. The ‘coming out’ process wasn’t tortuous or traumatic.

At 18 I moved to London from the north of England and fully embraced my gay identity. I became the first person to live openly as a gay man in the section of the university I attended, and even established an LGBT group for other students, actively preaching against those who suggested that being gay was somehow a choice, or even wrong.

I never felt the need to change. I was born gay, it was all I’d ever known – end of. Even though I’d been raised a Christian and attended an LGBT Christian Movement in London, I reveled in the capital’s gay scene and led a very promiscuous lifestyle. In fact, I reckon I had 200 sexual partners.

Eventually I settled down with a long-term boyfriend, an ex-soldier and Falklands vet, and we considered going abroad to marry – or at least have a civil-partnership. But around this time I made the decision to enter a relationship with Christ, which allowed me to examine my life more deeply.

I realised I had some issues, centring on commitment. I discovered I had a deep-rooted fear of rejection, I was too anxious, and I used people. I had an innate fear of men – not of their homophobia, but the real thing: a chasm between me and the normal heterosexual male (Kinsey’s so-called number ones).

I terminated my relationship with my long-term partner to get a clean slate, and, acting on a friend’s advice, I went into therapy to address my commitment issues. There was nothing brutal or harrowing about the help I received; the horror stories you hear from some of those gay-straight ‘conversion’ documentaries don’t apply here. It was simply a mixture of cognitive therapy, to challenge my core beliefs and root out one-sided thinking; behavioural therapy, to change problematic actions trained through years of reinforcement; and EMDR, which uses rhythmic eye movements to dampen the power of traumatic memories.

My therapist and I never focused solely on my being sexually attracted to men, but my “being gay” had to be part of the dialogue, otherwise I’d have been leaving a part of my life at the door. Much of my journey was about forgiving those I needed to forgive, and recognising where I had built walls against significant others in my life, especially my parents and siblings.

I eventually came to realise that as a boy I had failed to interact with other men on any significant level. I had perceived myself to be rejected by men even as a small boy and had made an inner vow never to deeply trust them. People had reached out to me and I had spurned them, including my father and two older brothers. No wonder men had become a mystery to me and even an obsession by my teens, when I began erotically craving men and feeding this through porn.

I also realised I had thrown myself wholeheartedly into a world of the feminine, with no masculine counter-balance, yet I despised women for having the natural ability to woo every aspect of a heterosexual man, which I could not do. I discovered that my natural place was not among women.

A lot of core behaviours were challenged – my looks, my body, my walk – and my therapist challenged me to look at where I wasn’t like other men, and where I was. The therapist began to work on things like my voice and my gait – he was giving me permission to think in a different way, to do things differently.

My fears and anxiety gradually subsided, and I began to feel more accepted around both men and women. I moved from constantly rejecting masculine identity to embracing it; my posture changed, I began to walk straighter and lost my old mincing walk. My voice gained a whole new resonance, such that people would regularly comment on it to me.

I began to see that maybe, just maybe, I was never truly gay and that there was a man as real and as noble as the men I had often admired, worshipped and yearned for hidden deep within me, waiting to be freed and released.

Physical contact with women, even touching a woman’s hair, became more enjoyable. I began to enjoy being a man, and enjoy women’s company more. This doesn’t mean I went out and was attracted to every woman I met; I wasn’t an on-heat teenager. But it was a gradual process, eventually leading to dates and relationships.

Today I’ve been married to a woman for eight years, and we have a five-year-old daughter. I love art and theatre, but I enjoy team sports in a way that frightened me as a child. One of my favourite movies is Saving Private Ryan, because it’s about brotherhood and deep male friendships, something I’d never enjoyed before.

If you want to comment, please try and avoid using the words “repressed”, “suppress” and “bisexual” if you’d be so kind.

43 Comments on “James Parker’s Testimony

  1. On reading through this, I noticed a number of things that puzzled me and didn’t quite seem to me to “stack up”, as they say nowadays, but I was particularly struck by the following:

    (1) His accounts of his “innate” fear of men, of throwing himself wholeheartedly into a world of the feminine, and of constantly rejecting masculine identity.

    (2) His clear implication that he wasn’t able to enjoy being a man or watching war films (!) until he allegedly became heterosexual, and what sounds like a suggestion that his acquired love of war films was somehow proof of his acquired heterosexuality.

    (3) His expressed belief that he “would have ended up considering, and no doubt requesting, gender reassignment”.

    None of these things have any relevance to anything that I have experienced. I’ve not done a poll on it, but I’d bet you any money that the vast majority of gay men would say the same. If he had a problem, it sounds like some kind of gender dysphoria, not ordinary homosexuality.

    • I have looked hard but I can’t find any mention of gender reassignment (your comment 3) in the article. Also, James Parker’s mention of “Saving Private Ryan” is more an illustration of how he now appreciates male friendships than a suggestion that he now enjoys war films. I am wondering if there is a longer version of the article somewhere else? Could you let me know?

      • What Peter has given us here is an abbreviated version. (For the entire original article in International Business Times, click on the words “It’s powerful stuff” at the top of Peter’s version here.) James Parker’s exact words, in the antepenultimate paragraph of his article, are:

        “I now believe I would have ended up considering, and no doubt requesting, gender reassignment at the expense of the public purse.”

        In the second paragraph of his article he writes:

        “I grew from a loud and arrogant person, trying desperately to mask my deep insecurities in group situations, into a strong, assertive guy who loved sports and war films.”

        • Thanks for the reply….I managed to miss the war films reference at the beginning though I did look – honest! Thanks too for pointing out the link to the full article.

    • I googled Parker, he’s a shill for Journey into Manhood and People can Change, two ex Gay ministries. As they said during Watergate “Follow the money.” Whenever you read an article here or on any blog you must go back to the original article. Always and everywhere. It’s the only way to get the truth. And Google is our friend.

    • Hmm, Gerry Lynch seems to make the opposite argument to your?! Maybe everyone is being a little too obviously defensive?

      • I’ve simply described the impression produced on me by this article. I don’t quite see where defensiveness, obvious or otherwise, comes into it. Nor do I see how anything that Gerry Lynch has said is opposed to what I have said. In the main, I agree with what he has said, and particularly with his point about the committed partners of “converting” people frequently being regarded as disposable.

  2. As Guglielmo Marinaro so rightly says, gender dysphoria has zip to do with homosexuality; same goes for feeling alienated from other men and war movies.

    The whole thing is riddled with cliches about gender identity (real men like sports and blood & guts), that point to the deep-rooted issues disclosed in the article.

    If ever there was a cautionary example of the folly of projecting your own experience onto others, it’s this.

    • Err, human beings are always worth listening too – unless you don’t want to hear what they have experienced… Something that liberals usually acuse Christians of!!

      • Human beings are indeed worth listening to – usually, at any rate. I would add that one should not suspend one’s critical faculties when listening to them, and one should certainly not make an exception to that rule when it comes to accounts of ex-gay conversions.

  3. I love sport. I’m really looking forward to Ulster beating Saracens (hopefully) in the Heineken Cup quarter final tomorrow night. And my Sky box is set to record Everton v Arsenal on Sunday because it’s our APCM and I’ll probably miss the start otherwise.

    I like quite a few war films, especially the old school type. Battle of the River Plate is one of my all time favourite films. A Bridge Too Far, Top Gun and, yes, Saving Private Ryan are all up there too.

    I’m assertive and I think most people would describe me as strong. Commitment issues? I’ll let people who knew my late partner and I be the judge of that, but I doubt they’d say I had commitment issues.

    I’m definitely a Kinsey 6.

    Guess what? Gay people come in all shapes and sizes, and straight people come in all shapes and sizes, and so do all the people who don’t quite fit those boxes. There are straight flower arrangers, ballet dancers and male nurses. And straight guys who are pretty camp.

    I also like opera (I’m listening to Nixon In China as I type this) and good tailoring as well. So what? Looking back on my childhood, we were all fed a load of codswallop about what being a real man was about. With hindsight, it messed a lot of people up, most of them straight. Do any of you come from a poorer working-class community? Because if you do, you’ll be well aware of how a stupid culture of hypermasculinity is one of the factors that is destroying poor boys’ life chances, especially when many don’t have many real life positive male role models. Poor communities in the US suffer even more from that sort of codswallop.

    As you so often point out, Peter, our true identity is in Christ. So why are so many Christians obsessed with an Americanised version of mid 20th Century masculinity? What’s so good about it?

    None of this is intended as criticism of James. He clearly has found a wonderful love in his wife and a beautiful daughter. May God continue to bless him. I’m not sure what his life is supposed to say to mine however.

    There’s only one bit of his story that would make me ask him any questions. He and his ex-partner were clearly very committed to one another – and the guy just got ditched when he became inconvenient. We hear nothing about how being jilted pretty close to the altar affected him, and we hear nothing further about him from this point. It’s a frequent part of gay conversion narratives, and it doesn’t strike me as a particularly loving way to treat people. Jonathan Berry, to his credit, has the integrity to admit it was a searingly painful experience for his ex-partner.

    One of the things that has made me have deep reservations about the ex-gay movement is the attitude they project that partners of ‘converting’ people (whether to heterosexuality or celibacy) are disposable human beings, barely worthy of consideration unless they too ‘see the light’. If I’ve got the wrong impression about that, I’m happy for Peter to set me straight (pun intended).

    • ‘We hear nothing about how being jilted pretty close to the altar affected him, and we hear nothing further about him from this point.’

      Strange that you don’t question James’ promiscuous abandonment of 200 sexual partners before he gave up his homosexual behaviour. Are those consensually casual relationships disposable? I wonder what impact the LGBT Christian movement sought to have on them. Well, let’s look at Changing Attitudes’s Sexual Ethics: A report of the Lesbian and Gay Clergy Working Group:

      Thus while it is clear to us as LGBTs when we survey the gay scene, and indeed much of contemporary social life, that casual sex can often be addictive and destructive, we think it is important to remain open to the possibility that brief and loving sexual engagement between mature adults in special circumstances can be occasions of grace. Risky, but then as Paul Tillich said ‘A Christian is safest taking risks!’ p.10.

      Until then, it would appear from Changing Attitude’s stated ethics that those sexual engagements between James and 200 other mature adults offered the possibility of risky, ‘brief and loving’ occasions of grace…

      Yet, St. Paul says rhetorically: ‘What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?’

      By the lassiez-faire false gospel of grace through Grindr, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. No wonder most evangelicals are wary of giving LGBT pressure groups ‘safe space’. In less euphemistic terms, it could simply be called licence!

      • David, you’re just confirming my views here. You’re bringing up
        extraneous issues, in the most extreme terms possible, to avoid talking
        about how James’ ex-partner was treated. He doesn’t even have a name in
        this story; he’s entirely disposable. What might he think about
        Christians after having his engagement wrecked by them and then being
        treated as an unperson? I don’t think this is exactly good witness, is
        it?

        The “grace through Grindr” line is, again, rotten witness –
        you go out of your way to assume the worst both of gay people and those
        who disagree with your theology. You pull one quote out of a decade-old
        discussion report (always repudiated by CA England, which in any case
        hardly doesn’t comprise the entire LGBT Christian movement) and try and
        claim a small minority position represents a settled consensus, when you
        well know it doesn’t. And then you give it a misleading headline to
        make that view sound more extreme than it is.

        It would be like me
        claiming that you wanted to see gay people locked up for years because
        some conservatives do. And actually, it wouldn’t even be like that
        because that’s the position of a depressingly large number of
        conservative Christians, and it’s a poisition tolerated by even more.
        Even Peter defends Uganda’s right to lock gays up for 14 years, for
        example.

        If you do want to interrogate very promiscuous when he
        was young, and then settled down with someone and got engaged to him.
        Sounds just the same as the life pattern of most young heterosexuals to
        me – yes, including many young Evangelicals. But in any case, why is it
        any more relevant to his relationship with his ex-partner than it is to
        his relationship with his wife? Shouldn’t you be rejoicing that he
        matured out of promiscuity and was (had his relationship not been
        wrecked) going to covenant his life to someone faithfully?

        And one final thought, if you think I preach
        a laissez-faire Gospel, you’re more than welcome to
        ask anyone who knows me.

          • Peter, you’d need to ask CA but I certainly hope they WOULDN’T hide it.
            Christians are supposed to be truthful people and I don’t think it’s
            very ethical to pretend that things haven’t been said or done even if
            one now finds them embarrassing. It’s also pretty silly in the era of
            the Wayback Machine.

            I still haven’t heard a single conservative
            voice engage with the issue of the treatment of James’ ex-partner, so I
            shan’t be engaging in anything else on this thread unless I do.

            • I think it was perfectly acceptable for James to end his relationship seeing as he believed it was no longer moral. I guess it does raise the interesting question as to what if he had been in a civil-partnership / same-sex marriage? Would that change the morality of leaving a (perceived) sinful relationship?

              • I think I basically agree with you. I think this raises a whole host of undiscussed questions.

                I
                am very careful not to trample on people’s toes with this sort of
                decision, any more than I would with someone who finally confronted a
                gay sexuality they have been in denial about until some years into a
                heterosexual marriage. In both cases, the situation confronting the
                person seeking to end the relationship is agonising; however, their
                spouse/partner often ends up feeling brutalised and entirely contingent
                to the situation. I think anyone involved really should consider the
                obligations to the existing spouse or civil partner – and I don’t
                particularly mean the person whose understanding of
                their nature has changed, who often are bewildered. Those influencing them have
                serious responsibilities to consider. To add to the mix, divorce should
                never be an early resort for a Christian, and I think the ethical issues
                are idenitcal whether it’s a marriage or a civil partnership.

                I
                do think that some of the language used by conservatives is
                inappropriate in that context. E.g., the EA’s pastoral guidance
                specifically discusses the ethics of at what point, if any, it’s
                appropriate to try to break up the relationship of a same-sex couple
                who’ve started attending a church. I think the fairest assessment I
                could give of the guidance is that it doesn’t mandate that this happen
                but it assumes that it will in many cases; the impact on dependent
                children is discussed but hardly prioritised. Too often an instrumental
                view is taken of people as an obstacle to ‘seeing the light’. I don’t
                think taking an instrumental view of people is an option for Christians.

                • Gerry, you beat me to the “Someone in a marriage suddenly comes to term with their sexuality” situation as a comparison. I guess the one difference of course is that from the conservative perspective an other-sex marriage is a moral relationship (so should be maintained if at all possible) whereas a same-sex marriage is not a moral relationship and so therefore can be dissolved in order to achieve a “moral better”.

                  • A parallel I can think of is when somebody breaks up with a boyfriend/girlfriend who isn’t a believer because they decide it would be better in the long run not to marry that person. As Peter points out, this would not be considered appropriate if the two were married, so not and entirely similar situation. However, I know people who have felt let down by Christians who basically said ‘well done, you stood up for your faith!’ and then walked off not taking any time to listen or care about the pain that they’d just caused to themselves and another person. I think Gerry definitely has a point here.

        • A reference to James’ testimony of his earlier life is hardly extraneous. I’m not avoiding anything. James stated: ‘I terminated my relationship with my long-term partner to get a clean slate, and, acting on a friend’s advice, I went into therapy to address my commitment issues.

          So, in the narrative, he didn’t mention his ex-partner’s name, nor that of his therapist, nor a single memorable liaison with his 200 or so previous sexual partners. All I have done is to challenge your emphasis on one ‘casualty’ of James Parker’s decision, when it is clear that putting the first name of his ex-partner into the public domain might breach the right to privacy.

          His succinctness doesn’t necessarily make his ex-partner an ‘unperson’. It’s simply a personal narrative of his own journey that is wary of betraying confidences.

          You may also declare that the commissioned report was repudiated by CA England. That view doesn’t tally with the Radio 4 exchange between Chris Sugden and Colin Coward:

          Chris Sugden: Well, things have changed, Ed in the last ten, fifteen years. There’s been a more insistent approach by gay pressure groups to change the whole of society’s practice to heterosexual marriage, to normalise the interchangeability of gender and redefine marriage by making the multiple partner approach of many, not all but many gay people, the norm. Now within that I quite understand what Colin is saying about, he wants to and these people want to, eliminate the distinction between orientation and inclination and practice, but if we integrated it as Colin is suggesting and we took that to something like adultery or promiscuity …

          Colin Coward: Chris I am not …

          Edward Stourton: Hold on a second, Colin Coward…

          Colin Coward: Chris, I am not taking it to adultery or promiscuity. You are taking it there, I am not.

          Chris Sugden: Well, I want to hear you then say that there is a difference and you denounce those who in these pressure groups are saying they’re wanting to change the whole construction of marriage.

          Edward Stourton: Okay, you’ve got 30 seconds to say what you want to say, Colin Coward, because sadly we’re coming to end of our time.

          Colin Coward: I am not going to denounce anybody. I am simply going to repeat that society has accepted equality for lesbian and gay people. It is the church, a minority in the Church, who are opposing it, and that minority has to repent of its own homophobia and change.

          Colin Coward neglected a perfect opportunity for CA to repudiate those who ‘normalise the interchangeability of gender and redefine marriage by making the multiple partner approach of many, not all but many gay people, the norm’. The opportunity to denounce homophobia is rarely missed, while other LGBT activist groups like the Cutting Edge Consortium happily ‘explore’ polyamory at their 4th National Conference. Perhaps, it would be more engender trust for these groups to clarify their stance on scriptural principles (not just high-minded ideals) that they believe should be applicable to all sexual relationships.

          ‘It would be like me claiming that you wanted to see gay people locked up for years because some conservatives do. And actually, it wouldn’t even be like that because that’s the position of a depressingly large number of conservative Christians,

          Fortunately, I am on record both here and on TA denouncing the misogynistic criminalisation of female adultery and homophobic criminalisation of homosexual acts. It would be great to see CA distance itself from those pressure groups of which Chris Sugden spoke.

          ‘Shouldn’t you be rejoicing that he matured out of promiscuity and was (had his relationship not been wrecked) going to covenant his life to someone faithfully?’
          I rejoice that James’ journey returned him to the Genesis pattern of marriage that Christ endorsed. Even if OT variations were tolerated provisionally, Christ was clear in declaring in the NT: ‘it was not so from the beginning’.
          BTW, I didn’t accuse you of preaching a laissez-faire gospel. I did challenge your emphasis in questioning just one aspect of de-personalisation in James’ narrative.

  4. “If you want to comment, please try and avoid using the words “repressed”, “suppress” and “bisexual” if you’d be so kind.”
    Seems odd to outlaw such words when the first two are entirely relevant here for a man who has apparently recently resolved repressed feelings for male authority. I mean, I’m no psychologist but that seems to be what’s happened in Parker’s case so why not use those words to describe it?

    Your point, of course, stands for “bisexual”.

  5. I am sincerely happy to hear that James Parker now feels better ‘in his own skin’. To spend your life feeling uncomfortable in your own skin is a dismal and demoralising experience.

    It is always helpful and instructive to hear people’s personal experiences and I am always glad that Peter shares them on this blog. However, there are a thousand ‘James
    Parkers’ out there in our society and there are also a thousand ‘Andy Marshalls’
    (Andy was featured a few posts ago and is a university chaplain married to Mike), and a whole host of people in situations in between. It may be that Peter or another blogger decides to report on each individual case but this is most definitely a long-term project.

    Meanwhile, we might ask: how do we make our churches ‘safe space’ for both the James Parkers and the Andy Marshalls (and everyone in between) in order that everyone has equal
    access to come to faith? How do we support those members of our fellowships who struggle with our changing cultural situation? Could we encourage them to consider the ‘safe space’ issue by reporting on those stories of people who have moved from :

    1. a traditional (but exclusive) viewpoint to
    2. a (still) traditional but willing to adopt an appropriate Christian response to make church ‘safe space’ for those people who may become the James Parkers and Andy Marshalls in our own congregations?

    These are the people who quite firmly ‘drew the line’ but have found over time that God has gently taken the pencil out of their hands. How do we get the message out to our communities that our churches are going to try their best to be ‘safe space’ for everyone – and that we genuinely want to be non-discriminatory? How do we minimise the damage done by churches which have received a reputation (deserved or otherwise) for being homophobic and/or adhering to an ideology of heterosexual supremacy?

    But yes, I do think personal stories are profoundly influential and ‘humanise’ the issue. Kudos to Peter for making space for them on his blog.

    • Thank you Jane,

      I not only find personal stories interesting, but what is also fascinating is how the one person can apply utterly different critical analysis to two different testimonies, simply dependent on whether they agree with the testimony.

      • Thank you Peter
        I think you are right here and this is also an area in which we all need more self-examination – and after all, our storytellers are not witnesses for the prosecution or for the defence but people just living their lives. We journey with them wanting to see God at work in their lives as much as in our own.

  6. The cynical reactions of some commenters here and on the thread to the original International Business Times article mirrors that of the Pharisees in last week’s John 9 reading.

    Jesus had healed a man born blind and initially people first questioned whether he was truly born that way. They tried to undermine his testimony of change by challenging his stated identity. In essence, his testimony involved no more than admitting that Jesus to applied a mud paste to his eyes and obediently washing in the pool of Siloam: ‘“He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” (John 9:15)

    It was impossible for them to recognise Christ’s healing as creditable because it would invalidate their own committed rejection of Christ and his teachings.

    Their continued opposition was founded on piecemeal inferences from scripture, rather than the whole counsel of God. It was a process of induction that carefully excused Sabbath ritual necessities and protecting one’s means (recovery of livestock and providing them with water, replenishing liturgical bread and circumcision were okay). However, their induction prohibited gleaning ears of corn, carrying one’s bed and compassionate miraculous interventions.

    In his disagreements with the Pharisees, Christ constantly exposed the weakness of their selective self-serving scriptural induction that would contradict another part of scripture elsewhere. Contrary to a deduction from the 4th commandment, the faulty Pharisaic application of Corban could selfishly obstruct parental access to the financial relief that their children had a duty to provide. Even Christ’s argument for the resurrection was deduced as an inference from the divine declaration to the Israelites that He is (rather than was) the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

    Most pertinent to the wholesale prejudice against the validity of James’ testimony is Christ’s criticism of specifically where the Sadduccean error lay: Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God”

    • I fail to see that any of this can tell us anything whatever about the credibility or otherwise of the International Business Times article.

        • Are you a man who has an “innate” fear of other men? Are you throwing yourself wholeheartedly into a world of the feminine, and constantly rejecting your masculine identity? Are you unable to enjoy being a man, and do you regard having no taste for war films as indicating some sort of gender identity deficit? Do you believe that you will end up considering, and no doubt requesting, gender reassignment? If so, James Parker’s narrative may possibly have something to say to you. If, on the other hand, you are simply a normal homosexual man, it will have little or no relevance to you. Where Jesus’s healing of a blind man comes into this is an enigma too great for my understanding.

          • Perhaps, it’s too simple for you. James has, as bravely and honestly as anyone who’s ‘come out’, tried to articulate his journey in his own words.

            I don’t have to identify with his ‘innate’ fear, neither does my life have to resonate with his experience of rejecting his masculine identity.

            As much as the healing of the blind man, his story has something to say to me because it means that change, if I want it, may be difficult, but it is not a pipe dream, it is a distinct possibility.

            James wanted change and, thank God, it was not illegal for the therapist to respond with an effective remedy for his need.

            • When I said “you” in my previous post, I didn’t mean you personally. I meant anyone, and in particular any homosexual man, which obviously doesn’t include you. My point was that if his account of his fear of other men, his rejection of male identity etc. describes his problem, it wasn’t normal homosexuality but a problem that most gay men have never had.

              We may believe a narrative; we may accept it tentatively; we may treat it with scepticism; we may entirely disbelieve it; or we may feel that we are not adequately equipped to make any judgment about its credibility. Whatever, Jesus’s curing of a blind man gives us no guidance whatever on whether to believe James Parker’s narrative.

                • Well, yes, certainly you can say that if you like. Equally, you could postulate that it’s a problem that most straight men have and refuse to accept. Not saying that’s so, just simply pointing out the options. I see as little reason to believe it in the one case as in the other, but there’s nothing to stop us from dreaming up gratuitous hypotheses till the moon fails. Quod gratis asseritur gratis negatur. But on the other hand, as Herodotus noted, “He who carries back an explanation to what is imaginary cannot be refuted.”

              • Whatever, Jesus’s curing of a blind man gives us no guidance whatever on whether to believe James Parker’s narrative
                As I said, it was the motives of detractors that was targetted. To that issue, it speaks volumes.

  7. i’m pretty cynical, but then that’s because I think the real problem is the religion. Get rid of the religion and life looks very different – for me, far better!

    It didn’t take me all that long to see through and dump evangelical Christianity once I recognised its limitations and I now feel bemused that I could have ever believed in it at all – I find religion a fascinating topic, sociologically and in terms of its role, but for me, as someone who does happily identify as gay, it became decidedly unhelpful, at least in its conservative form.

  8. After six years in marriage with my husband with 3 kids, he suddenly started going out with other women and coming home late, each time i confronted him it turns out to be a fight and he always threatened to divorce me at all time, my marriage was gradually coming to an end. i tried all i could to stop him from this unruly attitude but all proved abortive, until i saw a post in the forum about a spell caster who helps people cast spell on marriage and relationship problems, at first i doubted it but decided to give it a try, when i contacted this Spell caster Dr. Dangogo via email, he helped me cast a spell and within 4 hours my husband came back apologizing for all he has done and promised never to do such again and today we are happily together again. Contact this Great spell caster for your marriage or relationship issues via this email; dr.dangogospell@gmail.com 0r call him +2348132176549

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