Posts made by Shami94

@vmalar It's a great movie but left me feeling unsatisfied.

One of my FBs who is very into gay themed movies made a list on IMDb that is supposed to be gay themed non-porn movies that have unsimulated gay male sex in them.

https://www.imdb.com/list/ls088513722/

1. Do you think Noel Alehandro movies fit this category? Aren't they porn movies?

2. What about Antonio da Silva / Bruce La Bruce?

Does anyone know any other movies that should be on the list ?

Thanks  :cheers:

https://anonfiles.com/D3ge5d98pc/EqdRQYjUUAAvh-g_jpeg

I am a member of the Treeleaf Sangha, an international online Sangha of the Soto Zen school of Buddhism based in Tsukuba, Japan. Today’s zazenkai (meditation meeting) was dedicated to our LGBTQI+ ancestors. I found Jundo’s talk very moving.

If you are interested, the recorded version is on YouTube here:

[https://youtu.be/3IOVX6f1kig]

You will need to fast forward to about 55:55 if you are only interested in the talk.

Dogen.

I am Buddhist.

For me they are strongly linked. I became interested in Buddhism in my teens because I realised I was gay and I initially tried to control myself to be not gay but then at a Buddhist meditation retreat I came to accept my sexuality. Then I was a follower of Burmese Therevada but now I am a member the Soto School of Zen Buddhism.

Buddhism is fundamentally about understanding the nature of self. As Dogen (the founder of the Soto school) most famously said:

"To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be verified by all things. To be verified by all things is to let the body and mind of the self and the body and mind of others drop off."

This is something that has to be experienced rather than understood but knowing this south asian, male, right-handed, introverted, gay, AI nerd body (including brain) is real and also indistinct from the incomprehensible flow of the universe means fully accepting the truth of my experience.

In my experience, religious people are on average less moral. Especially Christians.

I recommend that you ask a gay Muslim why your opinion about Islam is so wrong.

You could of course just Google what gay Muslims and gay Imams say.

Though I happened to mentioned something about this weird phenomenon of atheists and christians claiming to know more about Islam than Muslims do to a good friend who is both Muslim and gay. To summarise the answer, the Quran says God is merciful and God is compassionate a huge number of times, I think he said 150 or something. He said that overrides anything else and that there is nothing that clearly condemns homosexuality anyway.

And PS, I notice you've fallen for your own propaganda about the two 15 year old "gay" men supposedly hanged in Iran for being gay. They were actually convicted or raping a 10 year old boy and it was never established that they were gay.

https://76crimes.com/2019/06/13/iran-defends-harsh-laws-but-does-it-execute-men-for-homosexuality/

Also, giving the example of ISIS (an organisation who's highly heterodox interpretations of that Quran were condemned by nearly every Islamic scholar and leader in the world and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims), executing gay MUSLIMS, doesn't really help your argument does it.

I will say it again.

There are thousands of gay Muslims. There are gay friendly mosques. There are queer Muslim support and activist groups. Islam has a long history of tolerance of homosexuality before political changes in the late 20th century. These are undeniable facts.

That you can't be gay and Muslim is an opinion made clearly false by these facts.

Continuing to hold an opinion that is contradicted by facts is insanity, but all too common among conservatives. After all, many still believe things like Obama is a Muslim and that Japan applies a "bowling ball" test to American car imports.

After all, isn't everyone entitled to their own opinion? Aren't people entitled to their opinions that 1 + 1 = 346, the best place to grown pineapples is Antarctica and the moon is made of margarine?

"You can't be gay and Muslim" is a belief or an opinion.

"There are thousands of gay Muslims" is a fact.

Facts falsify opinions in the real world.

I wonder how many Americans when they hear Fox News weather forecast that it is not going to rain walk around outside soaked to the skin in the rain saying "It can't be raining! It can't be raining!".

Sane people when faced with facts that contradict their opinions realise that there is something wrong with their opinion.

I know it is out of fashion in the new world of reactionary populist conservatives, but facts outweigh opinions. The social media mantra is "everyone has a right to their own opinions", but not all opinions have the same weight. Some opinions are supported by facts and some are falsified by them. Some opinions are wrong. People do not have a right to hold an opinion that is falsified by the facts.

The opinion that it is raining outside now does not have the same weight as the opinion that it isn't. Depending on the facts, one of these is wrong. The other is right. So let's weight the apparently majority opinion on this thread against some facts:

OPINION

“You can’t be gay and be a Muslim”.

FACTS

1. There are thousands, probably millions of gay Muslims. I know a few of them personally.
2. There are gay friendly mosques in France, Canada, USA, Australia etc..
3. Recently gay couples have been married in mosques.
4. Sydney has a “Queer Muslims” group. I saw their stall at the Mardi Gras fair day last weekend. I know many other countries have similar groups.
5. Until very recently (late 1970s), in Muslim countries that do not have a legacy of European colonial laws, homosexuality was not criminalised. Homosexuality was explicitly legalised in the Ottoman Empire (including most of the Middle East) in the 19th century, long before many Western countries. In Iran it was never illegal until 1979. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, homosexuality has never been illegal until very recently where it was outlawed in two provinces for Muslim residents of those provinces only.
6. European gay men used to migrate to North Africa (mainly Morocco) and the Middle East or the Greek Islands under Ottoman rule to escape persecution and stigma. e.g. https://www.gaytorrent.ru/details.php?returnto=%2Fmytorrents.php&id=1d2499d5cba28cbab9f5b89e8d356c2c02d21710dd948dad
7. There are very many examples of explicit homoeroticism in Islamic Art and literature.
8. There are many examples of Islamic rulers who were homosexual. One of the rulers of Cordoba had a male harem. Another (maybe the same one) had his wife cut her hair and dress as a man to be more pleasing to him. The first Mughal emperor Babur wrote in his memoir of his infatuation with a young man in his youth and his refusal to sleep with the wives that had been arranged for him because of his love for the young man.
9. In the majority of countries (including Muslim countries) where homosexuality is still illegal, the laws derive from inherited colonial European criminal codes that conservative societies have in many cases failed to reform, not from Islamic law. e.g. Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, India (until recently), and many African countries inherited anti-sodomy laws from the British criminal code.

So clearly, the opinion “You can’t be gay and be a Muslim” is falsified by the facts. The opinion is wrong.

I'm a Buddhist and gay. I was raised as a Hindu but I started practicing Buddhism in my high school years (in India). I have practiced in two traditions, Burmese Theravada and now Japanese Zen. I live in Australia now.

I have never heard a Buddhist teacher say anything against gay people. In fact, when I went on a Vipassana meditation retreat in my late teens, one of the main reasons I went was to try to "control" my sexuality. I had not really come to terms with being gay, but ironically during that retreat, I did finally accept myself. It was a very emotional time for me and I had private teaching sessions with the Burmese monk leading the retreat. I was very open with him and told him everything I was going through. He was completely accepting and didn't seem surprised at all when I told him I was gay. He seemed to think it was completely normal. He just told me how to let go of negative ideas about myself. He was actually the first person I told I was gay. (Sort of. I'd already had casual sex with guys so I guess they knew).

The Buddhism I know from Burmese Vipassana to Japanese Zen is very meditation focussed. It isn't doctrinal or belief based. For someone external to try to tell me that being gay is bad would make absolutely no sense. What I experience here and now in my mediation and in my daily life is the primary source of truth. Not what a teacher says or certainly not what a book says. There is no higher authority than the truth of your own experience in Buddhism.

This brown skinned gay boy sitting here now typing on my laptop is Buddha too. This is Nirmanakaya Buddha.

Today I went with some friends to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival Fair Day. In the section were religious groups have their stalls, I noticed the Sydney Queer Muslims stall.

I wasn't surprised that there was no long queue of Gay Christians and Atheists waiting to explain to them how they don't understand their own religion and that Gay Christians and Atheists know more about Islam that Gay Muslims do, because such people only exist in social media echo chambers, not in the real world.

Yes, religion is totally made up, obviously.

Not all religions are theistic, depend on a belief in the supernatural or require any beliefs at all (for example Zen Buddhism) so you can be religious and be an atheist.

Religion is essentially psychotherapy. Religious beliefs are psychotherapeutically useful fictions (useful bullshit). Their usefulness does not depend on them being logical, consistent or "true". Meditation, drugs or counselling by a psychologist are more effective.

Most of the literature, art, plays, movies ever made are depict something that is "made up" i.e. fictional. Many people are inspired by the story of Luke Skywalker and the concept of The Force but very few of them think that the story is non-fiction. Something doesn't have to be true to be useful. Not everything made up is bullshit.

The theories of science are similarly useful fictions. They are made up by scientists and mathematicians and tested against facts. If they explain existing facts then they are useful. If they predict future facts they are even more useful. If they are falsified by facts they are modified or discarded. They are never true.

I don't believe there is a god or there is a supernatural because those beliefs are useless to me. I have no problem if someone else finds those beliefs useful to them as long as they don't think the beliefs that they chose authorise them to affect the lives of people who haven't made the same choice. Historically there is only one religion that assumes that authorisation, and it isn't Islam.

@raphjd:

Believers will always use mental gymnastics to justify their position on their religious beliefs.

"I only eat halal food because that's what the quran tells me to do."  and the same person "Fuck what the quran says, I want cock up my ass".

"The quran is the perfect word of god." and the same person "Fuck what the quran says, I want cock wrapped in bacon shoved up my ass."

And? Whoever said religious faith is rational and consistent? In fact the famous Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas (the author of the five proofs of god that Richard Dawkins dismally failed to understand let alone refute in his God Delusion book) said that if people were forced to believe because of reason, then they would not be saved because they hadn't made the choice. An Islamic philosopher who's name escapes me at the moment said about the same thing.

If you believe in the kind of god Christio-Muslims believe in, it is not subject to reason. Strangely, many pseudo-atheists remain embedded in Western Christian culture and so believe that an idea based on facts and reason can itself be a truth. Presumably these ideas/truths float around in the universal supernatural mind (but don't mention the word "god").

Of course ideas only exist in one place that we know of in the entire universe; human minds. Only facts (primarily phenomenological facts) are truths.

Interesting. An Atheists making judgements about who is and who isn't a "shitty" Muslim based on his own religious beliefs about the importance of religious texts.

Yes, Buddhism has a huge volume of scriptures but none of them define Buddhism, though I guess you as a non-Buddhist are going to tell me as a Buddhist about my own religion. Not surprising since you seem to think yourself qualified to teach gay Muslims about Islam.

https://www.newsweek.com/muslim-white-evangelical-gay-marriage-907627

Yes, of course religion is made up. I already said that religion is a cultural phenomenon and that "sacred texts" as cultural artefacts. No intelligent person would seriously believe otherwise. It is strange that you seem to have doubts.

Religious beliefs change every few decades, even more frequently now. Many religious beliefs that have been falsified by science have dropped out of fashion. Liberation theology, evangelical prosperity theology and the psychotic interpretations of the Quran that ISIS/DAESH (/CIA/MOSAD) have been pushing are new and have not existed previously in those religions.

I personally have no use for the religious beliefs of Christio-Islam and I suspect you don't either. The thing that is most strange about this thread is that the religious belief that is most obviously false, that is most obviously inconsistent, that is unique to only Protestant Christianity until very recently, that you yourself have given examples of as being false, is the belief you hold onto most strongly. That is that religions are defined by sacred texts.

Of course you are going to have a hard time holding onto that for Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism, Shinto etc. etc. etc. for what sacred text do you suggest defines them?

This topic basically says, "Being Gay is inconsistent with being Muslim because the Quran condemns anal sex between men" despite the fact that their are millions of religious gay muslims, that Islamic literature and art have many examples of homoeroticism and that until very very recently the Islamic world has been more tolerant of homosexual relationships than the West. These are the facts only contradicted by your deep devotion to the obviously false belief that people's religion is defined by what is written in books.

You are still obsessed with the protestant Christian notion that religions are defined by "Holy Texts".

You do realise that Christianity existed before the New Testament did?

You observe that Christians "Cherry Pick" from the OT and the NT and Muslims basically ignore the Quran, but you don't get that YOUR understanding of the relationship between religion and "holy texts" is wrong, not their's?

As I said earlier, one of the weirdest things you find on social media is "atheists" insisting that Christians and Muslims be religious fundamentalists. In other words, atheists who have a purely fundamentalist (mis-)understanding of Religion.

At most, a literal interpretation of the Quran (and the Bible) only condemns anal sex between men. However:

1. Girls are publicly caned in Malaysia for kissing in public (not men and not having anal sex).
2. Men are arrested and imprisoned in Egypt for dancing together at a party on a boat (not having anal sex).
3. A boy is expelled from school in the USA for wanting to bring his boyfriend to the school prom (not wanting to have anal with his boyfriend at the school prom).
4. A B&B in the USA refuses to honour a booking made by two men (to stay in a room, not a booking to have anal sex) because it is against their "Christian Values".

If religion is based on "holy texts" as you insist, how do you explain this discrepancy?

Religion is a social phenomenon learned within social groups. It is NOT defined by what is written in religious texts. Religious texts are cultural artefacts. They (and their interpretation) are the product of religion, not the other way around.

You don't see the irony of you, an atheist, telling Muslims how they should interpret their religious texts?

You often see the argument on social media:

Christian: Quote from Proverbs, quote from Genesis, quote from Job, quote from Samuel.

Atheist: But the old testament also says your should not cut your hair and not wear clothes made from more than one kind of thread.

Christian: Well Jesus came to give us a new covenant. The Old Testament isn't relevant anymore.

Atheist: But you were just quoting from the Old Testament!

Christian: Ummmmm.

Both sides in this discussion have got it wrong. Christianity is NOT defined by the Bible. It has not been learnt by reading the Bible. It has been learnt within a family and a social group (the church). The problem in Christianity (and Christian influenced culture including the atheists) that because of the reformation, people think that a religion IS defined by a text, creating this cognitive confusion.

This is even less true of Islam and other religions. For most of the history of Islam (and of Christianity), the Quran and the Bible were not even translated into languages that people could understand.

I know many gay Muslims, mainly from India, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Malaysia. I know the Middle-East is different, but most Muslims don't live in the Middle-East. They live in South and South-East Asia. I have seen two gay men dressed in Desi drag (Saris, Indian Jewellery, wigs, makeup) kneeling on floor doing their prayers before going out to the Taxi Club in Sydney to pick up Lebanese men (who apparently like that kind of thing).

I have been in a gay night club in Dacca during Ramadan where they have suddenly turned off the very loud music because of the last call to prayer and then a lot of the men there knelt down to pray.