From Reddit where the original letter is posted:
“James: This is a difficult but necessary letter to write. I hope your telephone call was not to receive my blessing for the degrading of your lifestyle. I have fond memories of our times together, but that is all in the past. Don’t expect any further conversations With me. No communications at all. I will not come to visit, nor do I want you in my house. You’ve made your choice though Wrong it may be. God did not intend for this unnatural lifestyle. If you choose not to attend my funeral, my friends and family will understand. Have a good birthday and good life. No present exchanges will be accepted. Goodbye, Dad.”
Comments
21 Comments so far. Leave a comment below.People who use God to justify their bigotry should be sterilized and locked away forever.
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There’s a response on that thread from a much better father if anyone needs their faith in humanity restored.
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Nice grammar Dad. Wow,
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This was a comment a bit farther down the page on the reddit page. The person has a gift.
“In the big funeral parlor, there was a bigot in a box. And a protest sign saying, “God Hates Cocks”. And there were three ugly hags, railing against fags. There was a big plate of cold cuts, and a ton of religious nuts. And flowers, and cowards, and a touch of white power.
Goodbye, bigot. Goodbye hate pouring like water from a spigot. Goodbye Fred. Glad you’re dead. Goodbye picket lines, and goodbye signs. Goodbye, nobody. Goodbye, loon.”
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Heartbreaking. No loving god could want this.
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“You may even decide, after much prayer, to enter into a committed relationship with a member of the same, um, same genital-group.
“And if you do, and you feel you can do nothing about it, and you’ve been to a psychiatrist, and you’ve had aversion therapy and you’ve tried tying a metal winch to your private parts, and, um, and you still feel these tendencies, then I’m afraid it means that…
“Well. God just wants you to have a rotten life.
“God’s like that.
“He hates poofs.”
Rowan Atkinson (Gay Christians, Not The Nine O’Clock News)
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To me, the saddest thing about life is knowing some day I won’t be with my kids. Maybe that’s a little selfish, but my kids are my heroes. Loving them is one of the very few things I can do without conditions.
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There are parents in this world whose children have died and would give anything and everything to have them back. To toss away a relationship with a wonderful, living, breathing son is a blatant disregard for what is truly precious in our short lifetimes.
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Made me think of Heathers, and Jason Dean’s question, ‘How do you think he’d react to a son who had a limp wrist with a pulse?’
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What a piece of shit. I’d attend the guy’s funeral just so I could piss into his open grave.
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He’ll regret that in years to come. Not mention all the awkward conversations when people ask about his son and he has to either admit that (gasp!) he has a homosexual in the family or that he disowned his son. I wonder how the kid’s mother feels about it if she’s still around.
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first read the caption as drowning… though not far off from what happened…
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James is much better off being separated from this piece of trash.
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I don’t accept black people. I think they are not pure and should stay segregated like the bible says they should. If god really wanted black people then he would have made Adam and Eve black. Even though there is no scientific evidence to base my beliefs on, I think being black should be made illegal because they can be harmful and corrupt my kids minds.
Now, replace the word “Black People” with “Gay” and listen to how fucking stupid you people sound.
Source: http://9gag.com/gag/4956167
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The saddest part is the father; with his overwhelming self-loathing and low sense of self worth projected outward. His son clearly knows who he is and is ok with it. The father is missing out, and as a father, that breaks my heart. The son I’m sure is strong, and will be hurt, but move forward. The father will remain frozen in time, like a tree in the desert; its only a matter of time. Alone in his island of despair. I don’t feel anger or hatred towards this man, only pity.
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Hey! No sweating over birthday, Father’s Day or Christmas gifts! It’s a net plus!
All right. Being somewhat facetious there. This has to hurt, to stun even, and maybe one does have to find these little positives just to keep sanity together. Can’t imagine myself in the shoes of the recipient of the letter.
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Considering that Christians are expecting to live forever (a rather significant prize for following their religion), I’m never suprised at their behavior regarding “threats” to that notion, since even I would react defensively if my lotto winnings were in jeopardy.
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I find this a sad situation. I can see why the son is devastated (I assume) and why he’s made the letter public but I am also trying to empathise with the Father even though I have no agreement with his beliefs.
All of the ‘how can any father blah blah blah’ kneejerks to this are about forgetting that for people who have faith and a belief system that no matter how it looks from the outside, that is the way that they live their lives and the overarching unconditional love that they have is for a God that they have an overwhelming faith is the creator and who’s teaching, in what ever nit-pickable form, it comes in is the set of rules that they live their lives by.
There is an irony in saying ‘well they should just not feel that way and not believe in those things and not act like that’ in a discussion about sexuality, something that picks us, we don’t pick it.
I don’t see this father as some twisted redneck but as a father conflicted by what he believes to be right and for the sake of his soul and the soul of his son, has to, with regret disowned him.
It’s incredibly harsh but it’s an ultimate test of how he inerprets his faith. He’s not picking and chosing when he obeys those rules, he’s not agreeing to them but then trumping them with his personal need to keep a relationship with his son but my guess is that the test will stay with him for the rest of his life and the sorrow involved in making the decision.
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Not a case where “do what Jesus would do” would be helpful. After all this man’s god is willing to condemn all of his ‘children’ to an eternity of flames not for being born homosexual but simply for failing to praise him enough. Now that is an f’d up father.
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On the one hand I never understand the arguement that imposes goodness on a deity. The whole idea of being omnipotent is that you are no more answerable to the people that you have made than a ten year old boy is to the hamster he owns and maltreats.
I do have a lot of dificulty with that ‘end of the Jack Chick comics, you can butcher all the people you want or live your life as a good person and it doesn’t matter as long as you renounce evil and accept God before you die as though you can keep a little card and say the words just in the nick of time.’ Of all the conveniently human rules of christianity (the ones that keep order) this seems the most contrived. We’ll see.
The strength of character question is a bit abstract and I’m sure the interpretation is largely to do with sympathy or not for the person in the example.
Imagine, you live your life as a civil rights advocate, you have a family and bring your children up believing in equality. your eldest son, who is 20 comes home one day and announces that he is a white supremicist, he has a swastika tatooed on his forehead and guess which word he likes saying a lot.
You have a 12 year old daughter and an 8 year old son who you don’t want to be exposed to this kind of ideology plus it disgusts you to the core that a child that you have brought up feels this way about people. But he’s your son.
To me strength of character is saying he can’t live with you any more rather than deciding that maaaaaaybe it’s OK to have a white supremecist living in the house, which would be changing your whole philosophy because of emotional considerations.
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Gotta disagree on that one. It takes a certain amount of mental courage to reevaluate strongly held beliefs in this kind of scenario. The dad’s inability to do that shows his weakness of character. Thoughtlessly holding to a belief as it destroys part of your life is the easy way out, mentally speaking, and it’s absolutely worthy of me looking down on.
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