Dan

Vayri, i live in Toronto.. and yes, I've heard of AGLA, GALAS, and Q-Hye... There is a group called Queer-Hye here in Toronto, but I'm not sure how many people there are, and they don't have a website or anything like that... The number of Armenian people in Toronto is really low, and then number of gay Armenians would probably not be enough to have an organized group. i think we're all talking about majorities. true, there are positive Muslims, Catholics, Jews, and Blacks out there, and a lot of people find it very easy to come out, etc., but the majority of them don't. i don't know about elsewhere, but here in Toronto, the gay "village" being 80% chinese, 10% indian, and 10% white, black, etc., we don't see much racism from the white side. and no, i'm not saying this cos i'm white.. there is a sort of reverse racism.. i don't know, but that has been my experience. it seems to me that black people are full of more hatred than white people... yeah, but not in the Armenian church.. i mean, i don't care about whose church it is, if i'm gonna believe, i'm not gonna believe in the church, but still, religion is institutionalized, and sometimes we DO need something to cling to, and more often than not, the church lets us down. there is a church here in downtown toronto, and the priests are very queer positive. i've never taken the step to go there.. maybe i'm not ready yet. or maybe i'm just not religious and don't want to be..

Well, I was bored, and I thought about going back to my photo collection and found some photographs I had forgotten about... they brought back a lot of memories, life through war, what it's like, and what I remember of it. Well, my life was spent moving back and forth between England and Lebanon, as my dad was a soldier.. For those of you who don't know what was going on in Lebanon at the time - there was a civil war.. And so we moved there, and I attended an Armenian school... There is a pic of the kindergarten I attended in the album (link at the end of this post) - A friend of mine took those pics upon my request, and sent them to me this summer.. So yeah, I had a pretty unstable childhood, between moving back home and returning to Lebanon, but when I look back, it's as sweet as it would've been if it was just a normal childhood in England. The pictures of destroyed Beirut are still in my head.. The collapsed buildings, the shattered windows, the ruined homes, burnt cars... I remember running down the street with my mom and the bombs whistling in the air, the tank just behind us.. I remember not thinking, not asking any questions about where we were going, but just running in the direction my mother was pushing me.. And I remember the scary nights I spent in the basement of an old building, which was supposed to shelter us from the bombs. I remember seeing my mom crying.. I remember how my childhood was destroyed. The only times we were allowed to go out to play were when the bombs had stopped for a month, and there were no rumours about any upcoming bombings. What I don't remember is ever having had a day with the family, with my mom and dad together. A war that shattered an entire nation, broke thousands of hearts, and destroyed my family. Yet somewhere in my heart, I love this nation. I love the people for the resilience and strength. I love them for their patience, for their hospitability, for their hope. Yes, I love the people who killed my dad and traumatized my childhood. When I look at the post-war photographs, I can translate them into the buildings and places of that great war.. a great war indeed. for me.. for my mom. time stopped for us right there. I never knew my dad well enough, and even though I might've hated him for who he was, I wish I had been given the chance to meet him when I was older, when I could reason out, when I could talk... but no... the war took him away, and took my childhood too; only memories remain, and those memories are now nothing but old, forgotten postcards, thrown into one corner of my mind, and I wanted to revive them through this thread. if I am entitled to one thread on this forum, let it be this. As I take a stroll down the memory lane, I remember the day the war was over. I remember it clearly.. It was not a day of rejoice for us. it was not a day of rejoice for anyone. it was a day of thinking, crying, mourning, and remembering. and so we did exactly that. How my dad was shot and what exactly happened I have asked my mom to re-tell a million times.. but not that she knows much about it.. we are told he was suspected to be part of a militia group, and was shot and killed.. i wish i had known what group that was, and if there was any truth behind those claims... i wish i had known... i was watching a documentary a while back, about a woman who never knew her father, because he was killed in Vietnam when she was only a few months old.. her mother knew about where exactly her father had died. they traveled to Vietnam, and lighted a candle there.. I cried.. I cried because at least she had a sense of closure. I cried because I, too, wanted to know the spot at which my dad had been killed. There were accounts about his location when he was shot, but there are no witnesses who are alive at this point. none that I know of. All gone. Lost. and will I ever give up the fight? Will I let go? I don't know.. but it's hard.. it's hard.. it's hard to have lost so much for a nation that is not yours.. but I have learned the meaning of sacrifice. A very precious lesson indeed. Do I wish I could turn back the time and change things? Perhaps, but things happen for a reason, I'm sure.. Or maybe not. But even then, what's done is done, and I want to put an end to it. I have tried to do that more than once, in many ways, but I have come to realize that the best way to conquer it is to live it. So I have re-lived it one more time through this post. One last stroll through the memory lane. Closing it forever, and giving it to God, if there is any god out there. I may not have done a good job at describing what really went on over there and then, and I may have sounded really pathetic to you, but if I have a right to one rant thread, let it be this. A tribute to a great nation - a nation that has seen the depths of pain and hopelessness, and has recovered from it with all its strength. A nation that kept on hoping when there was no hope. Maybe now I can be like them. All I can do is aspire. I might never achieve, but I want to hope, and I want to live, forgive, and forget. http://gallery.cybertarp.com/thumbnails.php?album=1001

lol me too, Sip.

wow, anileve.. that was a good blow lol...

hahaha Sip, that was a good one.. that one doesn't apply to me though, cos i never do homework. lol

Sip, I agree with you, but not totally - there are chuches that accept gays and bless gay marriages.. so that is not a justification for not giving gay people their right to get married. if a specific church refuses to bless/conduct a gay marriage, they're free to refuse, but they should not prevent others who are positive about it to go ahead and support gay people.

JF, there are a lot of religious groups out there, some of which believe that all gays will go to hell, some of which say that Jesus is forgiving, but that homosexuality is still wrong, and some of which accept gays.. the bible is usually interpreted literally by all those groups, but the main argument that goes against them is that you can't interpret one verse literally and interpret the other one (stoning, etc.) metaphorically, which is what the Catholic church is doing. I am not religious and what I know from the bible may not be accurate, as it was quite a long time ago that I last took a christianity course at school, so I wouldn't try to quote from the bible, but i've talked with a few religious ppl from different "groups", and this is what I've understood... again, i may be wrong..

Hmmm.. It's hard to put it into words. I guess I'm just not attracted to women. I don't know.. I mean, I like women and all that, most of my friends are female, but I don't like them sexually.. He died when I was a kid.. Edit: Speaking of marriage and being gay and all that - I held a 6 month old baby the other day, and it was the best feeling in the world.. I can't imagine what it would be like to hold your own baby in your arms. I don't know if that will ever happen to me, but I'm sure that those who have had the opportunity to would say that it was just amazing.

Hey sev-mard. Thanks.. It's good to know that there are open-minded and positive people out there. It often helps, especially when we're alone out there.. however trivial saying "I'm supportive" may sound to people, it means a lot. I can safely say that a few supportive words have helped me A LOT through the struggle of being outed, and even in accepting myself for who I am. Strangers have helped me more than family and friends have through this struggle, and I am grateful for them and for people like you. Without them I wouldn't have been here right now.

lol. And I had no idea America-Hye was bi, until a coupla hrs ago. It's all good..

sev-mard, for me, it's a don't-ask-don't-tell thing.. My mom terrorized me into silence. My aunt is a total homophobe who tells me that all gay people should be burned.. she doesn't know I'm gay. She will never know. Not that I want to show my sexuality to everyone, but it's tough to have a relationship and come and go with no one suspecting, and that's why I almost always out myself to those who know me, in order to be at ease around them, or not be around them at all, whichever the case may be, depending on their reaction.. But it's different with family and close family friends. My mom and grandma know. My mom became a religious fanatic after she was told that I was gay... My grandma almost died of a heart attack. I was silenced after that, and I don't know how their reasoning works, but they think that if I don't talk about it, or if I don't go out with men, I'm not gay anymore... So I don't go out anymore, to satisfy my mom and grandma. One day I will leave home when I have the means to, but right now I am financially dependent on my mom... My stepdad, on the other hand, is totally cool with it, whereas my mom keeps threatening to kick me out if I "start again"... One of my relatives got married to a guy, and the guy left her cos it turned out he was pressured into marriage by his parents, as he was gay and his parents found out about it... and my mom has hated gay people ever since. It's impossible to tell Armenian friends. It's just something I can't even think about - they all have so many "expectations" of me. They've known me since I was a kid, or so they tell me, and they ask me all the time if I have a g/f, etc. and what am I supposed to tell them? That I'm gay? They would leave and never come back. Not that I care, but for my mom's sake, I can't do it. And sometimes it becomes an issue of personal safety as well - I'm on an Armenian basketball team, and if the guys find out, I'm dead meat... For me, nothing is worse than sitting in the subway train and all of a sudden hearing a coupla high school kids talking in Armenian about gays and saying how they're sick and calling them "fags"... Yeah, I'm proud of being Armenian, but I don't think there's a place for me in the Armenian community as a gay man, and I don't want to force myself on others - if they don't like who I am, it's fine, I could leave and not be part of their community.. Maybe there's something wrong with me, maybe that's why I don't go to the Armenian students' association at university, because I feel like I don't fit in.. Maybe.. I don't know.. I've never met any other gay Armenians, even though I'm sure they're somewhere out there.. I guess I have to be glad I'm not in Armenia where gay people are imprisoned or whatever, but my reality is mine and it's still painful, maybe not comparable to others' realities, but still...

lol good luck. heheh. I guess the whole purpose of the convention (if there were any such thing) is to relieve the pressure of gender repression through the boredom of creating cheesy lines and experimenting with ppl's reaction to them in their minds... then they release the creations to the general public and probably get paid for it by intelligence assessors and psychologists, who would use the data of how many men actually tried those lines, and how that is related to their intelligence.. lmao... ahhh... i'm bored.

*repeats the need for a wooing forum* <_<

-experimenting with the various methods of making a fool of oneself? -testing out the patience of the person to whom you said that? -a sentence construction practice? -playing out different scenarios of fantasies in your mind? I don't know.

wow... I'm not sure I would do that, but still, I think it's cool, and it's her choice to do what she wants.. Besides, if men have double affairs, it's usually more acceptable, but with women, it's not... and I don't like that.. hmm.. I agree with basically everything you said, THOTH. And I think the Armenian community needs to loosen up a bit w.r.t sex and relationships... I don't mean my grandma's generation, I mean the youth - a lot of them are closed-minded and seem to believe in arranged marriages or to be radically against interracial marriage.. But of course, there are others who are very open-minded about things like that.. but still..

And how can he prove that homosexuality is a choice? People who come up with such arguments are just ignorant IMO, not 'cos I'm gay and don't agree with them, but because they can't provide any proof whatsoever to base their arguments on, and still stubbornly insist that they are right. And how anyone can say that black rights rate higher than gay rights, I don't understand.. Rights are rights. It doesn't matter if it's a choice or if it can't be helped.. Who I want to get married to is no one's business, as long as I have the right to. It's not that black guy's business. And what HE does and who he gets married to is none of MY business. And I'm not saying that the church should be forced to marry me to another man. There are churches that do bless gay marriages, and I can go and get married there. No one is forcing anything on anyone. I just want to have the right to do whatever I want, even if I might not use that right. Same goes with black people, same goes with everyone else. That's why I take part in rallies against police brutality and racism. I am not black, and I can't really say I've been harassed due to racism. But I know that it's wrong to demand rights for minorities and then once one acquires those rights, stand up and talk against another minority group, using the freedom for which many gay people fought alongside one's ancestors..

what's wrong with starting a thread that might develop into a discussion on homosexuality? talking about it doesn't make you one, you know..

lol. very happy indeed.

Sip, I am talking about using programs like Autocad and HUGE rendering projects, not word processing with MS Office. word processing doesn't crash the computers on-campus... And what do you mean by incompatible? If a computer fails to render something because its graphics card is unreliable or not good enough, it would be the hardware's fault, rather than the software's... I mean, if Photoshop runs perfectly well on my Toshiba that has the same specifications as my friend's Dell, and having the exactly the same programs installed on it, no more and no less, what would explain the fact that Dell crashes every time? Not to mention, getting Dell's wireless to work for my friend's laptop took ages, and the computer networking services failed to do it... i had to work on it for hours in order to get it working. Same wireless network, different computer (my Toshiba), and it worked like magic the second i switched it on.. My friend got a new Dell Inspiron recently, and he too said that he can't seem to be able to do much without having to restart his computer at least a coupla times before he's finished with what he wants to do.. again, not talking about notepad or paint lol.. The old computers on-campus, which were replaced by the new Dells, were IBM, and they NEVER crashed. And they were ancient.

ok, but i disagree. we were talking about homosexuality w.r.t religion... anyhow............

well, i agree, and that is why U.$.A's justification for the war (besides the WMD issue) to liberate Iraqis is/was nothing but a joke and a way to deceive the world. if it were up to capitalists, we wouldn't have had the minor freedoms that allow us to go around our business every day. and look who;s talking about freedom and democracy now.. if iraqis wanted freedom from their dictator, they would've revolted a long time ago. like i said, all revolutions came from within, without any nation claiming that it was gonna help the poor oppressed people. it was the poor oppressed people who started those revolutions, and they won.

i thought the thread was relevant to the religion forum.......... the website help question was fit for the Help forum though... and this was moved?

Actually, following uploading the pics to that gallery, I was banned from the website: I got the following message: "You are currently banned from using this site." Nowhere in their terms of agreement do they say that pics of rallies are forbidden to be posted. Talking about freedom and democracy? Riiiight..

Her chest is too flat... or at least in that pic.. lol

Wouldn't that make them hypocrites? Hmmm, I mean, I haven't seen all that much racism against black people in the queer community, whereas the other way around, it's HUGE.. I believe the AIDS numbers are higher for the black communities, if you consider Africa as well... Surely all those Africans who have AIDS are not gay? I don't know - those who say that AIDS is gay people's punishment, that just doesn't work with the fact that more black people have it than gay people do.. that is the problem I have with Christianity and all other religions. The only reason I don't consider myself part of any organized religion is that I refuse to be part of an institution that tells me I'm going to hell because of who I love.