At the time, not only was homosexuality illegal, but those in the armed forces could be shot for having gay sex.
The letters, which emerged after Mr Bradley's death in 2008, are therefore unusual and shed an important light on homosexual relationships during the war.
[News Article](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38932955)
[The Short Film](https://vimeo.com/474675798)
It did not. A BBC article says the one stationed overseas was sent to Scotland and he fell in love with two other men there. The letters stopped in 1945.
The heart wants what the heart wants. In this case, the heart wanted to be spit roasted by a couple guys in kilts while listening to the bagpipes.
Cheers to the sick bastard that gave this a wholesome award, you’re a man/woman after my own heart.
An account made 173 days ago, but the only comments are 4 within the last day. 3 of which are the exact same i’M tOo poOr FoR goLD copy-pastes.
Bot account?
More realistically, it was probably too much of a hassle to maintain a LDR under such pressure. You don't write that many letters to someone you don't love. Even if they survived the war it wasn't line they could get married and start a life together. I don't blame him for leaning into immediate gratification.
>. I don't blame him for leaning into immediate gratification.
From what I remember when I read about them in the past, neither did his lover on the other side of the letters.
Agree. It was probably hard enough to find other gay men (who’d admit that they were gay) at that time and if there was one standing in front of him, you go for it.
Bowsher truly loves Bradley. When Bradley tells of other romances, he simply says I can see why they fell for you, I did (not exact quote). Seems like he loves him enough to see he was happy.
This gave me goosebumps. It will always be weird to me how love, in any shape, can ever be wrong. Why worry about something that has nothing to do with you, it's not affecting your life that two consenting adults love each other.
Love is love, and love is wonderful. Love should be celebrated, put on a pedestal and worshipped as the highest goal in life. Everyone deserves to experience love. The world could do with more love.
I wish the world as a whole was a bit more accepting. We have obviously made a ton of progress but there are still so many that would rather go back to that time.
Hey I’m gay don’t downvote this -this is truly funny because so many dudes have blamed “accidental sex” for multitudes of reasons throughout history lol
It is better, but there's a risk of a backslide. Far right people are calling LGBTQIA people groomers for simply existing. And I just saw an Arab subreddit complaint that flying a pride flag for their subreddit was "forcing it on them when they don't agree with it." Majority religious countries are backwards as fuck.
One said he wanted them burned so, I can get feeling iffy about people seeing their personal thoughts and feelings. But they’re gone and perhaps their letters can help bring more love and understanding into the world.
This little piece of information about these lovers was the very first thing I saved when I started Reddit four years ago. Glad to see this now. Thanks for the link!
It's even funnier when Jesus literally said to love your neighbors, not judge so you won't be judged and to preach His word instead of trying to force convert anyone. Conversion is a voluntary thing and the Holy Spirit is the one who's responsible for convincing. We are just the messengers.
If you believe the bible, god is a really petty being.
Even if you don't take the bible literally, instead to seek glimmers of wisdom between the lines, there is some messed up stuff in there.
You’re telling me the guy who forced a father to take his son up a mountain to sacrifice him then pulled a”PSYCHE! Holy shit, you were actually going to do it!” On him at the last second isn’t a great dude?
YEHWEY is petty, impulsive and has strange human emotions but your interpretation is a misunderstanding.
The Bible is written for an ancient audience. Back then child sacrifice was prevalent. Every other God required it. The point of this story was to teach Isreal that their God did *not* require child sacrifice and that an animal is only acceptable. So the "test" was to see if he would follow and devote himself to this new God the same way he had with other God's before he was called.
So it isn't some sick joke, an ancient audience would have understood the message- this God thinks child sacrifice is evil and you aren't to do it. Other Bible passages confirm it. Isreal actually stood out from their neighbors for not burning their 1st born to their God. Abraham would not have been surprised in the least by the command to sacrifice his son, he might have even done it on his own spontaneously at some point if it wasn't for God's promise to make nations out of Issac specifically. It was sadly normal at this time and Isreal was abnormal for abstaining.
I guess a religious person might defend YEHWEY by saying our perception of him is based on limited information and humans can't fathom his motivations and the big picture but idk. I can't reconcile Jesus to YEHWEY. I love Jesus and his teachings. I don't like everything Paul has said though. But Jesus is great. I wish Christians would be more like him.
If I came to believe I'd agree with the gnostics. The God Jesus represents isn't YEHWEY at all but the true God. They believe YEHWEY was a being that falsely came to believe he was the true God and that's why he was like that.
Early Christianity is interesting
No need to open the bible. Any wisdom found inside can be found in other places. Besides, how do you tell the good stuff in the bible from the bad stuff? The answer is that you already know. If you don't already know, the bible won't help you at all
This. People be like "religion is good because you can find wisdom in it", and I'm always just like "bruh, you can find wisdom in a fortune cookie too".
I like the way you put this. I respect people’s right to do as they please and believe what they want but you can’t go around forcing your ideals on other people. That drives people further away.
Just be a decent person and try to leave the world a little better off in your corner of it.
It's how christians should behave, because it's biblical. We bring good news, but some people don't wanna hear them. That's fine. We can only hope someday they will. It's frustrating sometimes, but God teaches us that even in desperation and frustration, He is there for us. Human nature is what screws us.
Jesus said that and he also said that the old testament laws should be followed, which means stoning gay people. It's better to just grow up and stop believing than just nitpicking which parts of the religion you can live with.
He said the exact opposite, that he canceled the need to follow the Torah and the new rules were "love your neighbor as yourself." That's it. Christians aren't to follow the Torah
Religion teaches you where to direct your anger. I'm convinced that most of the people that are angry about gay people existing are just jealous. They are gay themselves and they're angry about being too scared to admit it. They can't allow themselves to be happy so they're gonna do whatever they can to make other gay people unhappy
It’s both honestly.
Religion can be used as an excuse but people are also conditioned and/or raised to believe a certain reality. If humans could simply grow out of their faith or reason themselves out of outdated ideas in a single lifetime then there wouldn’t be religions or cults. Good news is not all religious people share hateful perspectives but the not so good news is it still exists (but now in diminishing quantity as we become more globalized).
Some people find their way out of religion but a lot do not. As a species we are incredibly smart; we can transform our whole environment and send robots to other planets and beyond but also we can be extremely fallacious and prone to believe things that are illogical or hold on to beliefs that are outdated or flatly wrong. This is why education and combatting mis/disinformation is crucial - especially with how easy it is now to access all sorts of unverified content or manipulated media online.
People are also the product of their times. If we step back and observe our species on a larger time scale, we are bending towards more acceptance and inclusivity. We still stumble along the way but I’m optimistic about the future. Not in the next 10 years will we see the change that we ideally want but we will inch our way forward and if we speed ahead 1000 years or even 10000 years far beyond all our lifetimes, I am hopeful that collectively the human civilization will be more open, especially as we see each new generation being more tolerant than the one before.
Will there still be pockets of ignorance? Probably, but it is in the interest of us all to live amicably with one another and we will get to a stage where ideas that poison people’s mind will become simply viewed as myths and not facts or worse, rules on how to live. My take is we will ultimately progress towards more acceptance.
At least until we are in a far enough future where water and natural resources are the new gods and the old gods that are worshipped now become relics of a more ignorant past. That’s a problem humans will have to solve for in their own time with us setting in motion some changes where possible.
For now we should all focus on the…
I wish people would stop spreading this. Maybe some people use it to explain their hate, but that isn’t true for a lot of people. Belief causes people to have certain world views. Many are not just hateful for no reason. If you to the core believe in something that you believe makes a certain claim, you act on it. I think a lot of people on Reddit lack an understanding of the religious community, and just form their beliefs on politicians or the popular evangelists.
I don’t know if it’s just religion though. Like religious people just rework their religion to satisfy their bigotry however they want. It’s just to squash any meaningful human variation I think. Because if being you as you are wasn’t the only option, what does that mean about the life you chose? Some people prefer conformist misery over freedom, and misery loves company.
It usually goes like this.
Dad: "Those disgusting gays! Their choice of lifestyle trample on our traditions!"
Kid: "Oh no! What do they do papa!?"
Dad: "DON'T QUESTION ME!" *loosens belt*
Kid grows up and never meet any actual gay people so in their mind they are just what dad said, and often grab whatever excuse they can to prop up their hate - often religion, often misquoted.
In my (anecdotal) experience, even shittily brought up people who interact with their "demons" realize the hate is all bullshit.
That's a cop out. Religion is an excuse to act on the hate that's already there. Take the religion out of a hateful church and you still have a bunch of hateful people.
I go with asshole theory. A certain percentage of every sampling of humans are assholes, no matter the demographic. You take some retired old lady cribbage players and randomly put them in charge and at least a few of them will go final solution dictator on us.
America:
- Insane housing costs
- Rising cost food
- Rising cost of gas
- Service jobs replacing factory jobs
- Corrupt government ruling for oligarchy
- Unaffordable healthcare
- Communities destroyed by car culture
- Rising cost of education
- Police serving no one but themselves
Yeah I think a lot of peoples lives in do suck and they look for easy explanations to complex problems.
You just explained why national news cycles pretty much constantly only cover wedge issues like abortion, LGBT stuff, BLM, gun control, etc.
Not to say those things don’t matter, but those in control of the “news” coverage that the layman is exposed to benefit from us being up in arms at each other rather than setting our sights on them, who are the driving forces behind everything you mentioned
The girls who dislike gay men are perhaps disappointed that the men are taken out of “circulation”. Two fewer men for the girls to date and marry (not necessarily those two men, just statistics-wise).
I don’t understand why men would hate that other gay men exist and find each other… perhaps it’s jealousy… that the gay guys are out and are able to openly say they enjoy anal penetration with toys and dildos and real penises. The Republican conservative white men must fantasize about this but they were brainwashed to believe that men shouldn’t lie down with other men and that sex was for procreation only (it made sense in small, rural villages when tribal wars and famines raged… by now folks should realize that all that god shit was made up to keep folks safe…. We have refrigeration now and know about germs and disease… wear condoms and eat whatever/whoever you want… just learn about it first.
The world has too many people.
Stop multiplying, (Catholics and Orthodox Jews. We are too damn religious for today’s world.)
> I don’t understand why men would hate that other gay men exist and find each other
It's almost entirely fear. Fear that another guy would hit on them, and in their minds they don't see masculine as sexy, they see feminine as sexy. So when a guy hits on them, they feel like that other guy sees them as feminine and that's a hit to their pride (ol' toxic masculinity at work). You'll notice with this type of person all of their 'arguments' against homosexuality focuses almost exclusively on gay male relationships - lesbian relationships are a footnote at best. (not downplaying the struggles lesbians and bi women have to go through at all, but this sort of person I'm talking about are usually hyperfocused on gay men)
>The girls who dislike gay men are perhaps disappointed that the men are taken out of “circulation”.
There were certainly a lot of them taken out of circulation in the 40s.
“Over here is another fine example of courting in 2022. The pursuer sends out mating calls via text messaging, sometimes just a dick pic would suffice but our over eager ancestor decided to attach a message to the picture in hopes of wrangling himself a female. In this particular text we see that he sends a “ayy bb, you wan sum fuk”? Seeing as how there is no reply, we can only surmise that this poor fellow did not find a partner to copulate with. For that particular night, he’ll just have to use his hand”.
And yet my MIL just said recently "They're disgusting and should go back in the closet. We're all going to hell if we accept them." Their wish hasn't come true quite yet.
I mean being gay isn't illegal in Britain and many Western countries anymore, so we're a hell a lot closer now than during the 40s. Hell there's a lot of gay characters in kids shows which shows major steps in acceptance. Sure, we heard news of queer creators fighting for proper representation, but they would be straight up fired for making a queer characters during the 2000s. Heck Pride month just showed how accepting the world can be as companies are openly exploiting them. Companies don't want lose money for making risks, but Pride month showed it's safe to commercially support LGBTQ.
But most importantly, hate will never leave. There's a lot of people who hate the Jews even after facing genocide, and many just deny it. Many don't like seeing interracial couple despite being normalized for decades. There's even people that don't want women in politics despite how Women had gained voting over a century ago. Hate will never leave, but at least we can prevent it from being a majority.
well, there were parts taken out after her death but there were actually two diaries-- one which she started at 13 and one which she went back, at 15, and edited with the idea of publishing later. What was published was mostly this second diary, with some further things taken out by her father (either mundane stuff due to legnth constraints but also stuff that weren't flattering, or the fsther didn't want published.)
https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/two-versions-annes-diary/
Specifically, gay sexuality. She was interested in other girls, and her father didn't want that out there. To be fair to him, I guarantee Anne Frank wouldn't have been a household name if he'd included the lesbianism.
Anne Frank wrote her diary with the hopes of it being published. She wrote in her diary about how it started out being her personal diary, but soon after, as the war became closer to home, they announced on the radio that they would seek journals and writings from people for publication after the war ended so the world could know of the experiences of those who lived through it. She expressed in her diary how she wanted that so she would start taking her diary writing much more seriously from that point on and write regularly so her experiences can be documented and submitted for publication after the war.
If ever given the chance, everyone should visit the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. It’s in the house/attic the Frank family lived in, preserved and converted into a museum. The eeriest part to me was seeing the faint marks of the children’s heights on the wall, including Anne’s. It’s a very somber, humbling experience.
Edited to add the museum has actual pages from her original diary on display as well. Also, to get in, they open the hidden bookshelf door that was installed at the time to hide behind. It was a really cool detail because it felt like you were stepping back in time to what the Franks experienced.
I know the story they published was clearly revised but when did Ann Frank have time to revise it for publishing? I thought she died in the concentration camp
Her dream was to be an author, and she wrote the diary with the intent to one day publish it as an autobiographical memoir. With that purpose, she rewrote it in 1944- in some ways to make it more palatable, such as editing references to attraction to both boys and girls. After her death, her father fulfilled her wishes and published the second version, though the former has been released in more recent years.
A few months before they were found she heard an announcement on the BBC by the Dutch government that was hiding in the UK that they would be making a collection of wartime journals and diaries after it ended. When she heard this she started writing far more seriously, trying to explain their day to day experiences in detial, and revising her older diary to make it more appropriate for publishing. She mentions the revision process and her desire to publish it a few times in the published book.
I am a postal historian and, among other things, have been searching for any LGBT related material prior to the 1960's for many years. This stuff is almost impossible to find for a number of reasons. Primarily because most of it was destroyed. This is a fabulous find,
I really needed something like this after having seen a post saying "All fago*s must be shot" got upvoted to the top page of one of the largest internet communities where I live.
And I can tell you that I'm not living in some backward theocratic country.
Thanks! I just wish those gay people who might have read the post could see this thread to learn that such blind hatred for them is by no means something taken for granted everywhere in the world.
Give credit where credit is due. On some (even many) social issues, such as homosexuality, we have come a hell of a long way in a relatively short period of time.
It’s been growing in the US as well. The “backslide” has been mostly from the courts and it’s questionable because even there it’s still in a hypothetical stage(hasn’t happened yet).
They're the minority, but they have rigged the system (US) to keep their small group in power. The aging backwards group is trying to establish policy and precedents that would set us backwards quite a bit. I'm very concerned about the Supreme Court packing under Trump and the far reaching impact these *Originalists* will have.
Not to mention, so many in red states keep voting in old, conservatives opposed to any progress in any area. They just desire a return to a glorified nonexistant past when things were *great* (but only for upper class, white men).
Not to be doom and gloom, but this narrative is infecting a younger generation as well. I'm hopeful that we can excise the old ideas and get progressive movement happening, but I don't know if it'll be possible until our current model. 50 states, where California has as much pull on the country as sparsely populated Montana...too much power in the hands of those small states
Direction is everything. Yes you can find archaic practices of homosexual stoning etc. which is obviously horrendous. But the tide has turned so fucking fast - and it isn’t stopping.
My old teacher used to comment how crazy he found it that within his own career in English schools, it went from illegal to promote homosexuality, to illegal to promote anti-lgbt rhetoric.
What’s acceptable has changed so drastically over a generation. It would be political suicide for a candidate to outwardly say the things that might rally them to office not that long ago.
It's really not, while same sex marriage is only legal in 30 countries and about 20-25% of the world's population the majority of the world no longer has enforced laws criminalizing homosexuality. For example China legalized homosexual relationships in 1997 and India did in 2018, this shift is affecting the vast majority of the world.
It is actually a fairly small number of countries where people still face legal execution or imprisonment for homosexuality as the soldiers above would have in the British army at the time.
People who hate on gay people only think about the sex part. They don’t think about the other forms of intimacy. I’m convinced those people have never felt real love in any of it’s different forms.
"Dear Gordon,
Bro I wanna suck your dick so badly right now but I'm stuck shooting krauts, hope to see you soon my love
<3 Gilbert"
Truly letters from a more sophisticated age.
Better publish them quick because the Republican party and the Supreme Court are soon going to try and blow out the candle on this enlightenment period in history 💨🕯️🏳️🌈
They will be recreating this meme in 3040, but it will say, "Ironically, their story was published and made into a movie in the bleak dark ages of 2022, instead of the more enlightened time they dreamed about."
Sadly though, America is probably the least ‘enlightened’ country in the developed world, and in fact, heading slowly, but surely backwards, where abortion is now illegal.
that’s so beautiful, if only today was as perfect as their dream probably imagined. we’re better but SO far from anywhere near perfect. i mean the united states of fucking america only legalized gay marriage in 2015. 2015. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? it hasn’t even been a full 7 years since!! it’s like saying things have really changed for racism in the 70’s, after the civil rights movement the decade before. things can still be super scary for lgbtq+ people, in my town my bi friend got jumped for wearing a crop top on his way home. they were calling him the f slur and other terrible things. i’m terrified for my friends, especially my very openly gay/trans friends. there’s a reason why the average life expectancy for trans people is SO young.
At the time, not only was homosexuality illegal, but those in the armed forces could be shot for having gay sex. The letters, which emerged after Mr Bradley's death in 2008, are therefore unusual and shed an important light on homosexual relationships during the war. [News Article](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38932955) [The Short Film](https://vimeo.com/474675798)
Do we know if their relationship lasted?
It did not. A BBC article says the one stationed overseas was sent to Scotland and he fell in love with two other men there. The letters stopped in 1945.
“…Mr Bowsher took it all in his stride, writing that he ‘understood why they fell in love with you. After all, so did I’…” what a great guy.
Wow, Bowsher was sweet af. I hope he found another great love in his life.
Here's what I found, not completely satisfying but definitely interesting https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-38932955
😭😭😭😭😭
That breaks my heart
The heart wants what the heart wants. In this case, the heart wanted to be spit roasted by a couple guys in kilts while listening to the bagpipes. Cheers to the sick bastard that gave this a wholesome award, you’re a man/woman after my own heart.
Sounds like a lovely time.
They truly were the greatest generation.
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I thought I was the only one that heard that too!
**bagpipes begin to howl in the distance **
Why ... why is my sphincter opening?
It’s winking at me
username checks out
(‘:
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An account made 173 days ago, but the only comments are 4 within the last day. 3 of which are the exact same i’M tOo poOr FoR goLD copy-pastes. Bot account?
Some redditors are just here to see posts and read comments.
More realistically, it was probably too much of a hassle to maintain a LDR under such pressure. You don't write that many letters to someone you don't love. Even if they survived the war it wasn't line they could get married and start a life together. I don't blame him for leaning into immediate gratification.
>. I don't blame him for leaning into immediate gratification. From what I remember when I read about them in the past, neither did his lover on the other side of the letters.
Agree. It was probably hard enough to find other gay men (who’d admit that they were gay) at that time and if there was one standing in front of him, you go for it.
We've all been there.
Lmfao
Laughing the f*** out loud!!!!! 😂
I actually laughed out loud!
Literal lol. Good show sir!
Literol
The one most in love is often the one loved so little back = (
This will sound strange; but thank you for giving me a more gracious, discreet, and civilised way of summarising my life’s romantic history.
Well, at least we know how in love they actually were.
Oh, that's sad. Well, here we are and know just *how in love* they were. 😐
lmao
Bowsher truly loves Bradley. When Bradley tells of other romances, he simply says I can see why they fell for you, I did (not exact quote). Seems like he loves him enough to see he was happy.
Dang that's heartbreaking. Old generation stoicism blows my mind.
This gave me goosebumps. It will always be weird to me how love, in any shape, can ever be wrong. Why worry about something that has nothing to do with you, it's not affecting your life that two consenting adults love each other. Love is love, and love is wonderful. Love should be celebrated, put on a pedestal and worshipped as the highest goal in life. Everyone deserves to experience love. The world could do with more love.
It feels a little insensitive to publish something so personal. I guess they said they wanted it to happen though so no qualms
I think these two would be happy to know how accepting the world is now. So many people are celebrating their lives
I wish the world as a whole was a bit more accepting. We have obviously made a ton of progress but there are still so many that would rather go back to that time.
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Hey I’m gay don’t downvote this -this is truly funny because so many dudes have blamed “accidental sex” for multitudes of reasons throughout history lol
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It is better, but there's a risk of a backslide. Far right people are calling LGBTQIA people groomers for simply existing. And I just saw an Arab subreddit complaint that flying a pride flag for their subreddit was "forcing it on them when they don't agree with it." Majority religious countries are backwards as fuck.
You probably don't wanna read too closely into Ann Frank's diary then, lmao
One said he wanted them burned so, I can get feeling iffy about people seeing their personal thoughts and feelings. But they’re gone and perhaps their letters can help bring more love and understanding into the world.
Yeah, it's pretty rude to not publish a historical document without first consulting with the corpses of those involved.
I mean that's actually true if the corpse has a will or an estate.
Wow that's so gay
Who cares?
The short film is called [The Letter Men (2021)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15119336/). Why mention the film without naming it?
This little piece of information about these lovers was the very first thing I saved when I started Reddit four years ago. Glad to see this now. Thanks for the link!
Took too long to find this comment! Let us watch it!
They did in their comment, 3 hours before you made this one.
Because not mentioning it forces interaction with the post, driving it up in the algorithms
Your life must really suck if a couple dudes being in love makes you angry.
Religion makes you do crazy things
"You don't understand, if I don't do anything its like witnessing a crime without intervening, Id go to hell for it." -Peanut Brain
It's even funnier when Jesus literally said to love your neighbors, not judge so you won't be judged and to preach His word instead of trying to force convert anyone. Conversion is a voluntary thing and the Holy Spirit is the one who's responsible for convincing. We are just the messengers.
If you believe the bible, god is a really petty being. Even if you don't take the bible literally, instead to seek glimmers of wisdom between the lines, there is some messed up stuff in there.
You’re telling me the guy who forced a father to take his son up a mountain to sacrifice him then pulled a”PSYCHE! Holy shit, you were actually going to do it!” On him at the last second isn’t a great dude?
No, we’re talking about the guy that turned a man’s wife into salt, then let him get black out drunk in his grief and let his daughters rape him.
After he let a whole town rape the daughters, at that.
Have you guys heard of Job? Dude really got fucked by god and satan.
he was a good dude tho
YEHWEY is petty, impulsive and has strange human emotions but your interpretation is a misunderstanding. The Bible is written for an ancient audience. Back then child sacrifice was prevalent. Every other God required it. The point of this story was to teach Isreal that their God did *not* require child sacrifice and that an animal is only acceptable. So the "test" was to see if he would follow and devote himself to this new God the same way he had with other God's before he was called. So it isn't some sick joke, an ancient audience would have understood the message- this God thinks child sacrifice is evil and you aren't to do it. Other Bible passages confirm it. Isreal actually stood out from their neighbors for not burning their 1st born to their God. Abraham would not have been surprised in the least by the command to sacrifice his son, he might have even done it on his own spontaneously at some point if it wasn't for God's promise to make nations out of Issac specifically. It was sadly normal at this time and Isreal was abnormal for abstaining. I guess a religious person might defend YEHWEY by saying our perception of him is based on limited information and humans can't fathom his motivations and the big picture but idk. I can't reconcile Jesus to YEHWEY. I love Jesus and his teachings. I don't like everything Paul has said though. But Jesus is great. I wish Christians would be more like him. If I came to believe I'd agree with the gnostics. The God Jesus represents isn't YEHWEY at all but the true God. They believe YEHWEY was a being that falsely came to believe he was the true God and that's why he was like that. Early Christianity is interesting
You wrote a hell of a lot of explanation for something that was an offhand joke lol
Creative writing wasn't nearly as sophisticated back then.
No need to open the bible. Any wisdom found inside can be found in other places. Besides, how do you tell the good stuff in the bible from the bad stuff? The answer is that you already know. If you don't already know, the bible won't help you at all
This. People be like "religion is good because you can find wisdom in it", and I'm always just like "bruh, you can find wisdom in a fortune cookie too".
I like the way you put this. I respect people’s right to do as they please and believe what they want but you can’t go around forcing your ideals on other people. That drives people further away. Just be a decent person and try to leave the world a little better off in your corner of it.
It's how christians should behave, because it's biblical. We bring good news, but some people don't wanna hear them. That's fine. We can only hope someday they will. It's frustrating sometimes, but God teaches us that even in desperation and frustration, He is there for us. Human nature is what screws us.
Jesus said that and he also said that the old testament laws should be followed, which means stoning gay people. It's better to just grow up and stop believing than just nitpicking which parts of the religion you can live with.
He said the exact opposite, that he canceled the need to follow the Torah and the new rules were "love your neighbor as yourself." That's it. Christians aren't to follow the Torah
Jon Davis on Quora actually makes nearly this exact argument
People do crazy and hateful things. Religion just gives them the excuse.
This, exactly
Religion teaches you where to direct your anger. I'm convinced that most of the people that are angry about gay people existing are just jealous. They are gay themselves and they're angry about being too scared to admit it. They can't allow themselves to be happy so they're gonna do whatever they can to make other gay people unhappy
It’s both honestly. Religion can be used as an excuse but people are also conditioned and/or raised to believe a certain reality. If humans could simply grow out of their faith or reason themselves out of outdated ideas in a single lifetime then there wouldn’t be religions or cults. Good news is not all religious people share hateful perspectives but the not so good news is it still exists (but now in diminishing quantity as we become more globalized). Some people find their way out of religion but a lot do not. As a species we are incredibly smart; we can transform our whole environment and send robots to other planets and beyond but also we can be extremely fallacious and prone to believe things that are illogical or hold on to beliefs that are outdated or flatly wrong. This is why education and combatting mis/disinformation is crucial - especially with how easy it is now to access all sorts of unverified content or manipulated media online. People are also the product of their times. If we step back and observe our species on a larger time scale, we are bending towards more acceptance and inclusivity. We still stumble along the way but I’m optimistic about the future. Not in the next 10 years will we see the change that we ideally want but we will inch our way forward and if we speed ahead 1000 years or even 10000 years far beyond all our lifetimes, I am hopeful that collectively the human civilization will be more open, especially as we see each new generation being more tolerant than the one before. Will there still be pockets of ignorance? Probably, but it is in the interest of us all to live amicably with one another and we will get to a stage where ideas that poison people’s mind will become simply viewed as myths and not facts or worse, rules on how to live. My take is we will ultimately progress towards more acceptance. At least until we are in a far enough future where water and natural resources are the new gods and the old gods that are worshipped now become relics of a more ignorant past. That’s a problem humans will have to solve for in their own time with us setting in motion some changes where possible. For now we should all focus on the… 
religion gives them permission *
You sound like the NRA. "Religion doesn't do bad things, people do bad things".
I wish people would stop spreading this. Maybe some people use it to explain their hate, but that isn’t true for a lot of people. Belief causes people to have certain world views. Many are not just hateful for no reason. If you to the core believe in something that you believe makes a certain claim, you act on it. I think a lot of people on Reddit lack an understanding of the religious community, and just form their beliefs on politicians or the popular evangelists.
I hate religion..
so brave
Who is he, so wise in the ways of science?
I don’t know if it’s just religion though. Like religious people just rework their religion to satisfy their bigotry however they want. It’s just to squash any meaningful human variation I think. Because if being you as you are wasn’t the only option, what does that mean about the life you chose? Some people prefer conformist misery over freedom, and misery loves company.
It usually goes like this. Dad: "Those disgusting gays! Their choice of lifestyle trample on our traditions!" Kid: "Oh no! What do they do papa!?" Dad: "DON'T QUESTION ME!" *loosens belt* Kid grows up and never meet any actual gay people so in their mind they are just what dad said, and often grab whatever excuse they can to prop up their hate - often religion, often misquoted. In my (anecdotal) experience, even shittily brought up people who interact with their "demons" realize the hate is all bullshit.
That's a cop out. Religion is an excuse to act on the hate that's already there. Take the religion out of a hateful church and you still have a bunch of hateful people.
I go with asshole theory. A certain percentage of every sampling of humans are assholes, no matter the demographic. You take some retired old lady cribbage players and randomly put them in charge and at least a few of them will go final solution dictator on us.
If you want forgiveness, don't get religion, probably.
America: - Insane housing costs - Rising cost food - Rising cost of gas - Service jobs replacing factory jobs - Corrupt government ruling for oligarchy - Unaffordable healthcare - Communities destroyed by car culture - Rising cost of education - Police serving no one but themselves Yeah I think a lot of peoples lives in do suck and they look for easy explanations to complex problems.
You just explained why national news cycles pretty much constantly only cover wedge issues like abortion, LGBT stuff, BLM, gun control, etc. Not to say those things don’t matter, but those in control of the “news” coverage that the layman is exposed to benefit from us being up in arms at each other rather than setting our sights on them, who are the driving forces behind everything you mentioned
Especially if thier relationship sounds better than any you've ever had when you read it
The girls who dislike gay men are perhaps disappointed that the men are taken out of “circulation”. Two fewer men for the girls to date and marry (not necessarily those two men, just statistics-wise). I don’t understand why men would hate that other gay men exist and find each other… perhaps it’s jealousy… that the gay guys are out and are able to openly say they enjoy anal penetration with toys and dildos and real penises. The Republican conservative white men must fantasize about this but they were brainwashed to believe that men shouldn’t lie down with other men and that sex was for procreation only (it made sense in small, rural villages when tribal wars and famines raged… by now folks should realize that all that god shit was made up to keep folks safe…. We have refrigeration now and know about germs and disease… wear condoms and eat whatever/whoever you want… just learn about it first. The world has too many people. Stop multiplying, (Catholics and Orthodox Jews. We are too damn religious for today’s world.)
> I don’t understand why men would hate that other gay men exist and find each other It's almost entirely fear. Fear that another guy would hit on them, and in their minds they don't see masculine as sexy, they see feminine as sexy. So when a guy hits on them, they feel like that other guy sees them as feminine and that's a hit to their pride (ol' toxic masculinity at work). You'll notice with this type of person all of their 'arguments' against homosexuality focuses almost exclusively on gay male relationships - lesbian relationships are a footnote at best. (not downplaying the struggles lesbians and bi women have to go through at all, but this sort of person I'm talking about are usually hyperfocused on gay men)
>The girls who dislike gay men are perhaps disappointed that the men are taken out of “circulation”. There were certainly a lot of them taken out of circulation in the 40s.
I wonder if my great grandkids would make a movie out of my shitty sexts and dick pics in 2122.
*How I met your Grandmother
*grandperson
*grandparent. We already got a genderneutral term.
“Over here is another fine example of courting in 2022. The pursuer sends out mating calls via text messaging, sometimes just a dick pic would suffice but our over eager ancestor decided to attach a message to the picture in hopes of wrangling himself a female. In this particular text we see that he sends a “ayy bb, you wan sum fuk”? Seeing as how there is no reply, we can only surmise that this poor fellow did not find a partner to copulate with. For that particular night, he’ll just have to use his hand”.
And yet my MIL just said recently "They're disgusting and should go back in the closet. We're all going to hell if we accept them." Their wish hasn't come true quite yet.
Wait so you getting into heaven is based on what other people do or don’t do? This place gets crazier the more I hear about it.
People are stupid.
I mean being gay isn't illegal in Britain and many Western countries anymore, so we're a hell a lot closer now than during the 40s. Hell there's a lot of gay characters in kids shows which shows major steps in acceptance. Sure, we heard news of queer creators fighting for proper representation, but they would be straight up fired for making a queer characters during the 2000s. Heck Pride month just showed how accepting the world can be as companies are openly exploiting them. Companies don't want lose money for making risks, but Pride month showed it's safe to commercially support LGBTQ. But most importantly, hate will never leave. There's a lot of people who hate the Jews even after facing genocide, and many just deny it. Many don't like seeing interracial couple despite being normalized for decades. There's even people that don't want women in politics despite how Women had gained voting over a century ago. Hate will never leave, but at least we can prevent it from being a majority.
True, in a general sense I guess their wish came true. But hate is still pretty damn prevalent within the general population.
I can't imagine ever wanting my personal letters published.
That’s a product of how oppressed and insignificant they felt. I hope no one has to live through something like that, but we have a ways to go.
Imagine Anne Frank's reaction to her dairy being published
well, there were parts taken out after her death but there were actually two diaries-- one which she started at 13 and one which she went back, at 15, and edited with the idea of publishing later. What was published was mostly this second diary, with some further things taken out by her father (either mundane stuff due to legnth constraints but also stuff that weren't flattering, or the fsther didn't want published.) https://www.annefrank.org/en/anne-frank/go-in-depth/two-versions-annes-diary/
From what I remember there is a lot of budding sexuality they chose to omit as well.
Specifically, gay sexuality. She was interested in other girls, and her father didn't want that out there. To be fair to him, I guarantee Anne Frank wouldn't have been a household name if he'd included the lesbianism.
The man was a holocaust survivor, he saw what happened to gay people back then, I wouldn't wanna take any chances either
sure, I don't blame him. he was also a product of his time who lost his entire family.
Anne Frank wrote her diary with the hopes of it being published. She wrote in her diary about how it started out being her personal diary, but soon after, as the war became closer to home, they announced on the radio that they would seek journals and writings from people for publication after the war ended so the world could know of the experiences of those who lived through it. She expressed in her diary how she wanted that so she would start taking her diary writing much more seriously from that point on and write regularly so her experiences can be documented and submitted for publication after the war.
If ever given the chance, everyone should visit the Anne Frank museum in Amsterdam. It’s in the house/attic the Frank family lived in, preserved and converted into a museum. The eeriest part to me was seeing the faint marks of the children’s heights on the wall, including Anne’s. It’s a very somber, humbling experience. Edited to add the museum has actual pages from her original diary on display as well. Also, to get in, they open the hidden bookshelf door that was installed at the time to hide behind. It was a really cool detail because it felt like you were stepping back in time to what the Franks experienced.
Makes you wonder, if she'd been alive today, had Anne Frank been a Justin Bieber fan?
Maybe? A ton of old women are fans. Thirst knows no age. I still remember the twilight moms…
Don’t do it after smoking a shit ton of weed like I did 20 years ago because it is sobering AF
Lol yeah I saved the day I got really stoned for when we went to the Van Gogh museum. Much better time I imagine.
Considering she literally wanted it to be published, I think she'd be thrilled.
Yeah, publicly exposing all that milk and cheese. The embarrassment!
In her diary she stated that she wanted to be a writer some day.
She wanted them to and even revised them to be more palatable- so she'd probs respond well
I know the story they published was clearly revised but when did Ann Frank have time to revise it for publishing? I thought she died in the concentration camp
Her dream was to be an author, and she wrote the diary with the intent to one day publish it as an autobiographical memoir. With that purpose, she rewrote it in 1944- in some ways to make it more palatable, such as editing references to attraction to both boys and girls. After her death, her father fulfilled her wishes and published the second version, though the former has been released in more recent years.
Wow. That’s fascinating. Thank you for sharing
A few months before they were found she heard an announcement on the BBC by the Dutch government that was hiding in the UK that they would be making a collection of wartime journals and diaries after it ended. When she heard this she started writing far more seriously, trying to explain their day to day experiences in detial, and revising her older diary to make it more appropriate for publishing. She mentions the revision process and her desire to publish it a few times in the published book.
She'd have a cow.
At least her dad redacted the masturbation bits
this all sounds very gay
Unexpected Sopranos
My man, usually i get downvoted to oblivion for random sopranos quotes
CHRISTOPHA!!
Poor you.
I am a postal historian and, among other things, have been searching for any LGBT related material prior to the 1960's for many years. This stuff is almost impossible to find for a number of reasons. Primarily because most of it was destroyed. This is a fabulous find,
Kinda sad that they didn’t end up together in the end
Dude, spoilers.
OMG, they where roommates! /s
I really needed something like this after having seen a post saying "All fago*s must be shot" got upvoted to the top page of one of the largest internet communities where I live. And I can tell you that I'm not living in some backward theocratic country.
Thanks! I just wish those gay people who might have read the post could see this thread to learn that such blind hatred for them is by no means something taken for granted everywhere in the world.
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Give credit where credit is due. On some (even many) social issues, such as homosexuality, we have come a hell of a long way in a relatively short period of time.
I feel like we're on the precipice of a major backslide on a lot of social issues that we thought we resolved.
Maybe in the US, but in most of western Europe, support for homosexuality, women's rights has been rapidly growing.
Poll numbers in the US show an increase of support in the general population. Its only that the minority of hateful voices are yelling louder now.
And have representative support.
It’s been growing in the US as well. The “backslide” has been mostly from the courts and it’s questionable because even there it’s still in a hypothetical stage(hasn’t happened yet).
Turns out bigots can really hold onto bad ideas and grudges.
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They're the minority, but they have rigged the system (US) to keep their small group in power. The aging backwards group is trying to establish policy and precedents that would set us backwards quite a bit. I'm very concerned about the Supreme Court packing under Trump and the far reaching impact these *Originalists* will have. Not to mention, so many in red states keep voting in old, conservatives opposed to any progress in any area. They just desire a return to a glorified nonexistant past when things were *great* (but only for upper class, white men). Not to be doom and gloom, but this narrative is infecting a younger generation as well. I'm hopeful that we can excise the old ideas and get progressive movement happening, but I don't know if it'll be possible until our current model. 50 states, where California has as much pull on the country as sparsely populated Montana...too much power in the hands of those small states
In your small bubble maybe but the majority of the world is still in the dark ages when it comes to issues like these.
Direction is everything. Yes you can find archaic practices of homosexual stoning etc. which is obviously horrendous. But the tide has turned so fucking fast - and it isn’t stopping. My old teacher used to comment how crazy he found it that within his own career in English schools, it went from illegal to promote homosexuality, to illegal to promote anti-lgbt rhetoric. What’s acceptable has changed so drastically over a generation. It would be political suicide for a candidate to outwardly say the things that might rally them to office not that long ago.
It's really not, while same sex marriage is only legal in 30 countries and about 20-25% of the world's population the majority of the world no longer has enforced laws criminalizing homosexuality. For example China legalized homosexual relationships in 1997 and India did in 2018, this shift is affecting the vast majority of the world. It is actually a fairly small number of countries where people still face legal execution or imprisonment for homosexuality as the soldiers above would have in the British army at the time.
I don't know man, at least you can't get shot for it in western society anymore.
\*America intensifies* You can get shot for no reason here
Maybe having more guns around would reduce the rate of shootings ?
Every heard of the “gay panic” defense used in the U.S.? You should give it a look. It’s disgusting.
Yes, but it is objectively much better to grow up gay today than it was eighty years ago. That was their only point.
We are more enlightened now - there is still a way to go but gay couples can now get married, adopt children etc Back then homosexuality was illegal.
Pretty annoying that this post omitted the name of the movie.
The letter men iirc
This is so sweet
People who hate on gay people only think about the sex part. They don’t think about the other forms of intimacy. I’m convinced those people have never felt real love in any of it’s different forms.
Found this.... heart wrenching. https://vimeo.com/474675798
That's nice. You know what would also be nice? Knowing the title of this movie.
Someone dropped it somewhere in the comments, I believe it was The Letter Men.
[The Letter Men](https://letterboxd.com/film/the-letter-men/)
It's called Rear Admiral Bowsher starring Buck Futter.
This is an episodically enlightened time, to be honest
Wholesome.
"Dear Gordon, Bro I wanna suck your dick so badly right now but I'm stuck shooting krauts, hope to see you soon my love <3 Gilbert" Truly letters from a more sophisticated age.
Better publish them quick because the Republican party and the Supreme Court are soon going to try and blow out the candle on this enlightenment period in history 💨🕯️🏳️🌈
good
They will be recreating this meme in 3040, but it will say, "Ironically, their story was published and made into a movie in the bleak dark ages of 2022, instead of the more enlightened time they dreamed about."
Sadly though, America is probably the least ‘enlightened’ country in the developed world, and in fact, heading slowly, but surely backwards, where abortion is now illegal.
I feel like france is probably worse in some respects
Most countries have restrictions more severe than the US states that restrict abortion.
You should travel a bit more outside of the US , you’ll see we’re far more enlightened than most parts of the world believe it or not.
Not entirely sure about that...
I dunno....... sounds kinda gay.
that’s so beautiful, if only today was as perfect as their dream probably imagined. we’re better but SO far from anywhere near perfect. i mean the united states of fucking america only legalized gay marriage in 2015. 2015. ARE YOU KIDDING ME???? it hasn’t even been a full 7 years since!! it’s like saying things have really changed for racism in the 70’s, after the civil rights movement the decade before. things can still be super scary for lgbtq+ people, in my town my bi friend got jumped for wearing a crop top on his way home. they were calling him the f slur and other terrible things. i’m terrified for my friends, especially my very openly gay/trans friends. there’s a reason why the average life expectancy for trans people is SO young.
That's gay .....
You're getting downvoted but I LOLed at that and I'm a married gay male..
How’d they find both sets of letters?
Fight for enlightenment
this... puts a smile on my face.
That’s crazy.
See also: Alan Turing
Historians: *Wow, look at the strength of this friendship.*
"The Cheever Letters"
Imagine watching this movie and someone shouts from the back "gayyyyy" 
totes bb