hello beautiful people today's video is
a time
recently a very famous online
personality that goes by lohanthony
renounced his sexuality online and
states that he's now a believer and he's
found jesus christ and he has been saved
from his sexuality
this sparked huge amounts of controversy
online because folks saw him as
promoting conversion therapy
and saw him as using a lot of kind of
homophobic dog whistles
and kind of remarks that are hugely
offensive to the lgbtq plus community
topic is my sexuality and my call to
christian
celibacy it's no coincidence that
through pursuing my same-sex attraction
i was also addicted to alcohol i was
also addicted to weed
i was also trying hallucinogenics that
earthly
pleasures brought to me did god make me
gay
did god allow the situation to be
did god force this struggle upon me
god gave me the answers that he
is love no matter what and that anything
that we encounter
other than that love is not of god this
story has been blowing up online because
anthony was famous for making content
around his sexuality online he's really
famous for a vine saying calling all the
basic bitches
calling all the basic bitches and he had
vine
saying oh you think god hates gays do
you know him personally
i didn't think so and those kinds of
things so lohanthony was
famous online as this young gay teenager
now many folks are seeing him as
promoting conversion therapy
and actually stating loads of homophobic
dogma that tons of the alt-right and
stuff used to justify their hatred
towards the lgbtq plus community
which is fairly disconcerting
now i'm an ex-christian myself and i
have been through some experiences that
folks may classify as conversion therapy
nothing that i would personally consider
as conversion therapy but
i've definitely undergone at least
self-induced therapy to try to cure my
sexuality in the church
and i've definitely had folks also try
to
influence my sexuality in the church as
well so i've been through a lot of these
experiences
myself i now identify as a proud
bisexual man and i am living my best
life and i now also identify as agnostic
which means that i believe that there is
a possibility of a god and a possibility
of the supernatural and spiritual and
faith i just personally do not believe
in the judeo-christian
set up of religion and i don't believe
in the jedi
christian perspective on god and the
bible so that is where i stand
philosophically when it comes to
religion
but i have very much been through the
journey that low anthony is currently
going through so
i thought that would be interesting to
comment on this from the perspective of
somebody who's really gone through this
i think from an outside perspective it's
easy to see his videos as some kind of
mental health breakdown and it's easy to
see him as promoting conversion therapy
and promoting these really evil
ideologies
but when you're in the church and when
you're in the faith and when you've gone
through these experiences
i have an enormous amount of empathy for
low anthony i have enormous amount of
empathy for what he's going through for
his experiences for his struggles
because i've been there i thought it
would be appropriate to wear my cross
today
i got this cross when i was i think like
10 years old
um and i was in new york city this is
the twin tower
beams i got this at ground zero um
and i got it when i was struggling with
my sexuality to
this extent of a huge mental breakdown
which i had
i very much had a huge mental breakdown
when i was
10 and i was starting to go through
puberty and experience lust and sexual
arousal and sex dreams and sexual
attraction
i thought that the devil was inducing
these scenes on me because i was raised
in a world where
all forms of lust were seen as sin no
matter what even thoughts that you
literally had no control over
and i had these thoughts that i had no
control over of same-sex attraction
and even in some cases opposite sex
attraction but i thought that the devil
was inducing these thoughts because
i didn't believe that these thoughts
were really things that i had a lot of
control over i felt like
quite literally i felt that demons were
were giving me these
sinful thoughts and lust and i bought
this cross
because for whatever reason i thought
that this symbol of christian
iconography was going to protect me
from the feelings of lust and same-sex
attraction that i was having
now i've kept it because it's such a
huge symbol of my
journey through faith and sexuality um
and i thought it would be appropriate to
wear it today
obviously this video is about low
anthony but it's also not this video is
also about me and this video is also
about
every other young queer man and queer
woman and queer person out there
who has gone through these experiences
of struggling with face and sexuality
out there
i mean this is huge this is an
experience that so many of us go through
so i ask that you have some empathy and
an open perspective if you are somebody
who hasn't gone through
a religious experience throughout your
upbringing as well continuing my own
personal story
i reached a point where i realized that
my lust and my same-sex attraction
and my feelings and my thoughts and my
sex dreams were things that i had no
control over
they were things that were influenced by
hormones by physical
processes and they were things that i
had to accept as being a part of the
human experience
nobody told me growing up that you
experienced lust and attraction
as part of your body so i grew up in
fear
of my own body and i grew up in fear of
these external supernatural forces that
i thought were ruining my life
and i grew up thinking that i had to
engage in spiritual warfare 24 7 to try
to ward off the feelings of lust and
sexual attraction now that is my
personal journey with faith and
sexuality i managed to overcome
these ridiculous notions around faith
and to allow myself to exist healthily
and happily within my own skin and
within my sexuality and to recognize
that my feelings of sexual arousal and
lust and attraction were not sin
but merely natural processes of the
human experience and luckily i have
managed to overcome
so much shame when it comes to my sexual
attraction and i am now
very content and happy with my sexuality
for years i had overcome my shame around
my same-sex attraction i've now also
managed to overcome my shame around my
opposite sex attraction
and i'm now proudly bisexual and very
happy with that identity
however low anthony is having an
opposite journey
he released a 40-minute long video on
youtube discussing how he was declaring
his intentions for celibacy
he declared his experiences of sexual
assault which were of course utterly
horrific
but then in classic homophobic fashion
he used his experiences sexual assault
as a justification
for his same-sex attraction and his lust
and his struggles with
sexuality and all of these feelings
additionally he talks about his
experiences with addiction
drug and alcohol abuse and how those
were also
in relationship with his sexuality and
fueled him spiraling in this constant
attempt to fill a void that he realized
could only be filled through god and
jesus in the supernatural
he also makes some really odd claims
when he's talking about sin and his
struggle and his battle with excess
implying that energy drinks are also a
sin and i'm just like
all right lord anthony i'm trying to
take you seriously here but
energy drinks come on nowhere in the
bible does it say that energy drinks are
a sin
additionally nowhere in the bible does
it say that healthy loving romantic
relationships between the same sex are a
sin it simply doesn't say that anywhere
in the bible
homosexuality was first mentioned in the
bible in 1946
that wasn't that long ago the bible was
hugely mistranslated to be
homophobic and to be used to justify
homophobia and homophobia in the context
of the christian religion is really
quite recent
now anthony doesn't really that's his
real name lohan he doesn't really
touch specifically quite a lot on the
actual scriptures and whether the
scriptures condemn homosexuality
he specifically talks through his own
lens of excess his own lens of lust and
his experiences and his struggles with
controlling drug and alcohol abuse and
these kinds of things he also
praises celibacy this idea that celibacy
is the solution
to his struggles with addiction and
excess and a way for him to become more
disciplined
and healthy with his own self
spiritually and physically
i think this is really interesting
because on one hand he has every right
to explore celibacy and he's
every right to engage in faith and
engage in the christian belief system
and there's nothing wrong with any of
that i'm not here to say that it's wrong
of him to be a christian
and i'm not here to say that his notions
around celibacy are wrong for his own
life path and his own journey you know
i'm here to condemn
the vitriolic idea that celibacy is the
solution for same-sex attraction because
that's
really messed up and hugely misguided
this suggestion
that celibacy is the solution to sexual
attraction
is frankly not biblical for one thing
and also just
wholly absurd you do not need to be
celibate to be a christian you do not
need to be celibate to be an lgbtq plus
christian you do not need to be celibate
to be loved by god
if you believe in god and so the ideas
that anthony's promoting he may
you know kind of promote them through
the lens of his own personal experience
in his own journey
but he heavily implies that celibacy is
the solution for same-sex attraction
additionally he also promotes some
really unhealthy ideas that same-sex
attraction is connected with drug and
alcohol addiction
not to mention the idea that same-sex
attraction is a result or at least
connected with
abuse and sexual abuse lots of us use
our own experiences to inform our
worldview and our belief systems but
that doesn't make it okay it's not okay
to say that same-sex attraction
is connected with sexual abuse or that
is connected with substance abuse just
because you personally have those
experiences he also talks about being on
grindr and
expecting validation through grindr look
if you're looking through validation
from grindr
that's a problem and it's a problem that
we associate grinder with lgbtq plus
sexuality because grindr is not lgbtq
plus sexuality
there are plenty of lgbtq plus men for
one thing that i know that have never
been on grindr and would never go on
grindr there are plenty of
men that look for sex in relationships
through more traditional formats like
real life um or other dating apps that
are generally
very uh different from grinder let's
just say that um
so again he's like yeah i was looking
for it through valid for validation on
grindr and i didn't find it
pretends to be shocked he states when i
had sex and when i had relationships
when i had intimacy with men it felt
wrong or it didn't feel right for me
of course it did we grow up in a society
that shames same-sex attraction and that
shame sex and that shames romance so
it's called porous chordal dysphoria
it's a thing
look it up like this is the condition of
the human experience like
of course you dealt with shame and i'm
sorry like i'm sorry you dealt with that
shame i dealt with that shame many lgbtq
people deal with our shame around these
topics but that is not a justification
for you to say that the solution to
shame
is god or the solution to shame is
christianity or the solution to shame is
celibacy we're not broken and we do not
need to be fixed by
celibacy or by god he says did god make
me gay
did god force this struggle upon me and
he goes on about how
how you know abstinence was at least the
solution to his struggle
again it's hard for me to critique him
because he's talking through the lens of
his experience but
what i can call him out on is that he
has this huge huge platform he's got
over a million followers on twitter
his videos are giving hundreds of
thousands of views and he knows that
these ideas are going to be implanted in
the lgbtq plus young people
of his audience members and they are
going to watch these videos and so
i may be coming across really harsh in
this video but i think that low anthony
has a responsibility as this really
really huge person
and with this huge platform to not be
making these associations in these
claims
being lgbtq plus is not a struggle wow
okay this video was like a lot longer
than i meant it to be i kind of just
wanted to sit here and respond to low
anthony
because y'all like i saw this video
and i was like this is my experience i'm
like
i've been there it's really interesting
because i started where he is now and
then have come to where i am now i chose
a very different path and overcoming my
shame which i think is
a lot healthier and i generally
recommend it if you're a queer person
and you're
you know struggling with your faith um
there is a path for you to overcome your
shame
that does not involve celibacy and that
does not involve more shame i'm here to
tell you
that that does not need to be the
solution for you you can overcome
shame and you can become proud of your
identity and maintain your faith if you
want to and keep your beliefs
and you can do all of that without
turning into more shame and without
turning to celibacy
and without turning to outdated doctrine
around the christian faith
and you know potentially misguided
scriptures but that's my opinion and
that's my perspective it was really hard
for me to watch
his video it was hard it was really hard
because
i've been through this and it's just
it's hard like it was just pain it was
painful for me to go through his video
um but i felt like i needed to talk
about this because again this is my
experience
and this is so many of our experiences
and
i don't think that what he said and
everything in that video should go
unchallenged
um so thank you for bearing with me with
this video
i hope that you found it informative and
not too dogmatic or harmful in and of
itself
i don't want to promote judgment of any
kind anthony says the same thing in his
videos and i think that his videos do
promote judgment whether he intends them
to or not but
at the end of the day you know i want
love and kindness to everybody
regardless of their belief system
so as always folks remember that the
world is a noisy place so make your
words count
and i will see you in my next video
let's see where this song
might lead
