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molluskwritesfic · 3 years ago

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Black Herons - Ch. 3

Masterlist - Ao3 - First Chapter - Previous Chapter - Next Chapter

A/N: We’ll actually get to Caladan in the next chapter I swear. If you’re wondering, this story does use a lot of canon from the Prelude to Dune novels (so spoilers), which is where I get the Paulus Atreides quotes and all the Dune backstory that doesn’t have to do with Rhiannon or Planet Iro. You don’t have to read the books to understand this story but maybe check out the Dune wiki page if you get confused.

Pairing: Duke Leto Atreides I x Fem!OC (slow burn)

Rating: M

Word Count: 4k

Chapter Three: Impressions

The two ornithopters circled the icy ridge, metal hulls glinting in the late afternoon sun. The Black Heron Hall estate sat squarely at the bottom of the valley, surrounded by a maze of walled gardens, well-tended waterways, and a scattering of ancillary buildings designed to blend in with the natural mountain rock.

Rhiannon stood on the walkway leading to the landing pad, her chiffon cape snapping in the wind stirred up by the landing aircraft. Elsbeth stood just off her right elbow, only having just returned from her trip to the nearest town, where she’d placed an order for several new uniform coats and travel dresses for those of Rhiannon’s staff that were moving with her to Caladan.

To Rhiannon’s left loomed Trevil Pennon, the Captain of her Personal Guard. Trevil was in his mid fifties, a dour man of a military disposition, complete with close-cropped gray hair, craggy face, and terminal scowl. Like Mariona, Rhiannon’s lady-in-waiting, Trevil had been a part of Bence Varvara’s staff — a hired mercenary turned soldier — that had chosen to stay with her after the Count’s death.

He glared fixedly at the settling ornithopters, face a mask of poorly-concealed disdain, silently daring the occupants to bring harm to his Lady. It didn’t help that Trevil was already sour about having to share the responsibility of Rhiannon’s safety with Duncan Idaho, who, as one of the Duke’s men, he had deemed untrustworthy.

The three of them were joined on the walkway by the Chief of Staff, several guards, as well as Hawat and Idaho. If the Master of Assassins had been put off by whatever he found in Elsbeth’s private rooms, he gave no outward sign of it. Idaho had yet to say anything, but Rhiannon still hoped for details to laugh over later. Especially when Elsbeth found out.

The crew of the ornithopter disembarked, and Rhiannon was treated to her first sight of her husband-to-be. She’d seen holophotos of him before and had already agreed with Elsbeth’s statement that he was pleasing to the eye. Seeing him in person now, she was able to add that assessment.

Duke Leto Atreides cut a handsome figure, dressed in the same work uniform as the rest of his men — black with the red Atreides emblem on the chest and two gold hawk pins to either side of his collar. He wasn’t particularly tall, only a few inches taller than Rhiannon, with a lean, athletic build. She cataloged his angular, hawklike features quickly: olive skin, heavy eyebrows, sharp gray eyes. His hair was black and curly, but had been slicked back with a holding gel to keep it out of his face. He sported a thick, well-groomed beard that was only just starting to gray at the corners of his jaw.

When Duke Leto and his guards reached the welcoming party, Rhiannon bowed gracefully and said, “My Lord Duke, welcome to Black Heron Hall.”

“Lady Rhiannon.” He took her hand in the half-handshake of the Imperium, then brought it to his lips to brush a kiss across her knuckles. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last.”

“Likewise, m’Lord.” Temporarily mollified by the gesture, Rhiannon was able to set aside the previous slights enough for her soft smile to be genuine. “I’ve followed your pursuits on Iro with great interest. It’s good to be able to attach a face with the progress.” She indicated Elsbeth, who had a knowing gleam in her eye that Rhiannon chose to ignore. “May I introduce my aunt, Lady Elsbeth Levin. And Trevil Pennon, the Captain of my Personal Guard.”

“Charmed, my Lord,” Elsbeth said in her sweet voice, dipping into a perfect curtsy.

Trevil fixed the Duke with a stony scowl. Looking downright murderous, but under direct orders to be respectful. He dipped his head once, said, “M’Lord.”

The Captain of the Guard was very opposed to the impending wedding, and already hated the Duke on principle. Having served Bence Varvara during his marriage to Rhiannon, Trevil understood just how much power a nobleman had over his wife — how much pain he could inflict. Trevil was uniquely aware of Rhiannon’s past marital experiences, and would gladly give his life to keep her from having to go through it all again.

Hoping the Duke and his men would overlook Trevil’s distemper and write it off as his usual moody nature, Rhiannon allowed herself to be introduced to Gurney Halleck, a muscular, rough looking man that had shadowed the Duke from the ornithopter. He was middle aged, but the scars that littered his face and hands indicated that he had survived many lifetimes worth of violence. The most notable was an ugly red scar curling across his cheek and jaw, most likely from an inkvine, a sort of natural whip with thorns containing a potent — and excruciatingly painful — neurotoxin.

Introductions finished, Rhiannon inclined her head incrementally toward the house. “Now, it’s a long journey from Dering House Hall. I’m sure you and your men would appreciate the opportunity to refresh yourselves. Dinner is to be served in half an hour, but if you’d like something before then, it can be arranged. If you’d accompany me?”

The Duke smiled politely and offered her his arm. She took it gladly, her delicate fingers curling around his bicep. “Dinner would be much appreciated, my Lady. Lead on.”

The banquet hall was just as elegantly rustic as the rest of the estate — smooth marble floors, fresh flowers in ornate vases, and roaring fireplaces. One of the walls was made entirely of glass, filling the room with natural light and tinting everything a cozy shade of orange as the evening sun drifted behind the mountains.

Leto sat at a well-polished oak table, enjoying a meal of roasted sugar-salmon with vegetables and a venison stew. He drank from his mug of pepper-sap ale, listening to the easy conversation flitting about the table. Lady Rhiannon was an excellent hostess, quick to set a relaxed tone for the meal and pulling the threads of conversation like a master marionettist — keeping them away from potentially unpleasant subjects like the recent Ironian House War and traumatic life events, and shepherding them into discussions about planetary ecology and personal anecdotes.

“As I was the smallest, it was my job to climb the trees and set the snares,” Rhiannon explained, deep in a story about the hunting trips when she would go on with her father as a child. “I don’t know what they would’ve done if I had gotten stuck.”

“How high would you have to climb?” Gurney asked, helping himself to another piece of fish as a server refilled his mug of ale.

“Oh… sixty feet or so, generally. Cravenbirds hunt for bark weasels in the treetops, so the bait had to be set as high as it could go.”

Rhiannon was markedly lovely in her portrait, but paintings and holophotos could never hope to truly capture her beauty — the way her dark eyes gleamed with lethal intelligence or the flash of her roguish smile. She commanded the room in an easy, deceptively off-handed sort of way, and yet her movements were intentional. Confident. Like fire in a dark room, she blazed; full of a magnetic intensity that she used to grab her guests’ attention and hold it in a vice grip.

As Rhiannon encouraged Leto to tell stories of his life on Caladan, she smiled at him, and he was startled to hear himself think: I could love her.

It was a strange revelation, given how worried he had been that they wouldn’t like each other at all. When the conversation drifted away from him and down the table to Lady Elsbeth, Leto found himself thinking about his own parents. The Old Duke Paulus Atreides and his wife Lady Helena had despised each other. While they feigned the perfect marriage in public, their thundering arguments were frequent and could last for hours at a time.

“I married for politics in the first place, lad,” the Old Duke had said. “Never should have tried to make it otherwise. At our station, marriage is a tool. Don’t muck everything up by trying to throw love into the mix.”

Lady Helena was stern, inflexible, and a religious zealot — and although the Old Duke had admitted to loving her in the early years of their marriage, his lack of personal investment in the relationship had made him a poor husband. Leto acknowledged the martial failings of his father, and wanted to avoid the Old Duke’s mistakes.

While Leto’s impending marriage to Lady Rhiannon was purely political, he hoped that in time they could grow to care for each other — or at least avoid the enmity that led to his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent banishment.

But of course, whether or not he found Lady Rhiannon likable was only one obstacle. Leto’s life was complicated by a concubine that he loved deeply and the son they’d had together. Adhering to both the promises he had made to them and to his duties as a husband would be a delicate balancing act, one that he was not wholly sure he could maintain. Despite his determination to ensure that his relationship to them did not change, he knew Jessica was deeply hurt; he feared that the engagement had already driven a wedge between them, and that the distance between them would only grow.

Leto’s eight year old son Paul posed a much more tangible issue — one that had the potential to become very serious in the future. As the son of the Duke’s bound concubine, Paul was technically illegitimate. Even though Leto had officially recognized him as his son and named the boy as his heir, another son by his wife would have greater claim to the ducal title.

No matter what, Leto was determined to ensure that Paul would not be displaced. From the beginning of the complex negotiations between House Atreides and House Dering, Leto had been very clear about Paul’s place in the Atreides household. He had expected resistance to the idea; producing an heir from the bloodline of the wife’s family was generally regarded as important.

Surprisingly, the Dering bureaucrats… didn’t seem to care. At all.

Being amenable or accommodating was one thing, but total indifference was another. Viscount Dering just seemed to want whatever would make his sister happy, while his council unanimously dismissed the subject as one of Duke Leto’s ‘private affairs’ and promptly steered on to other matters.

Confused and a tad bit suspicious, Leto had directly put the question to Odon, the Dering Master of Finances who was also acting as facilitator between Atreides and Dering. At first, Odon was elusive, but once Leto was clear that he was not in the mood for word games, he answered honestly.

“The Lady Varvara is… extraordinarily independent,” Odon had explained, taking off his spectacles and polishing them nervously on his sleeve. “She will likely have strong opinions about matters concerning children. The councilmen know, as I do, that a statement on that particular subject reached within the Council Room walls won’t matter if the Countess does not also agree to it.”

He placed his spectacles back on his nose and looked Leto in the eye.

“I give you my word that House Dering will not object to your son maintaining his title as heir apparent,” Odon went on, sounding serious, “but I strongly recommend discussing it with Lady Varvara.”

Leto had walked away from the conversation feeling mildly alarmed. Odon had made it clear that House Dering had little to no control over its wayward sister, but what did that mean for House Atreides? What did that mean for Leto? House Dering hadn’t made any effort to arrange for the Dowager Countess to meet him, and Leto had been struck by the notion that there was something wrong with Lady Varvara — insanity, perhaps — that they were trying to keep hidden until it was too late for House Atreides to back out on the deal.

He had wanted to speak with Jessica to get her insight, but she was still on Caladan and he wouldn’t see her for several more weeks, so he’d gone over the conversation with Hawat, Gurney, and Duncan instead.

Hawat had shared his concern, thinking of Lady Helena and Lady Kailea, as Leto did, and the irreparable damage they had caused.

It was Gurney that pointed out: “We’ve heard from several sources that Lady Varvara was one of the most trusted of House Dering’s advisors. It’s possible that it is a sign of respect for her, not a deception.”

Leto hoped Gurney was right, but decided that he needed to take matters into his own hands. As per Odon’s advice, Leto had sent an emissary to Black Heron Hall to negotiate the so-called ‘private affairs’. Leto wished he could do it himself — especially since many of the topics at hand would be the concerns Jessica had expressed to him — but since the discussion was no longer political, it was of lower priority than the other things that required Leto’s attention.

Still concerned about the implications of what Odon had possibly sugar-coated as ‘independence’, Hawat had suggested using the interaction as an early means of establishing control — just in case the future Lady of Caladan turned out to be as ungovernable as he feared. Thus, Leto was heavy handed in the stances he’d had presented to her, with the assumption that she’d dispute them and then he’d be able to develop a sense of her ‘independence’ and go from there.

Surprisingly, like the Dering bureaucrats, Lady Varvara… didn’t seem to care.

She’d acknowledged her betrothed’s statements with grace and indifference, leaving Leto both confused and hopeful; a lack of desire for children secured Paul’s position as heir, and no expectation of intimacy would allow Leto to prioritize his love for Jessica in a way he wouldn’t have been able to otherwise.

But was Lady Varvara’s indifference genuine, or was she simply agreeing with him to avoid pre-nuptial conflict?

He needed to find out for sure.

After dinner, Leto asked his bride-to-be to accompany him for a walk around the estate’s extensive sprawl of gardens. Night had fallen, but the path was lit by the warm light of glowglobes bobbing unobtrusively between sculpted trees and around alabaster statues. The air was crisp and cold, but Leto’s uniform had been lined with an adaptive thermal layer in preparation for the snowy planet; similarly, Rhiannon had donned a thick whalefur cloak, though she was well-accustomed to the chill.

“I’ve had the pleasure of spending a significant amount of time getting to know Viscount Dering,” Leto remarked as they walked. They were alone, much to the mutual chagrin of Hawat and the surly-looking Captain of Rhiannon’s Guard, but they needed the space to get to know each other, and Rhiannon had assured him that the estate grounds were quite safe. “Your brother speaks highly of you.”

“Ha! He’d better,” Rhiannon laughed, her arm warm in his. “Has he invited you to go hunting yet?”

“Several times,” he admitted. “He is a… very hospitable man.”

Her grin widened. “Driving you mad, is he?”

He gave her a look of mock offense. “I didn’t say that!”

“You don’t need to, m’Lord.” She bumped him lightly with her shoulder. “Larion is a charming host and excellent at delivering speeches, but after the death of our father, most of the House administrative duties fell to me. For good reason.”

“I understand that the population of Iro has you to thank for the structural development that’s happened over the past few years.” They had reached the fish ponds, which were lit from within. Leto stopped to watch the shadowy fish flitting beneath the surface, pretending not to admire the way the light from the water played in patterns across Rhiannon’s lovely face. “The construction of heated roadways across the Great Ranges seems especially generous.”

“A costly, but worthy endeavor.” Leto noted how she seemed to brighten at the mention of her work. “There are many settlements throughout the Ranges that are completely isolated for most of the year due to the heavy snows. It’ll be good for them to be able to continue trading with other villages throughout the winter.”

“It will be,” Leto agreed. “I hope you’ll find ways to benefit the people of Caladan, as you have on Iro.”

Rhiannon’s expression remained mild. “Perhaps. Fortunately, Caladan hasn’t been shaped by centuries of House warfare. Iro is quite primitive, in comparison. It will take several lifetimes to repair the damage — I imagine there is less that needs to be done on Caladan.”

“Less, perhaps,” he reassured, “but there are still plenty of important administrative projects that I’m confident will benefit from your insight.”

“I will gladly give whatever I can offer, my Lord.”

Sensing a window for change in conversation topics, Leto opened his mouth to ask the questions that had been on his mind for weeks, but hesitated. It was harder now to say what he needed to say; she was lovely and brilliant, and it almost pained Leto to try and re-emphasize the lines he had already drawn between them — especially now that he’d realized that she was someone he could grow to love.

“It’s Leto,” he started carefully. “If we are to be married, I’d like you to call me by my name.”

She nodded her assent. “Rhia.”

“Rhia,” he repeated, relishing the permission to use the more intimate form of her name. “Ours isn’t a silly romance. We both know why we are to be married. I know that it… may not be what you expected for your life.”

Rhiannon actually snorted. “A silly romance, he says.” She shook her head in mild amusement. “If you’ll recall, Leto, this isn’t my first political marriage. I won’t go into it under any false pretenses.”

Leto took the gentle tease with a small, wistful smile. “All the same… I know that the conditions I’ve asked of you are even more restrictive than the average arrangement.”

“You want your son and your concubine to be happy,” she said lightly. “I respect that.”

“I do want them to be happy.” Jessica’s hidden pain and young Paul’s confusion haunted him night and day. “But at the same time, you are to be Lady Atreides. I don’t want you to feel neglected either.”

Rhiannon shrugged. “It isn’t my place to challenge the conditions of marriage. An agreement has been made — my duty is to simply abide by it.”

Leto felt a surge of frustration. He recognized a deflection when he heard one, but didn’t know Rhiannon well enough to tell if the deflection was to cover a lie, or if she was truly honest and simply being polite.

“Rhia,” Leto pleaded, “be open with me on this, please. I’d much rather know if you’re bothered now, rather than have you resent me later.”

Rhiannon scoffed, her face morphed into a scowl of aggravated disbelief.

“Oh, it’s honesty you want? That’s interesting.” She unhooked her arm from his and turned to face him. Rhiannon looked him dead in the eye, her pleasant demeanor had melted away, replaced by something much more intense that Leto couldn’t name. “Very well. Honestly, I don’t give a fuck. The thought of having another baby makes me nauseous and I couldn’t care less about who keeps your bed warm. If you decide to never lay with me because it keeps Jessica happy, then that’s between you and her. I’ve been a widow for a long time, and am not at all ashamed about ensuring that my sexual needs are met elsewhere.”

Leto, startled by the sudden brashness, opened his mouth to reply. Rhiannon lifted a finger to silence him.

“Managing the politics that take place between the various Houses of the Landstraad is difficult,” she continued with a dismissive gesture, “but maintaining the politics within a household is both exhausting and a massive waste of time. Do whatever you deem necessary to ensure stability, Leto. It makes little difference to me.”

For a few moments, Leto could only blink at her in baffled admiration. If this was what Odon had meant by ‘independence’, then he found that he liked it. In his mind, he lamented: I could love you.

“Alright,” he said finally. “Thank you for being honest with me.”

Rhiannon snorted. Her expression softened. “The look on your face is stupid,” she said, amused. “I like it. Perhaps you should ask women for honesty more often.”

Leto immediately schooled his expression, covering up whatever emotion her tirade had shocked out of him with a mock scowl. “As my wife, that duty shall fall to you, m’Lady.”

“Hah! Be careful what you wish for, m’Lord. Few men have survived my unwavering honesty with their egos intact.”

“Nevertheless, I expect you to accomplish it with unwavering dedication.” Leto drew himself up and squared his shoulders. “I am the Duke of House Atreides, and am perfectly capable of managing my own ego.”

Rhiannon flourished and bowed gallantly. “As my Lord Duke commands.”

He gave a curt nod, then broke out into a grin as he offered her his arm again, greatly pleased to discover that she had a sense of humor. “Now that we’ve reached an understanding, we should probably go back to the house before Hawat sends a search party.”

“I get the sense that your Hawat and my Pennon are just as overprotective as the other.” Rhiannon commented as she linked her arm with his, walking closer to him than she had earlier; Leto could feel her warmth pressing all the way up his side. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they had us followed.”

“Nor would I. Pennon is coming with you to Caladan, isn’t he? Perhaps they will find friendship in their mutual paranoia.”

“Or perhaps they will compete.” Rhiannon shuddered. “Or even join forces.”

Leto barked a laugh. “You and I will never have been safer, m’Lady.”

Rhiannon made a noise like a dying animal, which made Leto laugh again. He made a point of walking slowly, stopping to ask about every statue and ornamentation they came across, just drawing out their time together as long as he could.

The stars shone brightly over Black Heron Hall, and the snow on the mountain peaks was luminous in the moonlight. Leto tried to soak in the peaceful atmosphere, listening to Rhiannon talk about various figureheads and why each memorial had been erected in their honor, but he couldn’t ignore the guilt. He had told Jessica that he did not love Rhiannon, and while he still did not, he now knew that he could.

Yes, I could love her, he thought to himself. But I’ve already given my heart to someone else. I will not break my promises to Jessica or Paul.

It was unlikely that Rhiannon would care anyway.

Rhiannon stood with Elsbeth on the walkway leading to the landing pad, waving off the three ornithopters as they unfolded their wings and lifted into the starry sky, bearing Duke Leto, Thufir Hawat, Gurney Halleck, and a number of Atreides soldiers back south.

After their walk, Rhiannon and Leto had returned inside for a cup of spice coffee and sweetcakes. For all his intimidating looks, Gurney Halleck turned out to be quite the troubadour — entertaining the occupants of Black Heron Hall by playing his nine-stringed baliset and singing songs that he had written himself.

Rhiannon had offered them rooms to stay the night, but House Atreides still had a lot to do in the next few days before the Duke left for Caladan, and there wasn’t a moment to waste. Leto had thanked her for the pleasant evening and kissed her hand before they parted. They wouldn’t see each other again until Rhiannon arrived on Caladan with the wedding party in several weeks.

Having met her husband-to-be, Rhiannon wasn’t sure how to feel. She felt the echoes of her past self stirring; Rhiannon Dering: the bright young woman she had been before she married Bence Varvara — when she had been whole enough to love unconditionally. Back then, she would have instantly fallen head-over-heels in love with the charming Duke Leto. She would’ve made him a gentle and loving wife, and he would’ve made her a kind husband.

Except Rhiannon Dering had been dead for well over a decade now, and there was no bringing her back — but for the first time in all those years, Rhiannon found that she missed her. Why couldn’t this be her first marriage? It wasn’t fair — but life rarely was.

When the sound of the thrumming ornithopter wings faded, Elsbeth remarked, “That’s a relief.”

Rhiannon drew herself out of her own thoughts. “What is?”

“To see that Bence didn’t completely crush that romantic heart of yours.”

Rhiannon didn’t dignify the comment with an answer. Elsbeth didn’t need one. She gave her niece a gentle smile that was both knowing and sad before turning and leaving Rhiannon alone to wrestle with her emotions.

#duke leto atreides x reader #duke leto x reader #leto atreides x reader #duke leto atreides x oc #duke leto x oc #Leto Atreides x oc #dune fanfiction #fanfiction

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keanuquotes · 3 years ago

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It's quite disconcerting meeting Keanu Reeves in the flesh. The 44-year-old looks at least a decade younger than his age, with his prominent cheekbones, flowing locks and smooth, other-worldly complexion. Deflecting questions with a mysterious gleam in his eye, there's something of the teenager about him.So it's not entirely surprising that his next role is playing Robin Wright Penn's toy-boy in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee, a film adapted by Rebecca Miller from her own novel, though the actors are only a year apart in age. "The cougar complex [younger men with older women] is something that happens all the time," shrugs Reeves, who stars as Chris Nadeau, a free spirit, Pippa's neighbour and her eventual love interest. "It's definitely something that needs to be explored in film. In terms of older women and younger men, at the end of the day it really doesn't make a difference to whether a relationship will work." In person, Reeves has a gentle manner that makes him immediately likeable but on paper, he remains one of cinema's greatest enigmas. It's too easy, never mind wrong, to typecast him simply as a pretty-boy actor who happened to be in the right place at the right time – the living embodiment of the dumb, feckless character he played in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, the film that first charmed a predominantly teenage fanbase back in 1989. In one daft thrash of an air guitar, his performances in Stephen Frears's well-received adaptation of Dangerous Liaisons and the 1986 independent hit River's Edge were quickly forgotten. Ever since then, his career has been one long battle to be taken seriously. It doesn't help that, even in his mid-40s, he still looks like a slacker, dressing as if the clothes on his back were the first things that he found on his bedroom floor that morning.I wonder if Reeves feels that people sometimes have a false impression of him because of the roles he has taken and how he looks. "I feel that once in a while, that's for sure," he says, slowly.Of course, the main reason for this misguided perception of the actor is that Reeves is so very, very good at playing dumb. His career highs in terms of box-office hits and critical acclaim arrived in the shape of Speed and The Matrix, both of them roles in which an ordinary American surpasses and surprises himself by showing guile, intuition and fleet-footedness. The impact made by both these films on popular culture was such that it's easy to forget some of the more eclectic choices Reeves made in the 1990s. In 1991, he played the Prince Hal role in My Own Private Idaho, Gus van Sant's loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I, which is principally remembered for the performance of his co-star and great friend River Phoenix, who died soon after the film was released. Van Sant then cast Reeves again in his disappointing adaptation of Tom Robbins' Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Reeves also played Don John in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Much Ado about Nothing, while Bernardo Bertolucci, recognising Reeves' unusual complexion and looks, cast him as the Indian Prince Siddhartha in the disappointing Little Buddha.Since then, he's made some surprising choices, none more so than his decision to disappear and play Hamlet in a production in Winnipeg at the height of his fame. Critics travelled across the world with their poison pens at the ready, but Reeves came away with mostly positive reviews. His desperation not to be typecast as an action hero saw him turn down a huge paycheck to reprise his role of Officer Jack Traven in the sequel to Speed (Jason Patric stepped into the breach). "I don't really have a preference between making independent films and blockbusters," says Reeves. "All I hope is that I can continue making these choices. I'm just glad that I've worked on so many different kinds of genres and popular films in the past. He's also worked on some truly unpopular films. He had several career lows between 1995 and 1998, a period during which it looked like Reeves' career was quickly heading towards oblivion.

The woeful choices included A Walk in the Clouds, Chain Reaction, Feeling Minnesota, The Last Time I Committed Suicide and The Devil's The feeling that Reeves was becoming a laughing stock was compounded by his decision to form a rock band under the name of Dogstar, with the band-mates Bret Domrose and Robert Mailhouse. Reeves played the bass guitar and sang backing vocals. Largely on the back of the actor's fame, Dogstar soon found themselves opening for Bon Jovi in Australia and sharing a stage with David Bowie. They also performed at Glastonbury in 1999 but their debut album, Our Little Visionary, was only released in Japan, the country where they played their last concert in 2002. Today, Reeves seems almost embarrassed by his musical escapades. "The band broke up. I haven't been playing bass recently. I sometimes play with some friends and do some jamming. I'm interested in different sounds, country. I play a lot of Neil Young." But, just when you feel that Reeves is cornered, like a tiger he comes out fighting and tips the balance back his way. Ewan McGregor, Nicolas Cage and Will Smith were all offered and turned down the lead role in the Wachowski brothers' The Matrix. Reeves' decision to take the role propelled the actor to the top of the A-list. This time, he didn't turn down the sequels and picked up a huge cheque that reportedly also included a percentage of the gross.Post-Matrix, Reeves could get films greenlit simply by agreeing to star in them. His power was such that he could even decide who directed films. When James Ellroy's The Night Watchman was adapted into Street Kings, it was Reeves who had a major say in David Ayer being the director. His only recent success has been Constantine, in which he starred opposite Tilda Swinton. He has also become more choosy. In the last three years he's appeared in three films: Street Kings, The Day the Earth Stood Still and now, Pippa Lee.Of this latest role, he asserts firmly that "nothing about my character Chris comes from my own life, everything is taken from the novel." He continues: "I think that films end up becoming short stories when you do adaptations of novels. You have to condense and the film-maker just picks whatever part of the story that they want to tell. It's a process of cutting, editing and censoring. All that has to be the same is that you capture the essence of the characters and the story."Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1964. His mother, Patricia, was a costume designer and his father, Samuel Nowlin Reeves, was a geologist. The name Keanu means "Cool Breeze in the Mountains" in Hawaiian. After his parents divorced, his mother resettled the family first in New York and then in Toronto. It's an eclectic background that has made him appreciate stories from all walks of life. "It's what stories are, they are reflections of the environment. Stories are told so that we can survive and learn from experiences, pass on and share knowledge."He's famously guarded of his private life. The actor has not been in a long-term relationship since the death of his girlfriend Jennifer Syme in a car accident in 2001. Her death came after she gave birth to a stillborn daughter, Ava Archer Syme-Reeves, in December 1999. He was recently linked to the fashion guru Trinny Woodall, around the time of the break-up of her marriage, and has since been photographed with the actress Parker Posey.In his spare time he has been busy learning to cook. He reveals that he's been reading Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavour by the popular French television chef Hervé This. "I'm dabbling in it and looking at becoming a chef. He is fantastic. I didn't really cook before but this book may be changing my life." It's hard to tell if he's joking or researching a role. He also admits to being a bit of a wine connoisseur. Recently he got his first computer and started using email; in the past he'd made a point of being something of a luddite. "My friend finally bought me one," he admits. "And of course I use it."This is as far as it goes, though. When a question

becomes more personal he replies by making the sound of the sea. Ask him about poor reviews and he breaks into song, crooning, "One drop of water does not make an ocean, baby."Finally, he relents. "I want to see what they [the critics] write, for sure. You know it's going to be whatever it's going to be and you have to take a review as it is. I mean, whatever they write is whatever they write, and I'm not going to be able to change it. The review is part of why you want to entertain. You want to know what your audience thinks about the film and the performance. I'm interested in what people think, even if it's just one person." And with that he's gone, back to his kitchen.'The Private Lives of Pippa Lee' is released on 10 July

Saturday 22 October 2011

#keanu reeves

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nickyandmikey · 4 years ago

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Do you have any recs for early gay movies?

hi! i'm flattered to be asked, tho i've gotta say i definitely don't have the most extensive knowledge of earlier gay cinema (i've only been watching movies seriously since like this february so i still have a lot to learn and see myself) but here are some things that come to mind (also i don't know how early you want but i tried to stay between 1970 and the mid 90s since that's what i'm most familiar with):

Parting Glances (1986), The Living End (1992), Totally Fucked Up (1993), Fox and His Friends (1975), Law of Desire (1987), The Birdcage (1996, and La Cage aux Folles 1978, both based on the same play), The Wedding Banquet (1993), The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love (1995), Bound (1996), Beautiful Thing (1996), Poison (1991), My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), My Own Private Idaho (1991), Something For Everyone (1970, kinda? idk this one is pretty weird lmao), Victor/Victoria (1982), Coming Out (1989), Paris is Burning (1990)

some things i haven't seen yet, but are on my watchlist:

Victim (1961), A Taste of Honey (1961), Desert Hearts (1985), Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), The Watermelon Woman (1996), Go Fish (1994), Longtime Companion (1989), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995), Tongues Untied (1989), Swoon (1992), Edward II (1991), The Boys in the Band (1970), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989)

you could also look into New Queer Cinema and related directors, or there are a bunch of movie lists on letterboxd that are a lot more comprehensive

ps. since this is a pretty random selection, some are more heavy than others, so definitely proceed with caution (for example early Gregg Araki movies can be.. A lot lmao)

#a lot of these are super basic but hopefully there are some new things to discover #also wish this list was more diverse so that's something i'll be working on in the future #if anyone has more recs feel free to add xoxo #asks #anon

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theradioghost · 5 years ago

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hey, can i pester you for some podcast recs? something with a good dose of humour and not too many episodes to catch up on. a sprinkle of queer romance would be a nice bonus. my fave so far is tsco starship iris, and i also loved greater boston, wooden overcoats, the bright sessions and caravan. and thanks always for all your great recs! you’ve brought many hours of joy into my life :)

We Fix Space Junk -- Two intergalactic repairpeople -- a knowledgeable cyborg veteran and a former socialite on the run -- travel the universe meeting people and fixing things at the behest of the terrifying intergalactic corporation they’re trying to work off their debts to. Hilarious British sci-fi sitcom featuring Evil Space Capitalism, many many wonderful AI characters, and an absolutely delightful teenage space wasp-human-cow hybrid princess who is probably off accomplishing her grandiose special destiny somewhere offscreen while the main characters deal with things like their bosses possibly trying to kill them (again).

Death by Dying -- People have a tendency to die in odd ways in the small town of Crestfall, Idaho. Luckily the town also has an Obituary Writer, an eccentric and nameless but impeccably stylish fellow whose closest friend is the Angel of Death, and who has a knack for solving murders even though that’s definitely not his job description. Throw in walrus haikus, extremely rude ravens, Something Mysterious And Malevolent Lurking In The Dark Woods Outside Of Town, disappearing childhood homes, silent nuns, ghost bicycles, and three man-eating cats, and you get something like a delightful cross between Wooden Overcoats and Lemony Snicket. (Also, OW is peak Canonically Bisexual Dumbass.)

Less is Morgue -- Riley is a paranoid, reclusive teenager with a fondness for conspiracy theories who lives in their parents’ basement. They’re also a predatory ghoul who feeds on human flesh. Evelyn is a cheerful, outgoing young woman with questionable tastes in media. She’s also a ghost, ever since she was killed by a falling stage light at a Nickelback concert 16 years ago. And since Riley dug up and ate Evelyn’s corpse, they’re roommates! Will they ever manage to record a coherent episode of their podcast without something going ridiculously wrong and/or Riley eating one of the guests? Probably not!

Victoriocity -- The steampunk buddy-cop comedy-mystery thriller you never knew you needed but definitely do! Featuring Inspector Fleet, a grouchy, extremely driven policeman looking for the murderer of the Empire’s greatest inventor, and Clara Entwhistle, an even more driven and unfailingly upbeat rookie journalist who has just arrived in the island-spanning, bizarre cityscape of alt-history Even Greater London. Come for some of my favorite sarcastic British narration since Adams and Pratchett, stay for characters-are-begrudgingly-forced-to-work-together-until-they-come-to-genuinely-and-deeply-care-about-one-another-as-friends trope. (Also for Tom “Eric Chapman” Crowley as the aforementioned grumpy detective.)

Quid Pro Euro -- From one of the other leads of Wooden Overcoats, this doesn’t have a typical plot as such but has made me laugh so hard I pulled a muscle despite the fact that I know nothing about the EU. Which is what this near-surreal, Look Around You-style comedy is about: Felix Trench’s vision of a simultaneously hilarious and terrifying alternate European Union, seen from the perspective of a serious of educational tapes from the ‘90s predicting what the EU would look like in the 21st century. It’s hard to describe this show in any way that does it justice, but it’s incredibly funny.

Time:Bombs -- A miniseries by the exalted creators of Wolf 359, which (because they are madmen) was written, recorded, and produced in the space of one week. Also, a comedy about an NYC bomb retrieval squad on New Year’s Eve, most of whom are just trying to get through the night while their leader attempts to break a record for most bombs cleared before the calendar ticks over. Chaos and hilarity ensure.

Superstition -- Wisecracking, bi, Jewish, definitely-a-private-eye-just-don’t-check-her-qualifications Jacqueline St. James receives a message from her father, which is weird, because her parents disappeared years ago. Following the trail leads Jack to Superstition, Arizona, a town in the middle of the desert where everyone’s got secrets, assorted ghosts/monsters/cryptids harrass the locals, and the missing persons rate is the highest in the nation. As a protagonist Jack is Looking For Trouble And If She Cannot Find It She Will Create It, so while Superstition isn’t a comedy per se, it’s got a fair share of laughs and is also just so, so excellent in general.

Standard Docking Procedure -- A self-declared hopepunk scifi workplace comedy about the somewhat dysfunctional staff of Pseudopolis Station, effectively a high-tech interstellar truck stop. It’s funny and heartwarming, nothing truly bad happens, and Julia Schifini is there.

Solutions to Problems -- A morally-questionable human named Janet who has defintely never done any illegal time travel and an easygoing, physically indescribably alien who likes to go by Loaf host an intergalactic advice podcast. Are you tired of your species’ insistence on solving everything via ritual combat? Not sure how to talk to your partner about whether body-swapping has a place in your sex life? Dealing with being a superpowered teenager summoned into being by the collective will of an apocalyptic groupthink cult? Janet and Loaf have you covered! Provided that Janet’s on-and-off girlfriend, the AI who supplies the air they breathe, doesn’t kill them all first. Oddly heartfelt comedy in the form of a relationship advice radio show from the Space Future.

Middle:Below -- This show’s tagline is “Remember: bad things WILL happen,” and that is basically a lie. This is actually a short, incredibly heartwarming and frequently funny show about Taylor Quinn, the only human with the ability to pass between the land of the living (aka the Middle) and the land of ghosts (the Below). Meaning, of course, that the dead call on him to fix all their problems, with the help of a girl named Heather, a ghost named Gil, and a cat named Sans. (Also, some of the most comparatively wild live shows I’ve ever heard.)

Inn Between -- Ever wonder what fantasy characters get up to between adventures, during all that time they seem to spend at inns? This show skips all the adventuring, question, and action, instead focusing on the quiet moments between where what is Definitely Not A D&D Party meet and progress from bickering strangers brought together by circumstance to close-knit found family -- all at the inn, of course. (Lots of queer folks in here also, although there’s no romance at least in the first couple seasons.)

The Godshead Incidental -- A relatively new but very exciting and so far really enjoyable show!! Following a young woman who writes an advice column through her life in a familiar, and yet strange city where anyone might be a minor god -- your editor, your landlord, that weird guy on the street who was shouting about how he’s the God of Memory and you got into a fight with him and now you keep forgetting everything? Also, your apartment is full of pigeons now because you found out the aforementioned landlord is secretly the god of doorknobs and he’s panicking. Good luck! (Starring Ishani Kanetkar, aka Arkady from Starship Iris!)

Gal Pals Present: Overkill -- Madison, a middle schooler at a Girl Scout camp, agrees to play a game with a somewhat tastelessly bright-pink Ouija board. However, Madison doesn’t know that she’s a natural medium, and now sarcastic mid-2000s 19-year-old Aya Velasquez has joined the many ghosts who are for some reason haunting scenic Harding Park. Aya, however, will not rest until she can solve her own murder (and possibly get to know that other ghost girl a bit better, who says romance has to stop when you’re dead?). Absolutely hilarious writing of a narrator who is almost definitely wearing spectral Uggs during the entire show.

Dark Ages -- The Rivercliffe Museum of Mostly Natural History is one of the finest museums anywhere! Or it would be, if anyone ever actually visited it. Or maybe if the staff weren’t a disastrous and dysfunctional collection of criminals, weirdos, wannabe immortals, idiot bisexuals who can’t just admit they like each other, and one extremely uptight elf with no people skills. Also, it would probably help if the legendary and fearsome Dark Lord, finally returned from his millennia of dormancy to complete his prophesied conquest of the world, wasn’t hanging around watching the chaos unfold because they’ve got his crown on display. (Fantasy workplace comedy with a theme song that did not need to go that hard?)

Brimstone Valley Mall -- It’s mid-December 1999, and at one mall in South Central Pennsylvania, a group of demons are going about their evil work -- namely, working at various dinky kiosks and restaurants, hoping of achieving every demon’s dream of getting to work at Hot Topic, trying not to do too much evil because Earth is way more fun than Hell and no one wants to get promoted back home, and preparing for their band's triumphant opening performance at the upcoming Y2K party. Just one problem: their lead singer is missing. Another absolute masterwork from The Whisperforge.

Arden -- 10 years ago, Hollywood starlet Julie Capsom vanished into the woods of northern California, leaving behind a car containing a human torso that may or may not have belonged to one Ralph Montgomery. Now, private eye Brenda Bentley and reporter Bea Casely, both of whom were among the first at the scene and both of whom have their own very strong opinions on the case, are setting out to solve the mystery on their true crime podcast, Arden. Providing, of course, they can stop arguing with each other long enough to solve it. (Or, a not-really-parody-but-definitely-comedy “true crime” podcast where the crime is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet -- and even knowing that, it’s still a genuine mystery with twists and a surprise ending! -- and the hosts are wlw Beatrice and Benedick from Much Ado About Nothing. In other words, it’s perfect. Season 2 is upcoming soon and is adapting Hamlet!!)

Alba Salix/The Axe and Crown -- Another high fantasy workplace sitcom, this one a medical comedy about the titular not-very-personable witch who runs the kingdom’s House of Healing and the various shenanigans she gets into, between her somewhat scatterbrained sister and brother-in-law the king and queen and her assistants, an overly-whimsical fairy and a wannabe monk forced to do community service. The same feed contains The Axe and Crown, a spinoff set in the same world that manages to simultaneously be a sitcom about the staff of a local pub trying to stave off foreclosure and come up with schemes to beat their business rivals, and a heartfelt story about gentrification and recovery starring a gay veteran with PTSD? Which is possibly one of my favorite podcasts? (Also contains one of the most unbelievable crossover cameos possible: Leon Stamatis.)

The Adventures of Sir Rodney the Root -- Also a high fantasy comedy! When a witch transforms heroic Sir Rodney into a small piece of wood, his closest companion Sir Gilbert must set out to cure him by collecting several highly powerful and dangerous relics, accompanied by a snarky dwarfen thief, an imperious princess, a slightly creepy human child raised by fairies, a picky elf sorcerer, a dead unicorn possessed by the ghost of a stoner, and a bard who breaks the fourth wall too much for his own good. So far as I can tell, nobody is straight.

The Amelia Project -- A dark comedy about a secret organization that helps people fake their deaths. Which is honestly a pretty full summary, barring the two important points that 1. this show contains possibly the most continuity-warping crossover event of all time (it’s the center point of this absolutely chaotic diagram), and 2. in one episode Felix Trench plays a character named Bartholomew Fuckface Chucklepants Knucklecracker.

#podcast recs #bobbie recommends things #yujacha #asks #my posts

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vegangiftsuk13 · 4 years ago

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exxar1 · 4 years ago

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Episode 11: New Believer, New Faith, and a New Vow

2/7/2021

- 1 -

Good morning! It’s a beautiful Sunday here in Las Vegas. I have much to talk about so I’m just going to get right into it.

It’s hard to believe we’re already a full month into the new year. This year for me has been very rewarding thus far. For starters, I have had no trouble keeping up with resolutions 1 and 4. (For a refresher, you can scroll back through my previous posts to the one from New Year’s Eve.) I have found time each day to read my Bible and pray, and I have had little difficulty in maintaining a pleasant attitude and a smile in my daily encounters with my co-workers and customers. As expected, though, that latter one has been tested a few times by the occasional sour apples that woke up on the wrong side of the bed. But I’ve surprised myself every time by my patience and my ability to keep a calm and pleasant demeanor. (Those of you who have known me for a long time will understand how truly remarkable that is for me.) It’s simply another testament to the power of God to change our basic attitudes when we are willing to let Him.

I’ve also made great strides in resolution #3, and that’s where I’m going to spend the bulk of my time on this post.

Have you ever sought something – therapy, a particular medication, advice from a friend or colleague – thinking that it might help with one problem, only to be pleasantly surprised that one, the result helped in many other ways you hadn’t anticipated; and two, that the change/outcome/counseling exceeded your initial expectations by such a great magnitude that you couldn’t believe you hadn’t sought this help long ago? That feeling has been with me for over three weeks now, and it’s only getting better with each session.

One of my first tasks in tackling resolution #3 was to consult a pastor on this issue of homosexuality and the Bible. I needed to know what God really said in His Word on this controversial topic, and since I have yet to find a home church here in Las Vegas the only pastor that I am casually acquainted with is Mark Sjostrom of the church in which I was born and raised back in Twin Falls, Idaho.

For those of you unfamiliar with Twin Falls or this particular church, allow me to forge a brief rabbit trail here to give you a short history. Grace Baptist Church was founded in 1975, and, back then, it was just a one-story, oblong, red-bricked building, its main auditorium forming a bubble at one end, at the intersection of Eastland Drive and Falls Avenue on the eastern edge of town. It’s still that same building today, only now there’s a massive, two-story gymnasium/classroom on the other side of the back parking lot, and a third, smaller, two-room annex that sits behind the gym. The first of those latter two structures was needed in the early eighties when the church launched its own private school, Twin Falls Christian Academy. I was in kindergarten when the gymnasium was under construction. I have many memories of watching my dad and some of the other men in church up on the scaffolds, putting together the walls, while I waited for my mom to pick me up after school, which was held in the various Sunday school rooms in the church. A few years later, I would be attending high school in the classrooms above that gym.

In the years since I have grown and left Twin Falls, I have come back to that church on the occasional Sunday morning worship service when I’m home for a vacation visit. I’ve always had mixed feelings every time I set foot beyond the threshold of its main doors (see my previous posts about my struggles during my teen years.) It’s the same feeling you get when you come back to something that is at once familiar and strangely comforting, but also brings with it unpleasant memories and the pain of old wounds that have never quite healed.

Grace’s pastor since 2005 has been Mark Sjostrom (pronounced ‘shos-trum’), and I didn’t know him that well when I decided to consult him on this issue. Our only interaction thus far had been a brief handshake and a greeting after those sporadic Sunday morning worship services, and I wasn’t sure he would even remember me when I nervously texted him a brief ‘Hello’ a month ago. He responded within a few minutes, and I re-introduced myself and then gave a short explanation of what I needed. We agreed on a time and date for a phone call, and I emailed him the next day with a longer explanation of what I needed to talk about with him.

That letter was a somewhat detailed account of what most of you are already familiar with: my struggle in high school with keeping my secret of being gay while trying to fit in socially and eventually declaring myself an Atheist after being expelled from school my senior year a month before graduation. It was probably about 2 pages, and I was now very nervous after clicking the ‘Send’ button. I suppose now is a good time to tell you something else about me.

I have been one of ‘those people’ for all of my adult life. You know who I’m talking about: the people who silently judge the other customers in the book store who pause to browse the Self Help section; or the people who quietly scoff when anyone talks about their latest therapy session with their friends or coworkers at lunch in the break room. I’m glad I don’t need self-help or therapy, I’ve always thought. But, then again, good for them, I guess. I’m glad I have all my issues worked out, and I’m a stable, normal adult. I’ve never had any issues that were so bad I needed to get help from an armchair counselor’s latest best seller or a psychiatrist’s couch.

Hhmmm. My life, lately, has been chock full of irony.

When the time came to dial Pastor Sjostrom’s number my level of nervousness was up to a ten out of ten on the anxiety scale. I hadn’t felt like this since high school when it was opening night of our Agatha Christie play, and I was one of the main cast. I had prepared a detailed outline of what I wanted to discuss, and, after a few initial pleasantries, Mark quickly put me at ease. I was pleasantly caught off guard by his relaxed, casual personality. I found immediately that he was very easy to talk to, and my anxiety level dropped to a ‘three’ in the first five minutes. Pastor Sjostrom is definitely one of those people who has found the right calling. His warm, personable demeanor made me feel like I was talking to an old friend over coffee at Starbucks, and after about ten minutes of getting to know one another, he brought the conversation back around to my letter.

Here’s where my second surprise occurred. Mark was bluntly honest. I had told him that I believed I was saved in 1985, when I was seven, after the evening service of one of our church’s mid-summer week long revival meetings. “Neal,” Mark said rather pointedly, “after reading your description of your life after high school, I gotta say that it doesn’t sound like you were saved. Your behavior and your atheism doesn’t reflect the change that is described in the Bible.” He went on to explain that salvation is a change brought about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the new believer. There is a desire to learn more about God and His Word. There is a desire to serve him and to live one’s life in surrender to Him.

I had to pause and think about that. And, doggone it, you know what? He was right. And the reason I knew that was because I had only to look at the last four months of my life, even more so since I had returned from Christmas vacation. That desire – that hunger – to know God had never been present in my life until September 17, 2020. That was the night I surrendered to Christ in an awkward, fumbling prayer on the way home from work. Ever since, I have had nothing but a desire to read my Bible and change my life. I told pastor this, and he agreed. It was evident now that I was truly saved. That evidence was lacking in my youth and my adult life up to this point.

My third major surprise of that initial counseling session – yes, that was what is was – was when pastor told me he was assigning me homework for our next weekly conversation. He wanted me to read the book of 1 John. He explained that we would eventually get to the issue of homosexuality, but that we needed to cover this ground first. I agreed to the assignment, and we hung up. I glanced at the clock in the upper corner of my computer screen. We had talked for almost an hour. I immediately reached for my Bible and opened it to 1 John. I read the whole book in about ten minutes.

1 John is a primer for the new believer. John states clearly and succinctly what makes a Christian a Christian. Chapter 1:9 was immediately familiar to me from my Sunday School days: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” So was chapter 2:9: “He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness, even until now.” John goes to say in chapter 5:2: “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God, and keep His commandments.” And, finally, verse 20 of that same chapter: “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.”

Yep. All of that book made perfect sense. Part of that was because I had absorbed so much of God’s Word in my youth that it had sat in the deep recesses of my brain for all of my life, and much of it had begun floating to the surface in the last several months – like debris from an ancient wartime submarine that has been recently dislodged from its ocean grave. Except that these artifacts – Bible verses, fragments of sermons, some of Mr. Walker’s proverbs from Bible class – were not dirty, soggy, disgusting relics. They were bits of priceless treasure, and I’ve been rediscovering them in dribs and drabs ever since.

I have had three sessions with Pastor Sjostrom, and they are each the highlight of my week. I very nearly broke down after hanging up from our first talk. I felt a combination of immense relief, peace and calm. Not to be overly melodramatic, but it was if something had dislodged in my very soul, like a sliver of wood just beneath the skin that has never quite come all the way out. I realized with immediate clarity that I was getting far more than just a pastor’s opinion on a particular issue for my book. I had stumbled on to something else, something I needed far more: spiritual counseling and guidance for my new life as a child of God.

I am a new believer.

That seems so strange to say out loud. I was raised in the church. I had at least a third of the Bible memorized by the time I was twelve. I knew all the major stories from the Old Testament – the creation of the world; God’s covenant with Abraham; Jacob, Esau and Isaac; Joseph sold into slavery into Egypt and God’s eventual deliverance of the Israelites from their captivity there; the introduction of the ten commandments and the Mosaic Law; Esther, Ruth, King Saul, David, the Book of Psalms, the prophet Isaiah – I knew all of it by heart by the end of my days in elementary school. Same for the New Testament – the birth of Christ; all of His teachings and parables; His death on the cross; His resurrection after three days; the founding of His church after His ascension back to Heaven – it was all as familiar to me by the time I walked away from high school as the mathematical precepts of basic addition, subtraction, division and multiplication.

I had assumed all this time that I was still saved. I thought I had really, genuinely believed in Jesus as my savior that long ago night in 1985 when I was seven years old. And maybe I did. But, for whatever reason, the Holy Spirit had not come into me back then. I was not truly saved. (This is perhaps worthy of a more detailed discussion and analysis later on down the road.) Whatever the case, I am most definitely a new believer now. The Holy Spirit is alive and well within me, and I have only a single desire and purpose: to know the God that created me, and to serve him with all my heart, soul and mind.

Pastor and I did discuss my homosexuality issue in our second talk, and that, along with the extracurricular reading I’ve been doing on this topic, has enabled me to finally reconcile what I couldn’t in my teen years when I first fought with this problem.

- 2 -

If I am gay, and God – through His written word – has condemned what I am as a sin, how can I be His child and serve Him as he commanded me to do? That’s the question I’ve been wrestling with anew for the last few months. I began this new journey in last September with the premise that I was born gay. I’ve believed that my whole adult life. I proceeded from that assumption through all of my reading and research these last few weeks. But if God made me this way, why would He then condemn as an abomination the very thing that I am? Is He not contradicting Himself? How can this be?

Pastor Sjostrom asked that very question in our second talk. He then went on to answer it by explaining that my unnatural desire for the same sex was a cause of the Fall, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This is what led their descendants to the sins of idolatry, fornication, sexual perversion, and many, many others. Yes, I was born gay. But that’s not how God made me. There’s a very distinct difference.

His explanation corroborated what I have come to discover in the last couple weeks as I’ve read Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church from the Counterpoints series. Author and editor Preston Sprinkle gathered four prominent Christian authors, scholars, and theologians to discuss this issue – two for and two against. I will not go into great detail of what these authors debate and discuss, mainly for the sake of page and time, but also because this issue is not anywhere near as complicated as it seems.

All four of the contributing authors to the Two Views book have used the following Bible verses/passages as the foundation of their arguments:

1.) The creation story in Genesis 1 and 2.

2.) Genesis 19:4-11 (Sodom & Gomorrah)

3.) Leviticus 18:22 & 20:13

4.) 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

5.) 2 Corinthians 5:17

6.) Romans 1:18-32, emphasis on verses 26-28

7.) 1 Timothy 1:9-10

Those authors have also drawn from extra-Biblical material such as the writings of Philo, a Jewish historian who was a contemporary of the apostle Paul; the Apocrypha; the writings of Saint Augustine; and various other books – most written in the last 50 years – on sociology, sexuality and anthropology in the ancient world.

Here’s an example of one of one of the arguments for the church’s endorsement of homosexuality. One of Two Views’ contributors, Megan Defranza argues that there were many people in Biblical times that were born with no distinct male or female genitalia or other defining sexual characteristics. These “intersex individuals” were often referred to as eunuchs by the people of that time, and many of them were used as sex slaves. Megan claims that Genesis 1 is “…a theological account describing creation in broad categories, not an exact scientific inventory of all of God’s good creatures.” She goes on to say that Adam and Eve were not the exclusive, ideal models for all of man and womankind. They were, rather, just the broad categories; that the birth of eunuchs and other such of types of intersex people prove that God would welcome the church’s acceptance of gays, lesbians and transgenders since they have been born that way, and their sexual desires are natural to them. She claims that God was not condemning the eunuchs and other similar people in those verses/passages I listed above. Those condemnations were for the ones who had turned deliberately turned away from God to worship idols and indulge their sinful lusts.

There’s a lot more detail to Megan’s argument, especially regarding the eunuchs and their forced sexual slavery to their male masters, but it’s not worth going into here. The other three contributing authors give similar arguments, citing external sources in addition to scripture, to support their particular view. Wesley Hill and Stephen Holmes, the two that are opposed to the church’s condoning of homosexuality and gay marriage, give the stronger of the four arguments. Two Views opens with Megan’s and William Loader’s essays (the other author who falls on the affirming and open acceptance side of this debate), but by the time I reached the end of their arguments, I already knew which side of this issue I was going to fall on.

Wesley Hill and Stephen Holmes – as well as Pastor Sjostrom – present a much stronger, sounder case for why the Christian church, no matter the denomination, should be condemning ALL forms of homosexuality as clearly as God does. My own Bible reading and prayer showed me this after only a few weeks. I don’t really need to read all the other books on this topic to know the truth. To be completely honest, I had a pretty good idea of what the end of this journey would look like before I even started it. All the verses from Genesis, Leviticus, Romans, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, and 1st Timothy that deal with this specific issue are quite clear. It is stated over and over: homosexuality is a sin in the eyes of God. Paul stated it best in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11:

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

That word “effeminate” in the KJV is translated from the original Greek word that Paul used: arsenokoitai. This is a compound word: arsen – male; koite – bed. “Male bedders”, in other words; those men who sleep with other men. In the NIV translation, the word “effeminate” is replaced with the phrase “men who sleep with other men”. The only other passage that Paul uses that word is in 1 Timothy 1:8-10 (NKJV):

“But we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, knowing this: that the law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless and insubordinate, for the ungodly and for sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, for fornicators, for sodomites, for kidnappers, for liars, for perjurers, and if there is any other thing that is contrary to sound doctrine…”

The meaning of these two passages is quite clear: those that practice any or all of those sins listed will not inherit the kingdom of God. They are not true believers and followers of Christ. And thus, any church that not only allows its homosexual members to remain in their sin, but also performs gay marriage, is not a true church of God.

And such were some of you.

God has commanded those that follow Him and declare His name to turn from their wickedness and be transformed. Those that believe on His name and repent of their sins will no longer practice those sins listed in the passages I quoted above. That’s the meaning of the phrase, “…and such were some of you.” Well, I have definitely been transformed. I can feel the Holy Spirit working in me. And, because of that, I have no other choice. If I am to be faithful to my Lord and Creator, if I surrender myself completely to His will, I must take a vow to turn away from my sin nature. I cannot indulge in the “lusts of the flesh”, as Paul says in Romans, if I am to call myself a true Christian. I am now a child of God, and His will alone must govern all I say and do.

But, even more important than those passages I listed and quoted above, is the book of Genesis, chapter two. God created Adam first and then He decided it wasn’t good for man to be alone. So God made the woman out of Adam’s rib, and he called her ‘Eve”. Then, in verse twenty-four, God said, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” This chapter, more than any other passage in the Bible, clearly and explicitly demonstrates what God had intended from the very beginning. The only natural desire of the flesh was for the opposite sex: man for woman and woman for man. That was God’s original plan.

Unfortunately for us, Adam and Eve did not resist the serpent’s temptation to eat of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. After the Fall, their perfect, pure natures were corrupted by sin, and that corruption was passed unto their children, and their children’s children. Part of that corruption was the perversion of the natural, normal sexual desire. Men lusted after men and women for women. Even though the subsequent passages in Genesis which describe mankind’s deplorable state before the Great Flood never state it specifically, it is not unreasonable to assume that more than just homosexuality was a problem. Bestiality, pedophilia, rape and incest were very likely abundant among the first few generations of man, as well as the worship of false idols and complete rejection of God. Why else would God have felt the need to punish his creation by wiping them from the face of the Earth, save for Noah and his family?

As the old saying goes, ‘God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve’. I’ve always hated that pithy, snarky retort whenever I had to defend my sexuality to anyone who tried to tell me I was living in sin. But it’s true. God created only Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve; not Melissa and Eve; not Adam, Eve, and some other non-gender, non-binary person.

Just Adam and Eve.

Man and woman were joined in holy matrimony and, until the Fall, they lived in perfect peace and union with their Lord and Creator. Anything that deviates from that original, holy standard that God still demands of His children today, is a sin. That includes homosexuality, bestiality, pedophilia, incest, idolatry and devil worship, to name a few. Anyone that willfully practices or engages in any of those things and does not repent cannot call himself a true believer in Christ. Nor can any church that not only openly endorses homosexuality but also performs gay marriage can call themselves a true church of Christ.

So then, what now? If I accept that my sexuality is a byproduct of my sin nature, and that God, in fact, did not make me this way, how can I best serve Him? I’m still gay. That hasn’t changed. (And, yes, I’m sure. I’m watching last week’s episode of The Resident as I write this. Matt Czuchry and Manish Dayal are among the best male eye candy on TV right now.) I still desire a physical relationship with another man. (Either of the aforementioned actors would be especially nice.) But that desire – as well as the act – is a sin. God has made that clear in his Word. After some more talk with Pastor Sjostrom, I finally came to an answer – or, at least, part of one.

- 3 -

I mistakenly assumed that after I asked Christ into my heart, after I surrendered myself to God, that my sin nature would be transformed. I thought what many torn, conflicted gay Christians and their family have thought: with enough prayer, genuine repentance, and strong faith I would no longer be a homosexual. God would change my unnatural desire, and I would be sexually attracted to women instead of men. I would throw out all the symbols of my gay pride that I had collected over the years – t-shirts, bracelets, baseball caps, the rainbow colored Apple watch bands – and I would begin my new life as a heterosexual man. 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” Yes, it would be hard at first, but God and I would make this work, glory hallelujah amen!

But that’s not how salvation works. Yes, there was a transformation, but not quite the kind that I was expecting. It’s hard to put into words exactly what I felt in the weeks and months following that quiet prayer on that car ride home from work late the night of September 17, 2020. I knew for sure that something was different. To begin with, there was an almost instant peace and calm that settled over my entire being. All the anxiety, the fear, and the worry about the state of the world around me that had been plaguing me for many weeks melted away. In its place was a quiet, firm assurance that, no matter what happened from then on, I was in the hands of God. He would take care of me.

And then, in the days and weeks that followed that moment of salvation, I began to feel more than just spiritual peace and tranquility. The first was a hunger – an insatiable, ravenous desire to read my Bible. I had only the app on my iPad, and I started with Genesis 1. Every night, before bed, I would read two or three chapters. And then I would pray. It was awkward and nothing like the prayers that I heard time and again from my dad or my teachers in high school or my pastor back then. I stumbled over my words, I repeated myself, I kept forgetting what I wanted to say. And I still felt weird doing it. It was like I was talking to myself. But I kept praying nonetheless.

Gradually, as Christmas loomed closer and closer, and the more I read my Bible and talked to God, I felt something stronger inside of me. But it wasn’t anything physical, like an emotion. It was…something else, something in my soul. I imagined this new feeling as a few drops of red ink falling into a bowl of clear water. At first, the drops fall straight down, coloring only a little bit of the water. But then the ink begins to slowly spread, crimson tendrils that stretch outwards, eventually turning the whole water into the color of blood. That’s what it felt like was happening inside of me. My soul – the very thing that made me me was being changed from the inside out. And it felt damn good!

It was after my Christmas vacation, after ten days of rest and relaxation with my family in Idaho, that I noticed an even bigger change. When I returned to the daily grind of my two jobs, I realized that my whole attitude – and, by extension, my whole outlook on life – had been transformed. I was no longer the angry, anxious, frustrated, fearful man that was always pissed about something – usually the people who were my customers. Before, I was short tempered, impatient, always inwardly complaining whenever those around me were being difficult or annoying me in some way. Now, however, I was at peace. The difference in my new attitude from the old was as glaring as night from day. I greeted my customers with a smile. It was no longer an effort for me to be patient with the difficult ones. Nor did I feel the need to rant and rage on social media about the problems of the world, as I had been doing practically non-stop before I became saved.

It was like being wrapped inside joy, as if joy was something tangible – like a big, soft, warm blanket fresh from the dryer. I had to constantly check my reflection because I was sure I had a giant, stupid grin on my face all day long. And that feeling only got stronger the more I continued to read my Bible – now an actual book that I had bought from Amazon – and pray. That, too, was getting better. I no longer stumbled over my words or forgot what I wanted to say. The hunger to know God, to build a new relationship with my Creator, overshadowed everything else in my life. I lost interest in many of the things that had once taken up all my time, like watching TV or playing video games. All I wanted to do every night when I got home from a busy day was to open God’s Word and keep reading.

But there was one thing that didn’t change during all of that wonderful transformation. I’m still gay. The desire for that sin is still there, as strong and lustful as ever. Everything else about me seems different. I am, indeed, a new creature in Christ. So why am I still gay? Why is this particular thorn still lodged firmly deep in my flesh?

I still don’t have an answer. But I do have a theory. The transformation of the new believer in Christ is not like wiping the old operating system of your ten year old iMac. With a computer you can install a whole new operating system that’s free of the bugs, viruses and malware that plagued the old system. The hardware is still the same old hardware, but the software is brand new. Your computer has been transformed. It performs and operates like a new machine.

But we humans are not machines. We are creatures born of the Fall. Being saved in Christ has made us like new, but the old self – the old, corrupt nature – is still there. The old operating system hasn’t been wiped away. Rather, the new OS is now installed, and the two systems are at war with one another. Why is that, I wonder? Why doesn’t God simply transform our sin nature by wiping it way when He fills us with the Holy Spirit? Wouldn’t that be easier – and more complete – than forcing us to constantly battle our old selves in order to remain faithful and obedient to Him?

The honest answer is, I don’t know.

What I do know is that God, in His infinite wisdom, has chosen not to remove this particular thorn in my flesh. I am still gay.

The thorn in my flesh. Yeah, that phrase sounds familiar. In fact, it’s been rolling around in the back of my brain for several weeks now.

In 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, Paul writes of the “thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan sent to buffet me.” Those four verses, more than any other Bible passages that I’ve read and also read about, have continued to echo within me ever since the beginning of this journey. Many pastors and scholars agree that that the thorn Paul speaks of was of a spiritual nature, not a physical. Paul says that he “…besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.”

The thorn in my flesh.

What if I am in the same seat as Paul? What if my sexuality is the ‘thorn’ in my own flesh?

I think that part of the reason that God doesn’t just snap his fingers and wipe away our old self is because, without those old, sinful desires and temptations, we wouldn’t continually come back to Him for mercy, grace and forgiveness. It might have taken a little longer for me to surrender if the outside world hadn’t melted down last year, but I have no doubt now that God has always been working in my life, and He wants my love, worship and obedience. My homosexuality is a reminder from Him that I have a choice: I can give in to my sin nature and indulge my own desires, or I can turn from the flesh, take up my cross daily, and follow Him.

God knows us better than we know ourselves. He knows our sin nature, and He knows that when times are good, when everything is going our way, we often forget Him – just as the Israelites did over and over in the Old Testament. We get wrapped up in our daily lives, turn away from Him, and give our worship to false idols instead; or we just pay Him our weekly rituals and sacrifice on Sunday, and then put aside our Bibles until the following week. But it’s during the times of adversity, when God allows the trials and tribulations of life to afflict us, that we come to Him. We seek Him because He is our only source of comfort and peace. The storms in our lives remind us that God alone can save us, can heal us. Our afflictions draw us closer to Him. And, if we remain faithful to Him, there is much reward for our devotion and service. When the storm has passed, we often find a rainbow.

The rainbow was God’s covenant with Noah and his descendants that God would never again destroy the world with a flood. In our modern world the homosexual revolution of fifty years ago took the rainbow as a symbol of pride and diversity. When I entered my adult life as an out and proud gay man, I, too, adopted the rainbow as a symbol of pride in myself. I vowed to live my life on my terms, and I wouldn’t be cowered or ashamed into silence about who I was, of what I had been born as. But, of course, I have renounced all of that since becoming a new child of God. It is NOT my life, but His as a gift to me. I live now in complete service to Him, and Him alone.

But I’m not quite ready to throw away my rainbow bracelet that I wear on my right wrist every day. It is still a symbol to me – and to everyone I meet in daily life – but not the one that it used to be. I have found a new place beneath the rainbow created by God in the aftermath of that flood in Genesis. The peace and reconciliation I have long sought has been found at last, and the rainbow is a symbol of both my old life and my new one in God’s service. I don’t find that conflicting at all, just as I have no problem calling myself a gay Christian. Until such time as God, in his perfect timing and wisdom, decides to change my unnatural desire completely, I will always be a gay Christian, and the rainbow will be a sign of my personal covenant with Him.

The process of reconciling this issue, the spiritual traveling and soul searching that I have done over the last few months, has shown me clearly that God is my Lord and Savior. He has allowed this affliction so that I would do the work that I needed to reconcile what appeared to be a crisis of faith. I wouldn’t have experienced personal growth in my life – and my faith – without this conflict and pain. Yes, it has been painful. Peeling back the faded scars of old wounds wasn’t not all pleasant. I had to go back to that fifteen-year-old kid and have a long talk with him. (See section 5 of this post.) I wrote letters to my parents and my three brothers, apologizing for the way I treated them all those years ago. I have recognized how selfishly I have been living my adult life, and the pride of my old nature has screamed fiercely whenever I bow my knee and my heart every morning in prayer. There is now a fight within me – the old nature vs. the new self – that will never let up until I die. And, sometimes, that fight will be painful. And yes, I already know that there are times when I will fail, when I will give in to the temptation to break my new vow with God. But that failure is not as important to God as whether or not I stay in the fight. And I will stay. I’m in this for the long haul, and I know without a shred of doubt that God is on my side. He wants me to succeed.

Hallelujah, amen!

- 4 -

Most of you have seen my post on Facebook from three days ago. My only answer from God to this twenty-four-year-old conflict has been a call to celibacy. Until such time as he chooses to change my sin nature, to change my unnatural desire into a natural one, I have made the following vow to Him:

I take a vow of celibacy before God; that I have surrendered my life and my will unto Him; that I will not give in to the temptations of my sinful flesh; that I recognize my homosexual desire as a sin in His eyes, an abomination caused by the Fall; that He has saved my soul from eternal damnation, and I owe him nothing less than my whole heart, soul and mind.

I take this vow on the 3rd of February, 2021.

Amen.

- 5 -

I read a long time ago – probably in a textbook somewhere in college – that one of the tools therapists and psychiatrists use in their counseling of patients is to have their patients write a letter to their past selves. As I mentioned earlier in this post, I wrote letters to my family to apologize for how I had wronged them in the past. After some more thought and deliberation I decided to write one more letter, this time to that fifteen year old kid that used to be me.

At first, I thought this a stupid idea. I mean, how much more clichéd can one get? Plus, I’ve already treaded into dangerously melodramatic waters in this post. Is yet one more emotional, sappy passage needed?

Ehhhh…yes and no. Turns out, I had a lot more to say to myself than I thought at first, and, son-of-a-gun, I did feel remarkably better afterwards. Guess there was some genuine, therapeutic value to this little exercise after all.

So…here it is.

Hello.

It's been a long time.

Yes, I see you. You've been there all along, but only recently have I begun to really see you. You've been with me my whole adult life, affecting me, shaping me in ways I never realized until now. I thought I left you behind when I left high school. At various times in my life since, I've judged you, shunned you, tried to erase you, or just simply ignored you. I could never understand why you never had the courage to speak up, to ask for help. There were a few adults – or even your friends – who would have very likely sympathized and tried to help you. All you had to do was say something! But you didn't. You kept your secret, protecting it, guarding it like Gollum with his precious ring. I was the one who eventually had to reveal the secret to those around me when I was old enough and no longer ashamed of what I was.

But now I realize that instead of judging you and blaming you, there's one thing that I should have done long ago. I never said, “Thank you.” Thank you for giving me the strength and courage to step into the world as a confident, independent adult. It was because of you, what you went through silently as a teenager, that I developed the strength and resolve to live my truth as an adult. It was because of you that I knew what I wanted in life. It was never my desire to just go with the flow, to blend into the crowd and do whatever everyone else was doing. I did my own thing. And yes, it would have been better if I had been living that truth within God's will, but God, in His infinite wisdom, decided not to work His will just yet. He chose to wait while I forged my own path.

Part of me wishes that I could go back in time and be the adult that you needed. I would have embraced you, told you that you weren't a mistake; that God loves you just the way you are, including being gay. And, deep down inside, you knew that you were loved. Your parents told you that every day. But you always had that sliver of doubt in the back of your mind.

“Would you still love me if you knew my secret? Would you still accept me if I was gay?”

I, the adult looking back at you across the gulf of years between us, know the answer to that is a resounding “Yes! They have always loved you, no matter what!”

Part of me also wonders how our life would have been different if you had reached out to the one person that understood what you were going through; the one that knew your pain – and your secret. It was He that made you, after all. What I can see so clearly now is that it never occurred to you to reach out to God. You only knew Him through the church, through your teachers, through your parents, through all the endless rules, and restrictions, and demands that they all placed on you. That's what you rebelled against. God, to you, was just a system, an institution that governed every corner of your life. That institution would never understand your secret, would never accept you for the real you.

But He was there all along. He was there on those nights when you cried yourself to sleep. You were struggling to understand your pain, to understand the turmoil inside you, but you didn't have the words or the wisdom or the experience to fully realize it all. All that you knew was anger, frustration and fear. But God understood you, and He was there in the darkness, crying with you.

I want so badly to be there now, to wrap you in my arms and wipe away your tears and tell you that everything will be okay. Because it will be. You can’t see it now, but things will get better. You will find a way through this, and you will emerge on the other side with a strength and resolve that you never knew you had within you. The rest of your life is an as-yet-unwritten map of joys and blessings, failures and setbacks, triumphs and successes that will make all of this suffering worthwhile. You will know happiness that you couldn’t dream of – most of it found within the family that you don’t understand or get along with now. (There are 10 nieces and nephews that think you’re the greatest uncle ever, for example.) God has a plan for you, and, like the father of the prodigal son, He will be there with open arms when you finally come back home. He will accept you, just as you are.

But all of that is for later. For now, just know this: the storm will pass, and there will be peace.

You will find your rainbow.

#christianity #life #personal growth #homosexuality #gay

2 notes · View notes

warrenkoles · 4 years ago

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Tbh, I grew up in the 2000s as well and never realised who Cher was until about a year and a half ago. Heard her sing so many times but never realised...

ahh sorry nonnie if you thought i was trying to say that everyone my age should know who she is or anything. i was making a joke about being a Baby Gay(TM) in the mid 2000s i’d watch stuff from the LOGO channel which was like the gay channel that at the time would play like queer as folk, etc. along with random little docuseries and LGBT films (which were mostly made for tv type movies but sometimes other stuff i rmbr my own private idaho ran a lot lol) and in those were a lot of Cher Is A Gay Icon type jokes and might play one of her songs in a drag lip syncing scene or s/t.

but everyone’s experiences are different of course and didn’t mean to imply otherwise

#anonymous #reply

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creepingsharia · 5 years ago

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The Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Students Association: What Americans Need to Know

A Short History of the Muslim Students’ Association in America

The first chapter of the MSA was founded way back in 1963 at the University of Illinois-Urbana/Champaign. It was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that most Americans would not even be remotely aware of for another half century.

Among the founders of the MSA in America was Hisham Al Talib, a man who would later go on to become a co-founder of the SAAR Foundation, an organization that was dissolved in 2000 when it became the target of an FBI investigation for providing funding to HAMAS, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Al Qaeda.

Another founder of the MSA was Jamal Barzinji, who, in 1991 was also the founder of the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Virginia. Dar al-Hijrah is perhaps most famous for being the mosque at which Nidal Malik Hasan (the Fort Hood shooter) worshipped under Anwar al-Awlaki, who later became the head of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (more on Awlaki shortly).

According to a 2008 New York Times report, right from the outset the MSA received its funding and direction from Saudi Arabia. The MSA was a product of the Saudi Wahhabi-run Muslim World League, a Saudi NGO with a history of ties to Jihadist terrorism. In fact, the MSA was the first effort in America by the Saudis to establish Islamic organizations around the world to promote Wahhabi Islam, the strain of Islam that would eventually give birth to Al Qaeda.

In other words, the MSA was founded and established in the USA by what should rightly be considered a hostile foreign power, namely Saudi Arabia.

MSA solicited donations for the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, whose assets the U.S. government seized in December 2001 because that organization was giving financial support to the terrorist group Hamas. MSA also has strong ties to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), a Saudi-based Islamic organization with chapters in 57 countries, including the US chapter, which was founded by Osama Bin Laden’s nephew. WAMY promotes jihad and anti-semitism and has raised funds for HAMAS.

Not only does the MSA have a troubling history, its members and leaders have included more than just a few jihadists:

• On October 22, 2000, Ahmed Shama, president of the UCLA Muslim Students Association, led a crowd of demonstrators at the Israeli consulate in chants of “Death to Israel!” and “Death to the Jews!”

• The University of Southern California MSA invited Taliban ambassador Sayyid Hashimi to speak on campus six months before 9/11.

• In 2003, University of Idaho MSA president Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, who had sought access to a chemical lab containing nuclear material, was ordered deported because he worked for the al Qaeda-tied Islamic Assembly of North America.

• In April 2003, FBI agents, who had secretly videotaped foreign student members of MSA who were illegally engaged in weapons training, raided the apartment of Hassan Alrefae and Jaber Al-Thukair, Arizona State’s MSA president and vice president, respectively.

• In June 2006, Ali Asad Chandia, who had served as president of the Montgomery College (Maryland) MSA in 1998 and 1999, was convicted on terror charges as part of a Northern Virginia jihad network; he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for three separate counts of conspiracy and material support to the Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

• Abdurahman Alamoudi, who served as MSA national president in 1982 and 1983, is currently serving a 23-year prison sentence for his extensive international terrorist activities, which included fundraising for al Qaeda.

• In February 2010, Aafia Siddiqui – a woman who had been captured in 2008 with explosives, deadly chemicals, and a list of New York City landmarks – was convicted of attempting to murder a U.S. Army captain while she was incarcerated and being interrogated by authorities at a prison in Afghanistan. Described variously as “al-Qaeda’s Mata Hari” and “Lady al-Qaeda,” Siddiqui had previously been a member of the MSA chapter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she studied neuroscience.

• Wael Hamza Julaidan, who served as president of the University of Arizona MSA in the mid-1980s, went on to become one of al Qaeda’s co-founders and its logistics chief. In September 2002, the U.S. government listed Julaidan as a specially designated global terrorist, identifying him as a close associate of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders, and as a director of the Rabita Trust, which had already been designated a terrorist finance entity that supported al-Qaeda.

• University of Idaho MSA president Sami Omar Al-Hussayen, who operated nearly a dozen Arabic-language websites for anti-American, pro-suicide-bombing clerics, was accused by federal authorities of using his academic studies as a cover for terrorist support activities. Al-Hussayen was deported to Saudi Arabia in June 2004 after agreeing to a deal with federal prosecutors.

• In December 2009, Howard University dental student Ramy Zamzam, who had served as the president of MSA’s D.C. Council, was arrested in Pakistan along with four other D.C.-area men (all of whom were also active in MSA). All five were charged with plotting to join the Jaish-e-Muhammed terrorist group with plans to attack U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan; all five were convicted in a Pakistani court in June 2010 and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.

• Syed Maaz Shah, secretary of the University of Texas-Dallas MSA chapter, was arrested in December 2006, for his involvement in paramilitary training at an Islamic campground, where he was preparing to join the Taliban in order to fight U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Shah was convicted on weapons charges in May 2007.

• Ziyad Khaleel, president of the Columbia College (Missouri) MSA, was a representative of the Islamic Association for Palestine (a Hamas front). He also registered and operated the English-language website for Hamas, and served as al Qaeda’s chief procurement agent in the United States during the 1990s. Among the items Khaleel purchased was a $7,500 satellite phone for Osama bin Laden. That phone, dubbed by intelligence authorities as the “jihad phone,” was used to plan the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings.

• Anwar Al-Awlaki served as president of the Colorado State University MSA in the early 1990s, and as chaplain of the George Washington University MSA in 2001. In Washington, DC, he delivered sermons that were attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers and by Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan. In 2002 Alwaki fled the U.S. for Yemen, where he developed ties to al Qaeda and reportedly played a role in the Fort Hood massacre of 2009, the failed Christmas Day underwear-bomber plot of 2009, and the attempted Times Square bombing of 2010.

• Carlos Bledsoe, aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, was a member of the MSA as a student at Tennessee State University in Nashville, TN. Bledsoe went on to receive terrorist training at a jihadist training camp in Yemen and returned to the US and murdered US Army Private Andy Long outside a Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting office on June 1, 2009.

• Abu Mansoor al-Amriki, aka Omar Hammami was an American-born member of al Shahab, a Somali Islamic militant group aligned with al Qaeda. Hammami served as president of the MSA chapter at the University of South Alabama.

• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would later go on to mastermind the September 11th terrorist attacks as the number 3 man in Al Qaeda, was a member of the MSA chapter at North Carolina A&T in 1986.

Given the history of the MSA right from the point of its founding, and the activities of its members and leaders in recent years in particular, there is every reason to be concerned about the MSA and anyone who was a leader in its ranks.

It is certainly not unreasonable to expect at least an explanation from Abdul El-Sayed of his affiliation with the MSA and disclosing any other Muslim Brotherhood organizations with which he is associated.

#Education #Sharia #Legal

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