2nd EDITION
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The main focus of Silent Gays is to help LGBT+ people who have experienced religious abuse, be it any form of rejection through to outright hostility as well as all forms of Christian ministry, demonic deliverance and "Sexual Orientation and Gender Identification Change Efforts" (SOGICE), which includes all forms of conversion therapy.
Silent Gays doesn't attempt to reconcile religious faith to our battles over sexual or gender identity, but rather empowers us to find our own unique spirituality.
Over the last few years we've been helping people through either personal contact, seminars and workshops and an online support group, as well as being an "online presence" with blogs and resources.
The COR Workbook is a culmination of extensive research and personal experience, providing a unique approach to working through the damage caused to LGBT+ people by religion.
It's presented as a course where participants work progressively through each chapter, completing application exercises and sharing in the support group.
This course doesn't "beat around the bush". It confronts head on the issues of sexual and gender identity, cultural and religious paradigms, religious abuse and even the foundations of faith itself.
It provides a practical way forward by helping to build self-worth, self-love and a different way to see ourselves, the world and spirituality.
This truly is a unique and challenging course!
The one off price of $15NZ gives you the Workbook as a pdf download, ready to print and assemble in a folder with room for your own notes and journaling. It also includes the lifetime membership to the COR Support group which is constantly monitored for safety and assistance, as well as providing regular articles, links and videos. You will also get free updated versions of the workbook when they are released through the support group.
Topics covered in the workbook:
Personal and Religious Paradigms
LGBT+ Sexuality and Gender
The Science
Conversion Therapy
The Impact of Religion
Mental Health and a Way Forward
Here's the Preface from the CORE Workbook:
In my memoirs “It’s Life Jim…” I talk about my own journey with spirituality, Christianity and sexuality. I share my deepest fears and passions – my longing to just be “normal” – my attempts to do whatever it takes to get “straight” – and my subsequent unravelling of all the above, leading to a new life of integrity, freedom and love that I only ever dreamed of.
In this book, my goal is to help you discover and understand the complex issues of sexuality and gender, the nature and workings of our mind and our personal and unique paradigms, and how that affects our understanding of religion and spirituality, and finally, to provide a whole new way of seeing life!
Integrity (the inner sense of “wholeness” deriving from qualities such as honesty and consistency of character ~ Wikipedia) is a very important part of my life, so the act of recognising my own biases and paradigms has been a huge part of my journey. A large part of the book will be around attempting to free us from the need to embrace dogmatic religion and recognise the true extent of subjectivity in our beliefs.
I’ll be challenging you to ask questions, to dig deep, to step out of the status quo, to not be afraid of where the questions take you, and to be confident that in the end, love is the only constant – the only thing that matters – and that we are intrinsically one with love itself at the very core of our being.
But before we can look at the issues in any depth we first must look at what we are actually talking about at the most basic levels.
We all know that sexuality and gender are an integral part of our sense of identity. In terms of our daily struggles, relationships and interactions with our fellow humans, our sexual and gender identity is extremely important and affects just about every aspect of our life.
Religious beliefs (for myself, that mostly refers to Christianity because of my own experience) have consistently tried to define our sexuality in a simple binary concept – male or female as described by our physical bodies and outward characteristics.
For traditional and fundamentalist Christianity, there are no other variations to that formula and to even consider anything outside that duality is questioning the very nature of God and how he created us.
But the facts reveal a much bigger picture. The last 50 years or so have seen a lot of research in this area that is constantly expanding as scientists and medical professionals from all disciplines begin to focus on this strange conundrum that defines us so dramatically.
One very important aspect of this book is the need for you to do your own research.
My own research has helped me to unravel, or de-construct religion, sexuality and gender, and from that space, build a system of beliefs that work for me and are constantly evolving as I continue to learn and grow.
One of our human weaknesses is to expect others to think for us, to do the hard yards on our behalf so we can just pick the voice that we feel most comfortable with and run with it. We have our favourite preachers/teachers/gurus because they do the spiritual/religious work for us and then dish it out in bite size chunks, and we never even think that we can actually do this for ourselves.
My aim is to present the big picture with as much relevant detail as possible – to expose the flaws in the fundamental approach to understanding the issues – and to challenge the religious mind-set that only sees black and white because God apparently only sees the same way.
There is a lot of material in this book that might initially offend you or make you want to dump it. But push through!
Ask the questions, and keep going.
The idea is that all the material here can create a whole new “picture”, a way of rebuilding our “paradigms”, and help you to find a genuine life of love, self acceptance and self worth, and a way forward out of the legacy of trauma and abuse.
Most importantly - take your time!
Don’t rush through the book, because it covers so many aspects of the issues we face. There’s a lot of information and the implications can be deep and profound.
At the end of each chapter, take time to work through the application exercises, and do any further research if you feel the need.
