E-Mail 'AGLA NY to Present ‘Dealing with Difference’' To A Friend

Please take your stupid thinking and leave ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS ALONE. No REAL ARMENIAN WILL EVER BE OK WITH THEIR KID BEING GAY. SHAME

Anthony and Kevork,

All of a sudden we are a traditional culture.

Hogwash.

I’m not even sure what it means.

Parts of the traditional culture subjugated our women. My mother was not able to go out of town or have a date until she was 25.

In the United States there are maybe 6-8,000 PLEDGED members of the Armenian Apostolic Churches, both Diocesan and Prelacy. Out of maybe 1M people who have Armenian ancestry. Even if half are Evangelical, that is a sad, low number. But all of a sudden we are traditionalists.

Our people are beset with problems of crime and domestic violence too. Hardly traditional, or maybe these things were. Adultery of every sort – straight and Gay – is rampant, why aren’t you complaining about premarital sex among the rest of us?

If our traditional culture is Christian, we are admonished in that culture to love thy neighbor as thyself. Bitterly attacking Gay people merely for existing cannot be reconciled with Christ, even if He abhors Gay sex practices and adultery of all sorts.

Do we remember that Christ was champion of the hated and despised? Prostitutes, adulterers, tax collectors, Samaritans, thieves.

What do you have against these people adding to the national story?

I have no Gay children, but if they were, they would by my treasures, just like any others.

It is your hatefulness which is Amot.

To jda and anyone else who takes my post the wrong way,

Actually there is some truth to your post, and I partially agree. However, I think you misunderstood my post. I can’t speak for Anthony, but like you, I would not disown my child either, and I do not have hatefulness.

There is however one issue I have, and that is that Gay politics is being used in Armenian issues which I think is not productive. I am not against gay people, and actually with the ones I have known, have found them to be even nicer than straight people, but to turn things into a political style conflict and make it an “us vs them” issue like they did in the USA, Europe and elsewhere is something we don’t need. Let these issues stay in families, not cultural is what I’m saying.

It is true that for many of us we are not “active” in our religion, and yet here again, it does not mean we are unbelievers. Our Christian identity has developed our culture for 1700 years. Even an Armenian ‘Atheist’ cannot escape these habits and cultural traits if they want to have anything to do with experiencing that Armenian culture fully. That’s what I mean when I say “traditional values”. It is what it is, and we as Armenians must at least respect it, instead of try to change it to conform to our present-day choices. There is a difference between that and cultural norms which get outdated.

I know you think it is strange that your mother’s parents were strict to not let her go out. but have you also considered that, that saved your mother from making the wrong choices in life? Things today are not as strict as how they used to be, and “cultural rules” are changing constantly. For example, if any Armenian today raised in the US were to transport back in time to an early 20th century or earlier Armenian village, they would get the shock of their life and what they would witness wouldn’t anything at all like what they know as Armenian life today. In those days, beating children in school was normal, but then again it was also normal everywhere else including the US. Today we know it is not necessary and can have damaging affects to a child.

Now with this gay issue, if an Armenian feels they are, then all I want to say is, you do not need to bring it up as an “Armenian issue” and advertise it, because it is not. It is a human issue. And when we put it into the perspective of having lost 90% of our country and our population scattered all over the place, it is actually a question of national security. We collectively as Armenians who got a very bad deal in history need to “be fruitful and multiply” before anything else.