Beliefs And Sexuality: An Autoethnography By Carlos E Gerena

The article I chose to write about was called “Conflict between Religious Beliefs and Sexuality: An Autoethnography” written by Carlos E Gerena. An autoethnography is a narrative where the author relives his or her life and uses the important events that can be used as evidence to back up the main focuses of the text. In this story Gerena starts off by describing the Pentecostal church him and his family attended every Sunday. He was very involved with the church and enjoyed being a part of the choir, but a very common topic every Sunday was homosexuality. The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah was a story that the author remembers vividly. This is a story in the bible where the two cities were demolished because of the sinful mannerisms that were

It was hard for him to accept himself and realize his emotions and feelings towards other boys just keep growing over the years. He was concerned because all his life he had heard how back homosexuality was, but he couldn’t help but feel the way he felt. He was from a strong religious Latino family, and he knew how much power the church had over his family. He knew that his parents were not acceptive of his lifestyle because it went against the church’s values. He felt so uncomfortable in front of his family because they would make comments about how sinful it was to be homosexuality and Gerena felt the need to lie about his sexuality to them for a long time. He would give his family what they wanted to hear and would try his hardest to make sure his actions didn’t seem “gay” to anyone else. He felt the need to lie to his family when he was going out with other men and instead would make up an excuse that he was spending the night at a friend’s house or even telling his family about the girl he is into just to avoid the fear he had about his family disowning

In today’s society being gay is more accepted throughout the world. People who are gay have the right to marry but that wasn’t always the case. They had to fight for their rights because there were a lot of people who couldn’t wrap their head around same sex marriage. Of course, there will always be people who don’t agree with your feelings, but it doesn’t mean that those feelings are not real. A lot of the older generation grew up on a negative connotation on homosexuality, but our world has progressed since the past. The last idea that resonated with me is how Gerena used his own personal experiences to help others who might be going through the same thing. He used experiences that were traumatizing to him to shed light and provide resources to others. I think we can all do this for others by using the negative things that impacted our life and teach others how to get past the gate of fear and judgement. Everyone struggles with things on a daily and there is always someone else who went through what you did. Be that person for someone like Gerena was for the other kids when he became a mental health