---In [email protected], <emptybill@...> wrote :
Back4More, Starting in the early to mid 1990's, gay men and lesbian women started to get interested in spirituality. Just like heterosexuals, having many serial partners gets to be a drag (pun intended), so they some of them decided to take a left turn at the sexual stop light. Consequently, they began joining monasteries and small monastic communities to experiment with some type of spiritual life. That should not be a problem because monasticism enacts celibacy as the standard of conduct. However, some of them maintained their old behaviors and after the word got out, more men and women homosexuals came into the institution lifestyle where some found the institutions a great place to pray, drink, fuck and fight. Yep, fight ... because the practice was to find a partner and then pair up with them during much of the day/night. At some point another "monastic" would entice and steal away the partner (or vice versa) and then full fledged fist-fights and brawls would erupt - sometimes especially vicious. This sounds exactly how herds of animals interact. There's always someone waiting in the wings to steal your mate away and there are constant fights for dominance, sexual and otherwise. Why should humans act any different? In addition, I don't find this shocking at all, as you predicted I would. This is tame, this is human nature How do I know? I used to participate in a forum for ex-monastics, since I qualified for participation by giving my monastic background. They used to discuss this stuff. Some of them were ex-monks, some were ex-nuns, some were ex-Jesuits. The Jesuits, of course were not monastics, but rather princes of the church. Many of them had women parishioners as paramours - cooks, secretaries or just plain fuck-buddies. Now the Jesuit thing sounds exactly like lots of gurus - both male and female. Gee, maybe all religions and spiritual paths are alike - after all, their all populated by the human animal. BTW, it is the same or worse in the Tibetan monasteries - all of which has started spilling out lately. Thanks for the insight, it was interesting. My question: did you fight over a mate in your monastic life and if so, what gender were they? Now that could be an interesting answer.
