Contradictions

My life seems to have been full of many contradictions. Not uncommon for a gay person still partially or fully in the closet. One contradiction thats always stood out for me is the combination of being introduced to sex at a very early age, and growing up within a conservative family.

When I was young there were multiple incidents of my friends and I pulling down our pants, looking at each other, etc. This, I believe, is a common occurence among children and nothing but natural curiosity and exploration. I say this because it happened (separately) with probably all of my childhood friends, at one point or another.

However, there was one friend, a few years older, who knew about more things to do. He began to show me these things, and though there was some guilt associated, it felt good so we continued to do it from time to time. In hindsight I now suspect that unfortunately some adult must have been doing these same things to him and he was going with what he had learned. While he was older than I, he was still too young to know about these things, and too young for any malicious intent.

Overtime, what we did grew into sexual acts. This was before I had been taught anything about sex from my parents or even heard very much in the hallways at (elementary) school. So when it did become time for me to learn about sex, and my family and church began to teach me that pre-marital sex was a sin--that was obviously a problem.

I then understood, and at that time believed, that pre-marital sex was a sin...yet I was already having sex. Add to that the fact that I was doing this with the wrong type of person...someone of the same sex rather than the opposite sex...how was I ever to get past the sin of pre-marital sex if I could never marry the person I was having sex with?

A lot to carry around in a young boy's mind.