visiting old corners

I am not really sure why, but I decided to go back to an old forum I used to be very active in. It's a Polish-Jewish discussion place. I started there over ten years ago, and became good friends with a few people there. One of them is still my best friend. There is some nostalgia in me going back .. I have no idea what I want to accomplish or get.

I knew that getting on a thread on homosexuality in the Torah would be a bad idea. But I had no idea how bad... The comments on how someone is "disgusted" with homosexuals, how they should be banned from adoptions, comparing to pedophilia (yep)... all was there. Even the old argument of "the heterosexuals don't show off with their orientation, why the gays have to". Idiocy. I don't know what I wanted to achieve discussing someone's very strict answer on absolute prohibition of homosexuality in the Torah... nothing works. I was basically told to choose another religion if I don't like that Judaism prohibits it. Progressive Jews were made fun of, and suggested they are not real Jews.

What a catastrophe. I know I am not going back to Poland, for many reasons. But one of the main ones is, that I refuse to live in the closet. I lived enough years with a mask on, lying to myself, others, pretending and trying to fit in. I want to be open at work, to family and friends. I don't want anyone judging my potential ability to be a mother based on whom I love.

To be clear - there were some voices trying to stand for gays... but even these brought an argument, that if they gays could choose they would prefer being straight (as part of an argument that it's not gays' fault, it's biological).

So sad. I guess that's similar to some more right-wing/evangelical places here. Maybe it's good, so I can stop having silly ideas of finding job in Omaha or Louisiana.

All this negativity of the past days, job search, fear, stress, headaches and anxiety get to me. I was really down today, even the kids were noticing. It's hard to keep up.

the most recent idea: get to graduate program with scholarship or something, to keep visa. I have good friends helping me, it's really great.