Confirmed bachelors (and bachelorettes)

[Cearbhall]

But then it wouldn't have meant "gay" as "gay", more as gay. A happy man that women could not entangle into marriage.

No, "confirmed bachelor" meant homosexual. It had nothing to do with the word "gay" or the definition of that word at that time. I'm just choosing to use the word gay.

 

[Goodbook]

Oh ok but i still dont get why atheists frequent christian forums. we talk about Jesus here. And dont need to apologise for our faith.

Atheists on the other hand, ought to apologise to God for their lack of faith. Even Paul did that, he said he was sorry he acted in ignorance and unbelief. But he was a confirmed bachelor because I suspect that his Pharisaic beliefs were so prideful that a woman couldnt stand to be married to him. When he repented and became a christian it was like he was turned the other way, so evangelistic that he just had to tell,everyone about the Lord and there was no time to settle down and be married.

 

[Cearbhall]

Oh ok but i still dont get why atheists frequent christian forums. we talk about Jesus here. And dont need to apologise for our faith.

Atheists on the other hand, ought to apologise to God for their lack of faith.

Did you post this in the right thread?

 

[Goodbook]

Confirmed bachelor ..means gay accordng to the urban dictionary.
Sometimes i look up meanings for english phrases there.
But it might just mean that someone is too old to marry and have children. Like I think if you in your 60s its a bit too late to think about it. Eg cs lewis was in his 60s and he married this younger american divorcee who already had children, but that marriage only lasted a few months as she died soon after of cancer. There was something sus about the marrriage though because back then the anglican church didnt allow divorcees to remarry and cs lewis claimed to be christian. If we just look at it objectively she seduced him and he was a willing victim, it was a marriage of convenience really, and then her stepsons inherited everything after that. I dont know what happned to the ex, apparently he was an alcoholic.

Will find out more as I read this book I suppose. Does that make me a busybody for reading all about his personal life? I dont suppose that people care that much but he was a prominent atheist who then converted. For me the concern is that he wasnt actually born again because of his continued mythmaking. Sometimes there are false converts or they convert, then get caught up in the cares of the world and dont bear fruit. You can tell a person by their fruit (meaning spiritual fruit) yet something about cs lewis to me seems off.

He keeps talking about joy and in this book it means the joy he gets from myths. But true joy in the bible is the joy of the Lord and a fruit of the holy spirit, yet cs lewis never seems to refer directly to the Bible in his writing. He always seem to make it to mean something else. You can believe intellectually and devils do this and tremble but its another thing to know Jesus as your Lord and. Saviour and act on this faith.

 

[com7fy8]

I am a confirmed but involved bachelor; and she is enough

If you are married, you can support each other in studying. Also, you already have your special someone; so you don't need to spend time with hunting and dating. You know who you belong with, and you can help each other stay with your studies.

My mother got her master's degree while taking care of four of us children. That was when you typed on a manual typewriter and she was allowed two errors for a whole paper and no erasing was allowed. So, if we made noise and distracted her so she made too many mistakes, she did not appreciate retyping a whole paper.

 

[Goodbook]

? What was your bachelors in comfy? What did you study?

I did english literature. And then a library masters degree. That one i did while working. I cant really imagine working full time, studying AND looking after children, unless your husband just stayed home and didnt work an outside job. That would be just too much.

 

[Goodbook]

I flatted with this lady she was sepearted and had two children. She said she was a stay at home mum at first but then as the children grew she wanted to find intellectual fulfilment, she loved dancing and so decided to study a dancing degree. Well she never finished as her partner didnt like that she was studying and said she was neglecting the children. Apparntly he was abusive and also didnt even Marry her in the first place.

 

[Goodbook]

Some men are like that sad to say, i dont know if anyones seen the movie Educating Rita, but some men actually feel threatened by a smart female.

I think its a good thing to study the things you most want to learn about, you cant damp down the hunger for wisdom and you learn continually your whole life. People that deprive women of higher education are misguided. So many housewives do not find child rearing the must intellectual stimulating of activities. There needs to be at least some conversation with adults that do not revolve around children all the time.

 

[Chris B]

No, "confirmed bachelor" meant homosexual. It had nothing to do with the word "gay" or the definition of that word at that time. I'm just choosing to use the word gay.

I'm trying to find something to back you up, but I'm failing, so far.
Do you have a reference, source or quotation?

" As Alan Bennett writes in the preface to his stage version of Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows: 'Bachelordom is a status that had more respect (and fewer undertones) in Grahame's day than it has now' -"

"(1893)
The Board of Trustees of the Academy at Tuskaloosa delegated one of their number, Mr. David Scott, a confirmed bachelor, adjudged by the number of years he had spent in that state, to proceed to Mobile and to accompany from there to Tuskaloosa the lady who was coming to take charge of their school. Mr. Scott performed the task assigned him. On a pleasant steamer the trip was made.... Between David Scott and Stella Houghton there was attachment and love at once, courtship immediately ensued..."


Professor Higgins My Fair Lady (film)
"The moment I let a woman make friends with me she becomes jealous, exacting, suspicious and a damned nuisance. The moment that I make friends with a woman I become selfish and tyrannical. So here I am, a confirmed old bachelor and likely to remain so."

It seems more a reading back from modern times and assuming a euphemism was being used then which was not really that at all.
That "confirmed bachelor" can carry that connotation nowadays, that seems clear.

"

 

[Chris B]

Atheists on the other hand, ought to apologise to God for their lack of faith.

It's a bit difficult to apologise to an entity that one doesn't believe exists.
And I try to have ordinate faith, which is why on long and hard consideration I decided that Christianity was not an appropriate object for faith. No failure of faith was involved, just a decision about its correct assigning.

Part of the reason I'm a confirmed bachelor is that I suspect no woman *should* marry me.
I'm a fair old way from good husband material (though with no violence, drinking or gambling to blacken my character.)

Oh ok but i still dont get why atheists frequent christian forums. we talk about Jesus here.

Questions addressed to atheists keep turning up, for one thing.
and then it's about being caught up in the fascinating characters and discussions that abound.
I know what people who think like me think. It's the others where time spent can be more educational.

 

[James of Arc]

I think it is modern comedians and TV personalities that have turned the term "confirmed bachelor" into the meaning of being gay as people of the past just did not talk about homosexuality enough to have any slang for it. Just 80 years ago gay meant happy and it was the TV generation that has turned it into a homosexual slang.

I am very happy that atheist do come here but I do wish they were more respectful of our ways. With some of the atheist community we can not say anything about our lifestyle without being put down and that it is wrong. We have rights to be as we are and your understanding is not wanted or needed. We all know that you come here because you really do know that God is real as all man does but you are just looking for a reason to admit out loud that you now believe. Well while on that journey please do not tell me that my reasoning is wrong as I do not care what you believe as I know its not like mine. I want to treat you with respect but some come here like little spoiled children that are visiting a kings castle and they are writing with markers on the wall and when asked to stop they throw a temper tantrum. Please respect our views and way of being as it is not like yours but we are allowed to be so.

 

[James of Arc]

It's a bit difficult to apologise to an entity that one doesn't believe exists.
And I try to have ordinate faith, which is why on long and hard consideration I decided that Christianity was not an appropriate object for faith. No failure of faith was involved, just a decision about its correct assigning.

Part of the reason I'm a confirmed bachelor is that I suspect no woman *should* marry me.
I'm a fair old way from good husband material (though with no violence, drinking or gambling to blacken my character.)


Questions addressed to atheists keep turning up, for one thing.
and then it's about being caught up in the fascinating characters and discussions that abound.
I know what people who think like me think. It's the others where time spent can be more educational.

Do you guys not have an Atheist Forum that you guys can go to? If you do are there a lot of Christians there telling you that no matter what you say that you are wrong?

 

[Cearbhall]

I think it is modern comedians and TV personalities that have turned the term "confirmed bachelor" into the meaning of being gay as people of the past just did not talk about homosexuality enough to have any slang for it.

No, it's a historical euphemism that was used well into the modern era. Comedians did not invent it. I would call this common knowledge, but I'm happy to find sources. People have always talked about homosexuality. There was plenty of slang for it. It's hard to be gay and have gay relationships without talking about it. It's not like people didn't know about it.

Another strategy was to live quietly as a single man or woman, sometimes with a roommate or alone, but sophisticated Americans knew that phrases such as "confirmed bachelor" and "spinster" were sometimes code terms for homosexuality.

Coleman, Marilyn, Lawrence H. Ganong, and Kelly Warzinik. 2007. Family Life In 20th-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Retrieved May 6, 2016 (https://books.google.com/books?id=0e-z2n2wzgoc).

But "confirmed bachelor" also serves as a code, among the wise, for a gay man

Lee, John Alan. 1989. “Invisible Men: Canada's Aging Homosexuals. Can They Be Assimilated into Canada's ‘Liberated’ Gay Communities?” Can. J. Aging Canadian Journal on Aging / La Revue canadienne du vieillissement 8(01):79–97. Retrieved May 6, 2016 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0714980800011211).

 

[Goodbook]

I just ignore the atheists as they whine all the time and have nothing much to contribute. If they do quote scripture it's always in a perverse truncated way that shows they don't understand it, only reading it in the natural.

I don't know what cs lewis was getting at when he tried to reach them, just make them feel better about themselves I guess. Without faith, it is impossible to please God.

For faith to be real, its something you can't see in the natural. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen.

 

[Chris B]

No, it's a historical euphemism that was used well into the modern era. Comedians did not invent it. I would call this common knowledge, but I'm happy to find sources.
Family Life In 20th-Century America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.
Lee, John Alan. 1989. “Invisible Men: Canada's Aging Homosexuals.

Interesting. Your references are from the other side of the Atlantic to me:
This may be at the least a differing frequency of usage compared to the UK, and perhaps imported to the UK rather later.

I grew up with a bachelor uncle and a bachelor cousin in my family. No hint of homosexuality attached itself.
They were in the area of being both uninterested (absorbed in their own interests) and somewhat unmarriageable
(absorbed in their own interests!)

 

[Chris B]

We all know that you come here because you really do know that God is real as all man does

Sorry, that's the statement of any failed Christian mentalist: claiming to know our minds and promptly demonstrating a miss by a country mile.

you are just looking for a reason to admit out loud that you now believe. Well while on that journey please do not tell me that my reasoning is wrong as I do not care what you believe as I know its not like mine.

That's an error of fact as an opening. I used to believe, now I don't.
And as for "I do not care what you believe", well, yes, I have met evangelists like that.
It's not a good opening strategy for more than one reason.

when asked to stop they throw a temper tantrum. Please respect our views and way of being as it is not like yours but we are allowed to be so.

If you can find a temper tantrum in my writing I will apologise.
My aim is to be at least as polite as the person I am replying too.

The principle that one should respect views I find disturbing, if the implications are worked through.
(and reciprocity of respect offered to all views.)
Certainly there should be no unnecessary insult or personal attack, but views and beleifs to be placed on an untouchable pedestal?
The concept might seem nice at first thought, but what if other people got their hands on it?
Consider all the things that would suddenly be beyond critique or criticism. Unless this was, rather dubiously, being claimed as a unique privilege, of course.
But even that idea could be claimed and asserted by others. Messy.

 

[redblue22]

I'm glad to have you here @Chris B .

 

[blackribbon]

I got my nursing degree while raising two teenagers alone. Magna cum laude. I would often be seen doing things like sitting on baseball bleachers studying microbiology or med/surg nursing while also watching my kids play ball. It was exhausting but obviously doable. I knew women who did it while raising kids and working full-time...I don't think they slept more than a handful of hours until they graduated. My kids are now both very good students and they can't possible tell me "Mom, you don't REMEMBER what it is like to go to school...it is hard and I am doing the best that I can" unless they really are working as hard as they watched me.

 

[blackribbon]

There are and always have been "confirmed bachelors" who were not gay. They just were more focused on other things and didn't need a woman in their life to make it whole. Many professors and scientists were referred to as confirmed bachelors without the shadow of doubt that they were more asexual than homosexual.

 

[Cearbhall]

Do you guys not have an Atheist Forum that you guys can go to? If you do are there a lot of Christians there telling you that no matter what you say that you are wrong?

If you would like to approach the mods about limiting the entire site to Christians, then do so. We're all sick of answering this question, and it's off-topic.