Hi,

I've been a long time lurker and fan of RRS.  I've been following the movement after Sapient, Kelly, Rook, Yellow #5 splintered off from the Infidelguy forums to form the RRS.  Before that I've been involved in the freethought community ever since I deconverted from Christianity.  I grew up in the Assemblies of God church and was brainwashed at an early age.  I got to experience a lot of weird shit in my early years from Holy Ghost revivals (speaking in tongues, holy laughter, faith healings) and later got into studying the bible more critically later on.  I had done a lot of street evangelism in my teens and was the typical "on fire" teen who spread the insanity that christianity had to offer.

My process of deconversion started within the christian community.  It was arguing positions like eternal security vs. loss of salvation and futurism vs. preterism.  Soon after I started delving into the greek NT and picked up interliners and greek concordances.  During college back in '94, there wasn't much information on the internet except Usenet newsgroups and the best freethinking resource Secular Web (Internet Infidels).  I spent my college summers researching early christianity, the canon of the NT, and bible contradictions to the point where I became more liberal in my christianity.  I was briefly involved in two extreme christian cults - Way International and the International Church of Christ - where they had oppresive views on sexuality.  ICCC put guilt trips on you for masturbation and had you write "sin lists".  The Way had a commune style of cultists who slept with each other (at least that's what I thought with a few men living with 2 women in this pad).

So over time I gave up christianity entirely.  Jason Steiner was a major influence on my thinking, and his page <a href="http://gaydeceiver.com/religion/">The Essential Absurdity of Christianity</a> sums up my view as well.  There was a period of confusion and depression that followed after I realized there was no christian God, so I was involved in the Unitarian Universalists for a while.  I liked their community outreaches and social gatherings, but dislike the generic hymns and churchiness of the sermons.  Still there was no other place to meet like-minded people.  During that time I was still in contact with christians of the Reformed Presbyterian variety.  A small groups leader dumped me books by R.C. Sproul, Ravi Zacharias, etc and I ended reading them, but at the time I lacked the debating skills to refute all those claims.  Thanks to the internet now there are so many resources to tap into.

I started reading philosophy.  Ayn Rand's Virtue of Selfishness influenced my views, and secular humanism became my world view.  After graduating college, I starting working in engineering/IT field which was lucrative in pay.  I did well for a few years until a series of events in my life drove me to the world's oldest profession.  In the meantime I tried starting up a freethought group on campus (to no avail), but I had the opportunity to support Students for Freethought at OSU.  I got to meet August Brunsman (who now head the Secular Student Alliance), and it was a good social group and one of the best organizations I've been involved.  That was years ago, but I got to meet Micheal Shermer who gave a talk on psuedoscience, Massimo Pigluicci who gave a talk on evolution, and I missed James Randi after I moved on with another job.

During my stay in the KC area, I got to network with other humanists and atheists.  It was difficult to socialize with the older folk as I was in my 20s, but it was only place I could meet other freethinkers.  I spent some time with those groups and met other ex-christians.  I got to see Massimo again debate John Calvert (ID proponent) at a UU church during the time when evolution was a controversy in Kansas.  After a job loss and an illness that took me 4 years to recover from, my life changed and had to deal with fundie parents again. 

I started doing a lot of menial work and low-paying jobs to survive until I went into the sex industry.  I've always had an oppressive upbringing from my parents who never talked about sex and made me feel inferior about sex period.  In high school I was very shy and took the bible verse where Jesus said that 'if you lust in your heart after a woman, you commited adultery'.  After seeing Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Baker fall from sexual indiscretions, it made me wonder why sex was the only thing that could bring a televangelist down.  During the time when Ted Haggard was outed by Mike Jones a male prostitute, I was working in a male strip club.  MJ was shunned by many people but a group of bloggers came to his rescue and helped him out.  I thought the act of a prostitute outing a hypocritical gay televangelist was one of the greatest feats of accomplishments.  You can follow his story here:  http://joemygod.blogspot.com/search?q=mike+jones

Over the last 10 years my views of spirituality changed from secular humanism to the Church of Reality which best decribes my views.  At the time a lot of atheists riduculed the notion of a "church" (which is nothing more of a gathering of people) and thought an atheist religion was conflicting.  I saw it as having a community of people working together to advance our knowledge of reality.  I didn't like the pluralism of the UUs, nor the stodgy view of other atheist groups, so I started getting involved in the movement (which is relatively unknown compared to other groups).

After college I was interested in drugs and drug culture.  I was fascinated by the psychoactive like LSD and read a lot of Timothy Leary.  I knew people who used powerful psychoactives to their benefit.  A lot of atheists seem to shun the idea of using drugs.  For example James Randi doesn't want to do anything to alter his conciousness and is against it.  Over time I found out about Micheal Persinger's research who can recreate the God experience in the laboratory, NDEs, lucid dreaming, salvia divinorum, and DMT.  DMT was the most fascinating drug because it is produced in your pineal gland when you sleep.  Shamans in the tribal cultures use this to gain insight on many different things.  I've had drug induced experiences that changed my views on conciousness and God.  I'm still an atheist, but I don't focus on it like many do here because there is more to life than non-belief in gods.

So as far as sexuality goes, I was embarrased to talk about it and wondered why even the non-religious were too.  It's still a taboo in our society although it's less of a factor now.   I identify myself as bisexual (gay for pay, rare moments of homosexuality) or as Alfred <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_scale">Kinsey's scale</a> 1-2 on the chart.

After making friends with a crazy stripper girl, I got into the subculture of drugs, drama, transexuals, drama queens and other freaks of nature.  I started go-go dancing at a gay club and then worked in a private club where males stripped for primarily gay men.  I have a lot of crazy experiences in that club with all the power struggles, drama, drugs, and freaks that would come in.  I won't go into personal stories but if you are interested here's one that got out in the news:

<blockquote>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seth_Tobias

http://nymag.com/news/features/43914/

</blockquote>

Soon after I started escorting and getting into some deviant behavior that clients got off on.  I have a experience dealing with crack whores, strippers, escorts, transexuals, and it's made me see that sexuality is broader than just gay/straight.  The work is hard and oftentimes dangerous besides most people have to live a double life because you can easily get arrested or have your "job" exposed to others that will not understand or respect the work you do.

Well I guess it's out that Kelly's a stripper (I had my hunch a while back), so it's good to see that an prominent atheist is in the industry and not too covert about it.  If you think getting on a pole and having people grab you, shove dollars in your private parts, do lap dances, private rooms is easy...well it ain't.  The work is a lot of fun but there are a lot of issues to deal with - abusive management, drama from other strippers, trickery (stealing business, personal items, money), getting bruised on the pole, cheap ass customers, etc...so I commend Kelly from coming out of the closet. 

Although the government doesn't want to admit it the economy is in recession.  Money is tight and former clients are getting cheaper, more of them are into hard drugs, and even the girls that I knew working at a popular strip club say making money is bad.  Last time this year girls were ballin' and now they are lucky if they come out a $100/night.  Vegas was the best market - an experienced dancer could walk out with 1K-3K a night.  Too bad I wasn't a female 'cause I'd be ho-ing like a motherfucker!!

So now I'm involved in sex worker activism with bloggers and organizations like Desiree Alliance and $pread magazine.  Alexyss Tylor is another sex educator that I hope to work with more in the future.  Just watch some of her videos on Youtube - they are hilarious.

Politically I see that we are headed toward hyperinflationary depression.  The US dollar has tanked while foreign currencies have risen.  The price of oil and food will continue to go up while jobs will be shed and the poor/middle class will go broke.  Gold and silver will take off as well as foreign commodities.  I'm a huge Ron Paul supporter because of his small gov't ideas and sound money principles.  His revolution is not likely to give him a chance of presidency, but hopefully his ideas of the revolution will penetrate the conciousness of americans before the election.

I don't care who gets elected besides Ron Paul.  The real people of power are the ones who run the banking dynasty and the secret societies.  That's something that I'm researching now.  A lot of good Youtube/Google video documentaries are online.  Check Jordan Maxwell's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=EA3D5A2EFF285F20">The Naked Truth</a> and I'm sure many of you in the RRS would agree with the arguments he raises.

Alright if you got this far, thanks for reading.  Comments and questions are welcomed.

Rev. Real (my alter-ego that I'm working on)