As the Quran says: "Oh, you who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that you may learn piety and righteousness" [Quran 2:183]
As a non-religious gay I probably wasn't invited anyway. But this kind of thinking is what leads conservatives to so much repression and hate. The idea that the wants and needs of your body are something which the mind must actively fight. That the scratchy, ill-fitting wool sweater of your culture is something that you must keep on at all costs. And it leads to resentment of people who are not under such self-imposed restrictions.
There is a reason in queer culture that 'shadiness' is a bigger sin than anger. Shadiness is what happens when someone represses their true feelings. Those feelings don't go away though, they just resurface in other unexpected and non-adaptive ways.
In Islam you're not hated or judged for what you call your true feelings. You are however instructed to gain mastery over those feelings and make them subordinate to you rather than the other way around. Fasting is one of the things that can help with that. As for feeling invited, honestly I get why you may think that (because a lot of Muslims do a frankly terrible job of marketing) but that's not how Islam looks at people, it doesn't look at people as unchanging monoliths, instead you are seen as a blank slate and whatever actions you do impact your life here and the life hereafter. Basically your inner reality is between you and God. Islam fully understands people have all sorts of desires, lusts, etc, the thing is in Islam you aren't cursed for having those desires, but for acting upon them rather than gaining control over them. HTH.
To me, that sounds like a very fancy way of saying : repress your feelings and who you are to conform to an arbitrary set of rules written by one dude hundreds years ago.
Enlighten me on how are you supposed to act/feel to “gain mastery over your feeling” when said feeling is “as a male; I want to spend the rest of my life sharing experiences with this other male, intimate and not intimate, without endangering anyone else” ?
This is a form of discipline and mastery of desires. Enlighten me how this is not what a faith built on God’s word should be commanding on any individual?
Why should you repress those feelings ? Unless they don't hurt you or hurt others; I see absolutely no reason to hide them or not act on them. What makes them "sinful" is you deciding they are sinful according to some made up rules you read in a book.
> Enlighten me how this is not what a faith built on God’s word should be commanding on any individual?
- Rule nb 1: Avoid harming yourself as much as you can.
- Rule nb 2: Avoid harming others as much as you can.
- Rule nb 3: Let others be.