philechat

Homosexuality is permitted in many cultures, and not always looked down upon. It appears to be more a cultural construct than a natural fear. Similarly, promiscuity is not uniformly looked down upon by many existing cultures.

Perhaps the reason it seems that the society as of now is homophobic is that the western civilization (driven by Christianity) is more homophobic than most other cultures. It likewise speaks of the dominant beliefs on monogamous marriage existing in the modern world.

The ancient Greeks and early Romans, the Japanese Sumerai, and the Polynesian "male sanctuary" all seems to speak otherwise on homophobia. Homosexual love appeared in many stories of Greek mythos and was associated primarily with the Orphic cults (as Ovid collected).

happyboy

speaking as a gay man, when i'm "excercising" ( ), i'm not thinking about power plays or dominance and submission: i'm thinking "wow this feels great!"

happyboy

beyelzu

happyboy,

your gay and an atheist?


fundies must really love you. i thought i pissed them off when i had blue hair and was an atheist.


but you obvoiusly have me beaten especially now that i have a shaved head.

Bree

Do people have less of an "eww, gross" reaction to lesbians because it doesn't have the dominance/submission aspect?

Personally, I don't 'understand' male/male sex because I can't imagine deriving pleasure from those acts (I'm an exit-only type of girl). I also don't have the parts needed for participation.

Captain Pedantic

I think there are a number of reasons for homophobia/calling homosexuality "wrong".

1)Repression. The oft-cited "repressed homosexuality" is probably true for some people. Especially, I think, young men. Anyone who's had to spend time with a whole bunch of them knows that a group of fifteen year old boys can come out with the most shocking stuff, and I would certainly imagine that maybe one or two of them say such things "so that no-one finds out". Also, some people who are actually gay might hate that, because they think they have to be "like that", ie, limp wrists and camp tones for men, shaved heads and unshaved moustaches for women. They usually find out eventually.

2)Religion. A couple of years back, I heard a chap on the radio (a Jamaican preacher type)claiming that he considered homosexuality wrong "because the Bible said so". He was asked if he would change his opinion if Jesus came down and said that actually, gay people are alright. He said he certainly would.

3)Believing everything you read. It is shocking to note how many people genuinely believe everything they read in the trashy tabloids. If the trashy tabloids tell people that gay men (and it's always men, women are never considered here) are predatory, and paedophiles, then it simply must be true. Although the trashy tabloids seem to be saying right now that everyone's a paedophile. Into the panic room!

4)Believing everything you hear. Some people are raised into their beliefs and unquestioningly accept what their parents/teachers/piano tutors tell them. These ones either work it out when they actually meet some gay people, or spend their lives contorting their beliefs around reality (that is, insisting they hate gay people when they have some for friends).

5)Bum-sex. This has been covered, but you'd think bottoms were sinful the way people go on.

6)Fun-free biology. The "it's unnatural because they can't breed together" thing. As if straight people only have sex for the breeding.

7)"I don't get it". Which has also been covered, but the notion that gay sex is wrong because you, personally, wouldn't like it seems prevalent. Stupid, but true.

8)Fear. Fear that people will see gay folks enjoying themselves and will magically turn gay. Fear that a new thing happening will make people crumble into dust and bring about anarchy and the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Fear that other people are loving, and enjoying sex, and that that is not quite right, and that there must be a moral catch somewhere (because morality is about sacrifice and denial, apparently). Fear that people are just being allowed to do as they please which will never do. Fear that, if it is no longer permissible to bully these people, people will turn on the bully.

There are probably more reasons, fell free to add them.

Janaya

Ha ha ha. I did write that didn't I. It sounds pretty silly today.

I guess I was trying to convey this from the OP:

red robot

I agree with what a few people have touched on here: opponents of homosexuality seem to think that the legitimacy of heterosexuality is universally at stake because they see homosexuality as threatening their personal heterosexuality.

Perhaps they have had a homosexual thought in the past, or they have had many, or they've had none but have been conditioned to beleive homosexuality can be spread somehow. The fear of admitting you are homosexual (or of turning homosexual, whatever that might mean) is due to social/cultural opinions of homosexuality. For someone, especially a xtian man, to admit that he was homosexual would have many repercussions.

Now that I'm writing this, it does seem that the threat comes mostly from, as Captain Pedantic said, the fear/thought that homosexuality can be spread, that you can magically turn gay from being around a gay person.

Now why this only seems to matter for male homosexuality and not female homosexuality, I don't know. I think it's more than not being able to look objectively. If that were true, wouldn't straight women stigmatize lesbians the way straight men stigmatize gay men? Perhaps it's because men are generally more visual sexually than women (is this true?).

Okay, now I'm just thinking out loud, so i guess i'll stop.

rr

Silent Acorns

As lpetrich points out, there are large gaps between:

a) homosexuality is gross
b) homosexuality is wrong/evil
c) validating homosexual unions will erode heterosexual unions

Obviously, christian fundamentalists (and their equivalents in other religions) take the belief that "homosexuality is evil" straight out of the Old T (and I'll leave it to another thread to discuss why they pay attention to this issue and not other behaviours condemned in the Bible). So how can we explain the "logical" leap from (b) to (c)? I belive it is all a consequence of "God vs. Satan" duality.

The Bible is full of passages that juxtapose "God" and "good" from "sin", "evil", and "Satan". From the Bible they conclude that all people are fallen, willful sinners and that only by submitting to God's will can we ever do good. When you combine this with the belief that the only "good" (or "least evil") sex is between a married man and woman, and that marriage is a sacriment with God, it isn't a big leap any more to conclude that homosexuality is a manifestation of Satan acting in this world. From there, our status as willfull sinners quickly leads to embracing sin (homosexuality) over good (traditional marriage) from whence everything goes to hell (literally). These people honestly believe that the ONLY thing that keeps them acting ethically is the guidence of God as laid out in the Bible. To them, the only middle groud between God and Satan is the shortest, steepest, and slipperiest of slopes.

At leasts, that's the imnpression they give me.

Autonemesis

And so which animals use personal lubricant?

B. H. Manners

My theory is that the "powers that be" in past societies opposed homosexuality because they needed lots of babies who could grow up and fight in their wars. Butts don't heave out babies, pussies do. If your humping ass instead of doing pussy there won't be as many babies around.