I have never understood why this has been singled out as such a big deal by people. Can someone explain?
>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://fathom.org/opalcat
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions
I’m not gay, so I can’t claim to be an authority on the subject, but I’ll give my opinion anyway.
Any minority group often feels the need to strengthen its position by being ‘louder’ about who/what they are, and this obviously includes the gay population. It must be very annoying to go through life with everone assuming that you are heterosexual when you’re not, and then people claim that you’re
making a ‘big deal’ about it when you do mention that you’re homosexual.
People think that I’m militant about being Welsh just because I get annoyed when people assume that I’m English. I’m not at all militant, I just don’t want people thining that I’m something I’m not.
Because of the segment of the religious that believe gay=evil. It’s pretty hard to try to live a quiet life when you’ve got a group of people calling you “evil” and “perverted.”
I’m pretty sure that those religious people think that lying=evil too, but you don’t see them picketing the funerals of someone who lied. Why is the religious right so obsessed with what people are doing in bed?
BTW, I was not asking why GAY people were open about being “out” but why NON GAY people were so hateful, discriminatory, etc about it. No gays in the military, etc. What about no nose-pickers in the military?
>^,^<
“Cluemobile? You’ve got a pickup…”
OpalCat’s site: http://fathom.org/opalcat
The Teeming Millions Homepage: fathom.org/teemingmillions
Somewhere in the bible it says that “man shalt not lie with another man” or something like that. But last time I checked the bible says you shouldn’t eat pork or cheeseburgers… yet we don’t see anyone crusading against McDonald’s or Denney’s
Other anti-gay people seem concerned that gay people are on a mission to convert/corrupt America’s impressionable youth or something like that. The few gay people I’ve met seemed pretty harmless, however.
A couple of reasons, Opal.
- Sex roles. (Or gender roles, if you prefer.) A certain segment of the population feels very strongly that sex roles are inviolable. Just look at the reaction of some men if you suggest that it’s OK for a little boy to play with dolls.
Being gay is the ultimate violation of sex roles-- at least in the heterosexual perception.
- This has a lot to do with the gays-in-military issue: most men objectify women, even sensitive New Age guys-- they’re just ashamed when they do.
Most men are horrified of the idea of a man looking at a man, and thinking of him in the terms in which men usually think of women.
There have been periods and places where homosexual rape was the ultimate way of humiliating the fallen enemy after a battle. (This is what the story of Lot is about in Genesis.)
In fact, believe it or not, many gay men who are “gay-bashed” are raped, by men who define themselves as heterosexual, and whose intent is not pleasure but power. Nearly all male/male rape takes this form, BTW; it’s pretty rare for a gay man to rape another man.
- Being gay is about sex. A lesbian friend of mine once joked that she would come out to her parents when she could figure out a way to do it without admitting at the same time that she wasn’t a virgin.
Some people are just so uncomfortable with sex in general, that any time they meet a gay person-- someone whose gayness is spelled out in so many letters-- all they can think of is “He’s had sex.”
Check out John Boswell’s books for more info.
–Rowan
Shopping is still cheaper than therapy. --my Aunt Franny
Simple enough answer: the Bible says it’s wrong, and it’s one of the precepts of the Bible that Christianity still considers a binding obligation.
Amongst Orthodox Jews, who believe that gay sex is forbidden by G-d but also that mixed meat and milk is forbidden and that pork is forbidden, it’s much less of an issue. Sex is just one more area of life in which one’s choices are limited by the Bible. Christians, though, apparantly abandoned almost all Biblical prohibitions except those about sex, so it stands out.
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
Reminds me of an incident that happened years ago when I taught preschool. Two Japanese four year olds were arguing (in Japanese). Then one kid said something to the other kid that horrified him so much that he slapped his friend across the face. I broke them up and asked the kid why he struck his friend.
Indignant, he pointed to the other kid and said “He… he called me ENGLISH!!!”
Quotes from CM Keller
>>Amongst Orthodox Jews, who believe that gay sex is forbidden by G-d but also that mixed meat and milk is forbidden and that pork
is forbidden, it’s much less of an issue. Sex is just one more area of life in which one’s choices are limited by the Bible.<<
While Orthodox Jews have interpreted Leviticus 18:22 as forbidding gay relationships, the truth is that what Orthodoxy really wants is for Jews to marry and produce children.
There is actually a Lubavitch rebbe who has gone on record as saying lesbian affairs involving married women are acceptable as long as they do not interfere with the marriage-- and he’s probably on good historical footing: what do you think every concubine did when it wasn’t “her night” with the husband?
However, there’s an argument, and not necessarily a specious one, that because the “mishkevei ishah” of Leviticus 18:22 LITERALLY means “the lying of woman,” men are forbidden merely from lying (down) in the manner of women with other men.
In other words, the authors of the Torah couldn’t imagine a gay relationship where one man isn’t taking the female role-- there’s those sex roles again.
Obviously whoever wrote this isn’t familiar with consensual gay relationship-- he (or she, I suppose) is thinking in terms of the sex roles games and reversals that were part of Molech worship.
Lev 18:21 forbids child sacrifice TO MOLECH, Lev. 18:23 forbids bestiality, and 18:24 says “don’t do this; the Canaanites did it, and you see that I’m now casting them out and giving you their land.”
So the argument goes that Lev. is addressing orgies as a religious offering, and not consensual gay relationships.
The reason I think this argument isn’t merely specious, is that “mishkevei ishah” is an unusual word choice. It comes after a long list of forbidden (incestuous) sexual acts, for which a different euphemism is used. The whole verse 18:22 is rather convoluted:
“And for a young man: don’t lie the ‘lying of women’; it is distasteful.”
This verse opens with a direct object, the verb of which is not apparent. Thus the translation “And for a young man…”
>>Christians, though, apparantly abandoned almost all Biblical prohibitions except those about sex, so it stands out.<<
Quite true. Interestingly, Christians don’t cite Lev. 18:22, nor the “New” Testament anti-gay passages; most commonly they cite the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, which Orthodox and liberal Jews all agree says nothing about consensual homosexuality.
–Rowan
Shopping is still cheaper than therapy. --my Aunt Franny
My own two cents on the subject is that a lot of the most virulent homophobes have some repressed homosexual feelings of their own. They reject these desires within themselves and project them unto others. That’s why you often hear homophobes talking about their fears that homosexuals have the ability to “convert” heterosexuals. They attack homosexuals to “prove” their heterosexuality. This is also the reason that so many homophobes focus their anger on male homosexuals and are generally indifferent to lesbians.
Opal, that’s a very interesting question! I think that most Christians have a tendancy to “rate” sins on how bad they are. You know, a little white lie isn’t that bad but, oooh, being homosexual is terrible. I don’t exactly feel that God thinks along those lines and I don’t recall anywhere in the Bible where any one sin is worse than others (except worshipping a god other than God) Anyone out there? I don’t have my Bible at work to reference anything. Anyway, back to the subject: I think homosexuality is an area of difference that’s easily focused on and the people who practice it are more easily segregated vs. those who, say, lie, or embezzle from their company. I think it’s just a way for people to say “you’re different in a way that makes me uncomfortable so down with you!” I don’t think that it’s entirely a religious issue, even though it gets made out to be most of the time. I have to agree with Mike who felt that some people have difficulty dealing with repressed homosexual thoughts/feelings themselves so they rail (sp?) against those openly homosexual. Thought provoking question!
Carpe Diem!
I was right there with Rowan on the ‘men objectify women’ as a reason for homophobia, but then I started thinking about some of my experiences in the East (India, Nepal, Thailand). I really can’t speak to their overall views on male homosexuality, but there certainly is no sign of overt homophobia. Men often hold hands or walk arm in arm and no one finds this the least bit disturbing. In all of these countries, women are objectified far more than they are in the Western world. Does anyone have any insight on why Easterners are less homophobic than Westerners? Perhpas it will lead us to a better understanding of the original question.
“I think it would be a great idea” Mohandas Ghandi’s answer when asked what he thought of Western civilization
In contrast to those less homophobic countries, there are still countries where it is a crime against the state & people are often convicted, tortured & excecuted on accusations alone.
A friend of mine (fresh off the boat from Vietnam) and his brother were walking hand-in-hand through a shopping mall when their uncle (who had been here a few years and hence understood the implications) forcibly separated and scolded them. They were quite disturbed at being told to break a bond they had held all their lives, so that foreign onlookers wouldn’t be made uncomfortable.
Our propensity for leaping to absurd conclusions is hard to understand sometimes: If they’re holding hands, then maybe they also… gasp.
Why is being gay an issue, you ask? Two words… “The Bible.” I am not one to take any faith in that document, but with it you basically get Paul’s interpretation of what someone else (meaning Jesus) said or did. I know that many of you will point out that Sodom and Gamorah (sorry about the spelling of the latter word) was in the Old Testament, but the real “sin” committed their was inhospitality. (That was according to a Rabbi I once knew in Texas, and no, he was not gay.) As far as the Jesus and his sexuality go, the Romans who were in power at the time thought he was gay too. I personally don’t have an opinion either way, but if Jesus was vocal about his sexuality, I doubt that he would have had many followers considering the majority of the population is heterosexual. (Well IMHO, the majority of the people are really naturally bisexual and just lean more towards one end of the spectrum) I myself am gay, <big shocker, huh?> and I have not only lost friends from coming out, I have also gained lifelong friends. To me, personally, the only people that being gay really is an issue to are those people with small minds. As was proven by Masters and Johnson in their studies on human behaviour(in the seventies, I believe) the more education one has, the more likely that person will be liberal. Perhaps that is because the people realize that their are so many different flavors of people that there is no point in harassing them because they are different.
I have digressed, so back on topic, the other main reason that being gay is an issue is cultural, I know that this still relates to the Bible in US culture. Because the USA was basically founded on Puritanical prinicples (not bad for an alliterative device) anything dealing with sex became taboo. Did you know in many states (Texas, Virginia, and Kentucky to name a few) oral sex is considered sodomy and a felony? Anyway, if one compares this to European culture after WWII, the laws involving consensual crimes were essentially abolished. Even with that said, it still took a long time for that to come about. And in places such as Amsterdam, Paris, and other capitals (they tend to be more liberal) have become gay Meccas. Another bit of trivia collected from the National Holocaust museum in Washington DC, after all of the Jews and Gypsies were released from the concentration camps, only the gays were left to stay to either die, or finish out their sentances. Perhaps this is becuase Americans in our Puritanical sense did not want gay people to go around and propogate. <Foolish Mortals, gay sex does not produce children>
I know that I have digressed, but to summarize, the main reasons that I have found that being gay is an issue all stem from the most puritanical side of the Bible and its influence on modern culture. If one could travel back in time, the people were in one view either extremely hedonistic or very open about who and what they were. (Or do I have to mention the Greeks to anyone?) Well enough of that. I hope this brought some enlightnment.
Sqrlcub
>Biggles, Sut dych chi heddiw? Os dych chi eisiau, ysgrifenwch mi, os gwela’ch yn dda.
Sqrlcub, also note in the Sodom and Gomorrah story that the men of the city demanded that Lot send out his visitors (the angels come to warn Lot to get out of the city) so they could have their way with them. I guess that would qualify as a lack of hospitality. 
Lot offered them his daughters instead (‘gee, thanks, dad’).
Carpe Diem!
Rowan:
Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. Both are true. “Be fruitful and multiply” is the positive commandment to marry and produce children. Leviticus 18:22 is a negative commandment which forbids gay sexual activity.
Acceptable? While I don’t know the specific Rabbi or quote you’re referring to, it’s more likely he said it’s not Biblically prohibited, which is a far cry from saying it’s religiously acceptable. For one thing, it would be considered a gross violation of the Jewish codes of modesty.
Are you trying to tell me that the usual gay male sex act doesn’t involve one man taking on the female (i.e., receiving a penis into an available bodily orifice) role? I won’t claim to be an expert on homosexuality, but I’d certainly thought this was the case.
Interesting theory. It comes after a huge listing of forbidden sexual relationships, including incest, adultery and sex with a woman during her menstrual period, but the one item you think defines this sexual prohibition is the non-sexual item that follows two verses later. In addition…
You’re mistranslating. It doesn’t say “And for a young man: don’t lie…”, it says “And a male you shall not lie with the way of lying with a woman.”
This is not a convoluted sentence, it is a simple commandment forbidding a man to do the sexual act (most) men do with women to another man.
In addition, the mention of “the way of lying with a woman” could be the author’s (I personally believe it was G-d) way of saying “In any way comparative to women”…in other words, even if it’s consensual and loving and not part of an idolatrous orgy (as with the standard male/female relationship), don’t lie with another man.
I’m not one of those who feels that due to the Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality, that discrimination against homosexuals should persist in American society, which is supposed to be religion-neutral. But to try to claim the Bible (whatever your beliefs about its authorship and/or veracity) doesn’t explicitly prohibit male homosexual sex is as ludicrous as claiming it didn’t say G-d created the heavens and Earth.
Chaim Mattis Keller
ckeller@schicktech.com
“Sherlock Holmes once said that once you have eliminated the
impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be
the answer. I, however, do not like to eliminate the impossible.
The impossible often has a kind of integrity to it that the merely improbable lacks.”
– Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective
“Being gay is the ultimate violation of sex roles-- at least in the heterosexual perception.”
—Rowan
Main Entry: 1het·ero·sex·u·al
Pronunciation: "he-t&-rO-'sek-sh(&-)w&l, -'sek-sh&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: International Scientific Vocabulary
Date: 1892
1 a : of, relating to, or characterized by a tendency to direct sexual desire toward the opposite sex b : of, relating to, or involving sexual intercourse between individuals of opposite sex
2 : of or relating to different sexes
The definition fits me, but the generalization sure doesn’t.
From reading the rest of your posts I’m convinced you didn’t mean it that way, but perception is everything.
I honestly believe that homosexuality somehow scares the shit out of a lot of men.
Why? I don’t know. Not for sure.
Peace,
mangeorge
Work like you don’t need the money…
Love like you’ve never been hurt…
Dance like nobody’s watching! Source???
>>I’m not one of those who feels that due to the Biblical prohibitions against homosexuality, that discrimination against homosexuals should persist in American society, which is supposed to be religion-neutral. But to try to claim the Bible (whatever your beliefs about its authorship and/or veracity) doesn’t explicitly prohibit male homosexual sex is as ludicrous as claiming it didn’t say G-d
created the heavens and Earth.<<
Well. We can get a room, and argue Torah, if you want.
Actually, I wasn’t trying to argue that the Torah doesn’t prohibit homosexuality: of course it does. But for men, not women, and in a specific context.
And more particularily, for Jewish men.
I thought you were trying to say that it’s ridiculous for Christians to ignore so many commandments, while being so immovable on this one; I think it’s ridiculous too.
Also, it’s worth adding-- although I’m learning not to touch superlatives without rubber gloves-- that Orthodox Jews of my acquaintance do not consider a homosexual encounter by a Jew to be somehow more abhorrant or less forgivable than say, eating pork.
And the Orthodox Jews of my acquaintance (and I had first night seder at the Lubavitcher rebbe’s house) are not interested in the sexual lives of gentiles, and would never dream of trying to make some sexual act illegal by secular law. Or beating up men as they come out of a gay bar.
–Rowan
Shopping is still cheaper than therapy. --my Aunt Franny
In the days of my [rather prolonged] virginity, it was alleged not only that I was too sissified to function as a heterosexual male (not “man enough”) but also that I either was or would become gay because “that’s what happens to guys like you”, presumably due to it being our only available alternative. So if you think of male sexuality as a masculinity tournament, in which the losers get stuck with guys instead of girls, you can see how a guy accepting and embracing gay sexuality could be revolting; and I think this IS how many males think of male sexuality.
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
In my experience, men tend to think about sex most of the time whether they are straight or gay. I think this bothers a lot of straight guys - when the meet a gay man they think, “I bet he’s thinking about having sex with me! Eeewwwwww.”