Why did people hate gays for so long?

[Laudenum]

Was thinking of this a while back, never posted.

We know that the current period where society is cool with gays is pretty rare (Greek had out gays, and apparently some native American tribes did too), and that for most of human history, gays were persecuted.

My question is why?

[friedo]

The Old Testament is pretty clear that hot man-on-man action is a sin. The cultures influenced by Judaism, Christianity and Islam developed their senses of morality and their law from religious traditions.

And it's always easy for a culture to oppress a small minority, no matter what your ethical system says.

[astro]

Most of human history is pre-literate so we have relatively little idea how pre-literate societies treated gays, but IIRC based on the few examples we do have based on anthropological studies of primitive cultures they generally weren't persecuted to nearly the same extent as they have been in modernity. In fact, in thinking about it, most of the really intense historical antipathy towards gays I can recall is generally associated with Judeo-Christian-Islamic societies.

[Rigamarole]

Originally Posted by Laudenum

We know that the current period where society is cool with gays is pretty rare

What makes you think society is cool with gays? A few concentrated areas (most of them urban, coastal, and wealthy) tolerate it to a degree but many many people still hate gays. I don't think you can go around declaring gay tolerance as the normal thing yet.

[friedo]

Originally Posted by Rigamarole

What makes you think society is cool with gays? A few concentrated areas (most of them urban, coastal, and wealthy) tolerate it to a degree but many many people still hate gays. I don't think you can go around declaring gay tolerance as the normal thing yet.

On the other hand, we don't tend to throw people in jail for sodomy any more.

[Laudenum]

Originally Posted by friedo

The Old Testament is pretty clear that hot man-on-man action is a sin. The cultures influenced by Judaism, Christianity and Islam developed their senses of morality and their law from religious traditions.

And it's always easy for a culture to oppress a small minority, no matter what your ethical system says.

Ok, where did Judaism get the idea then?


There is a theory that a friend told me that women favoured gay men as companions (to the extent of having children with them) and straight men got pissed off and started to ban them. He had no evidence for this theory.

[Rigamarole]

Originally Posted by friedo

On the other hand, we don't tend to throw people in jail for sodomy any more.

True, but just as an anecdote (sorry, but I don't think the OP's question can be properly answered here in GQ anyway):

Once I was in the West Hollywood area, which is famous for being extremely gay-friendly. Probably the most gay-friendly place in the country next to San Francisco. (and that's not to mention the U.S. is way more gay-friendly overall than most countries) I was standing in line for something and two men walked down the street by us holding hands. As soon as they were gone it elicited several sneers and negative comments from the people near me. And this was in the supposed paradise of sexual freedom - just for holding hands.

So I don't think society is even close to being "cool with gays". Be careful about representations in TV and film throwing you off, because homosexuals and homosexual-friendly culture is massively disproportionately represented in Hollywood. Doesn't mean that is the prevailing societal attitude.

[ZenBeam]

OK, so the "cool with gays" period is even rarer than the OP realizes, but that's really background or an aside. His question is "why is it rare?"

[ruadh]

A Civil Partnership Bill is due to be passed soon in Ireland and for the past few weeks there have been people demonstrating against it. They've engaged in some vicious behaviour such as heckling the Irish AIDS Alliance when they arranged a photoshoot with politicians to highlight AIDS Awareness Day.

The characters involved in this protest include members of Cóir (aka Youth Defence) who are the loopy fringe of the anti-abortion movement. On top of that they are presently involved in a campaign against plans to enshrine the rights of (living) children in the Irish Constitution. They oppose this move because it would overturn the present situation where it is practically impossible to remove children from the marital home, even when they're being abused and neglected.

Put simply, they are fanatical about the nuclear family (with the father at the head of it, of course), and are opposed to anything that they think undermines it. They're loopers, but they do seem to genuinely believe that Human Civilisation As We Know It will fall apart if that structure is not upheld. And homosexuality inherently involves rejecting that structure in favour of another type of relationship, so it's one of the things they're opposed to.

Similar types exist in the US and elsewhere, of course, not just Ireland.

[Suburban Plankton]

I thought it was just for the same reason that people hated black people, or Jewish people, or blind, left handed dentists...because they're "different". Nothing more, nothing less.

[Autolycus]

Did?

[Laudenum]

Originally Posted by Suburban Plankton

I thought it was just for the same reason that people hated black people, or Jewish people, or blind, left handed dentists...because they're "different". Nothing more, nothing less.

Black people - justification for slavery

Jews - owed them money, usury, killed Christ

blind, left-handed dentists - sloppy work

[Colibri]

I think this question is probably too complex to be handled easily in GQ (especially since it involves religion). Moving to GD.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

[MichaelEmouse]

People tend to be irrational and emotional when it comes to sex. There's a lot of sense of tradition when it comes to the family, gender roles and sexuality. Abnormal (in the neutral sense) people can upset that and cause opposition.

Deviation from the norm often brings hostility, be it women wearing pants in the 50s, women not merely being coy chaste recipients when it comes to sex, sex outside marriage, cohabitation. Gays break many social conventions.


Also, perhaps one clue as to one of the causes is that men are more likely to be homophic than women and that when people speak ill of homosexuality, they usually have male homosexuals in mind. Many men are queasy when they see homosexual men and people will often go from "it feels queasy" to "it's morally wrong".


And don't forget the anal sex.

[RickJay]

Because

1. They're unusual, and to straight people, hard to understand, and
2. People are afraid of things they don't understand.

[Little Nemo]

I agree with Suburban Plankton. Xenophobia has always been a human trait (and it's pretty common in other animals as well). Any social group tends to see anyone outside of the group as a potential enemy.

Heterosexual coupling is a fundamental aspect of life in most societies. Those who aren't part of that are seen as different. So homosexuals are seen as being outside of the group and that makes them targets.

[jayjay]

First of all, the concept of a set sexual orientation is relatively recent. Most people would have considered the idea that there was a subset of people who were homosexual to be very weird and counterintuitive. "Homosexual", the word, wasn't even coined until the 19th Century.

Secondly, even in times and societies were man/man sexual acts were tolerated or expected, it was a very narrow acceptability. The infamous Greek tolerance for it was limited to older men with much younger men, in a mentor/protege relationship. Two adult men who had such a relationship would have been seen as abnormal and wrong, and the "catcher", so to speak, would have been taunted and possibly assaulted for taking the "female" role. This was also true in Rome...in the scattered periods in Roman history when male/male sex was less scandalous, it was the receptive male who was most vilified.

A lot of this had to do with the fact that ancient (and really, all the way up to modern times) societies had a population replacement problem. Everyone was expected to marry and produce children because it was necessary for the society to survive, due to infant and child mortality.

[Laudenum]

Originally Posted by MichaelEmouse

People tend to be irrational and emotional when it comes to sex. There's a lot of sense of tradition when it comes to the family, gender roles and sexuality. Abnormal (in the neutral sense) people can upset that and cause opposition.

Deviation from the norm often brings hostility, be it women wearing pants in the 50s, women not merely being coy chaste recipients when it comes to sex, sex outside marriage, cohabitation. Gays break many social conventions.


Also, perhaps one clue as to one of the causes is that men are more likely to be homophic than women and that when people speak ill of homosexuality, they usually have male homosexuals in mind. Many men are queasy when they see homosexual men and people will often go from "it feels queasy" to "it's morally wrong".


And don't forget the anal sex.

But gays didn't suddenly 'appear' - they existed, and then they were taken against.

[Condescending Robot]

Originally Posted by jayjay

Secondly, even in times and societies were man/man sexual acts were tolerated or expected, it was a very narrow acceptability. The infamous Greek tolerance for it was limited to older men with much younger men, in a mentor/protege relationship. Two adult men who had such a relationship would have been seen as abnormal and wrong, and the "catcher", so to speak, would have been taunted and possibly assaulted for taking the "female" role. This was also true in Rome...in the scattered periods in Roman history when male/male sex was less scandalous, it was the receptive male who was most vilified.

A lot of this had to do with the fact that ancient (and really, all the way up to modern times) societies had a population replacement problem. Everyone was expected to marry and produce children because it was necessary for the society to survive, due to infant and child mortality.

First paragraph good, second paragraph bad. No one was sitting around planning the society's mores, and even if they were, it's doubtful that anyone who lived 2500 years ago was capable of grasping a concept like "homosexuality in itself is fine but the gays need to also have sham marriages in order to reproduce for the state's benefits."

Greece was a society of child abuse victims, and we all know that child abuse victims become child abusers. Nothing more or less, and nothing to do with homosexuality as we understand it (that is, consensual sexual relationships between adults of the same gender) had anything to do with it.

I can't believe that some people have the "noble savage" blindness that leads to statements like "Native Americans were so tolerant," but I assure you that people in primitive cultures generally are much more scared of deviance than the first world, which is still hardly enlightened about sexual freedom anyway, and being gay in a Western way in any backwards place, whether it's sub-Saharan Africa now or the world as a whole in 1500, is a one-way ticket to a lynching.

[MichaelEmouse]

Originally Posted by Laudenum

But gays didn't suddenly 'appear' - they existed, and then they were taken against.

Do you have a time period in mind for the word "then"? In Europe, it seems that opposition to homosexuality came with the spread of Christianity (Leviticus 20:13 isn't really gay friendly and homosexuals aren't in the habit of being fruitful and multiplying). The Greeks and the Romans looked down on being the bottom but weren't hostile to homosexual relations.

[Der Trihs]

Many reasons, I think. As has been mentioned, they are different, their behavior involves sex which people are often twitchy about, and they are perceived as hurting population growth. I'll also add that they make great "witch hunt" material; they look like everyone else after all, so you can't prove your innocence if accused.

[Hermitian]

Wow, I always thought the reason was simple, but no one has mentioned it here.

When I first learned about gay men, I asked my parents "uh... I'm not sure how the parts all fit together..." I was told that men used other men's anuses or mouths.

I considered this so abhorrently gross, I would defiantly not feel comfortable around them. I mean, something must be messed up in their head right? They are plain out crazy!

Its not hard to get from there to hate.

[Xenocrates]

I don't really have any actual knowledge about this but I would guess that homosexual sex is a thing that has a fairly easy time disgusting people. Sex is integrated with a lot of emotions. And people tend to make negative moral judgments about things that disgust them. I'm able to separate my emotions and moral judgments to some extent so I don't think that male homosexual sex is wrong but it still disgusts me. If I hadn't thought about it a lot I would probably think it was wrong.

[panache45]

Originally Posted by Laudenum

We know that the current period where society is cool with gays . . .

How can I get a one-way ticket to your planet?

Seriously, consider this: The Straight Dope has been fighting ignorance since 1973. It was roughly at the same time that gay people (and pro-gay people) began "fighting ignorance" on a large scale. In both cases, we're headed in the right direction, but "it's taking longer than we thought."

[Superhal]

Imho, the status of gays reflects the status of women in a society. Of course, "fear of gays" is only and always "fear of homosexual men."

You can tell how homosexuals will be treated in a society by how women are treated. Are women equal in terms of income, behavior, status, etc.? Regardless of how you think women are treated, how they are really treated is reflected in attitudes towards gays.

For example, if you ask a man why they would be opposed to homosexual rights, the usual answer is that they don't want to be approached by gay men on the street, propositioned, or even possibly raped. Why would a straight man have this fear from gay men? The reason, in essence, is that a man doesn't want to get treated like a woman in that society.

Therefore, throughout history, women have had a lower status in society, and men have always feared being treated like women. In fact, being treated like a woman is just about the worst thing to do to a man.

[aruvqan]

Originally Posted by Hermitian

Wow, I always thought the reason was simple, but no one has mentioned it here.

When I first learned about gay men, I asked my parents "uh... I'm not sure how the parts all fit together..." I was told that men used other men's anuses or mouths.

I considered this so abhorrently gross, I would defiantly not feel comfortable around them. I mean, something must be messed up in their head right? They are plain out crazy!

Its not hard to get from there to hate.

From what I understand many gay men are *not* into anal at all, and it is all hands and mouth.

Although, it does boggle me, men are absolutely grosed out at the thought of giving a blow job but they will pretty much badger women into blowing them [and in many cases refusing to *return the favor*]

[Sage Rat]

Originally Posted by Laudenum

Ok, where did Judaism get the idea then?

There is a theory that a friend told me that women favoured gay men as companions (to the extent of having children with them) and straight men got pissed off and started to ban them. He had no evidence for this theory.

It's fairly unknowable. According to the Bible, God just came down from outer space and told Moses the rules, without feeling any particular need to tell us his reasoning. That means that we're left to guess what "his" (or the people who wrote the Bible's) motive was.

Looking through the Bible though, it doesn't seem to be so much that "gay" is bad so much as not doing your best to turn semen into babies is bad. Sex with men, sex with butts, sex with faces, sex with hands, etc. are all cases where it's pretty darn certain that a baby isn't going to be born. This could either descend from a philosophical view about life -- that wasting your seed is equivalent to murder -- or to a tribal view that more Israelites meant a stronger, safer nation and so it was the duty of every man to make as many babies as he could.

[astro]

Originally Posted by aruvqan

From what I understand many gay men are *not* into anal at all, and it is all hands and mouth.

Although, it does boggle me, men are absolutely grosed out at the thought of giving a blow job but they will pretty much badger women into blowing them [and in many cases refusing to *return the favor*]

Is this really how you think at will heterosexual blow jobs with SO's and girlfriends get accomplished in the everyday heterosexual man's world, with "badgering" and lots of oral non-reciprocity?

Wow - Foolish myths about real world sexuality are everywhere.

[mr. jp]

Because most men find their sex life repulsive, and because humans are flawed that way.

[astro]

Originally Posted by Superhal

You can tell how homosexuals will be treated in a society by how women are treated. Are women equal in terms of income, behavior, status, etc.? Regardless of how you think women are treated, how they are really treated is reflected in attitudes towards gays.

I think that's a stretch. In the Islamic world, although they lack many freedoms we deem important in the west, women (mothers and wives specifically) have a ton of influence in household matters and how interpersonal relationships are conducted, and they are often respected and venerated by their sons and husbands, and generally deferred to as the authority, in that specific context.

I don't think gays hold any comparable status in Islamic society.

[Candyman74]

People are tribal and dislike things "not like them". They are often ill-informed about these alleged things. Thus they can hate foreigners, republicans, people of a different color or gender, and people of a different sexual preference.

It's not to do with "gays"; it's to do with "not like me".

Fortunately, people are coming to realise that people of a different color, nationality* or sexual preference are like them.




*Well, OK, not nationality. It's the last acceptable prejudice.

[Der Trihs]

Originally Posted by Superhal

Imho, the status of gays reflects the status of women in a society. Of course, "fear of gays" is only and always "fear of homosexual men."

Not at all. Societies have accepted gays while treating women like subhumans, and respected women while despising gays. And lesbians have been the target of plenty of fear and hatred; consider the practice of "correctional" rape, where men try to convert a lesbian to heterosexuality by raping her.

Originally Posted by astro

I think that's a stretch. In the Islamic world, although they lack many freedoms we deem important in the west, women (mothers and wives specifically) have a ton of influence in household matters and how interpersonal relationships are conducted, and they are often respected and venerated by their sons and husbands, and generally deferred to as the authority, in that specific context.

I don't think that's a specifically Islamic thing; I've heard the same about Asian cultures. That while in some women are just considered inferior, in others the custom is for women to be submissive in public but in charge at home. Which I understand comes to a shock to certain foreign men who thought they were getting a stereotyped "submissive Asian wife".

Now that it's brought up, I do think that the near-compulsive need many people have to fit everyone into neat gender categories is another reason for discomfort with homosexuality.

[Freudian Slit]

Originally Posted by Hermitian

Wow, I always thought the reason was simple, but no one has mentioned it here.

When I first learned about gay men, I asked my parents "uh... I'm not sure how the parts all fit together..." I was told that men used other men's anuses or mouths.

I considered this so abhorrently gross, I would defiantly not feel comfortable around them. I mean, something must be messed up in their head right? They are plain out crazy!

Its not hard to get from there to hate.

But don't most kids think that oral sex/anal sex is gross between heterosexual couples? Hell, kids think that even regular sex is pretty gross before they become sexually mature.

[aruvqan]

Originally Posted by astro

Is this really how you think at will heterosexual blow jobs with SO's and girlfriends get accomplished in the everyday heterosexual man's world, with "badgering" and lots of oral non-reciprocity?

Wow - Foolish myths about real world sexuality are everywhere.

i guess the various women i went to college with and sat around discussing men arent to be trusted ...I know that because I have had TMJ all my life, BJs are very uncomfortable for me to perform, and without an exception for about the entire 4 years I was in college every guy I dated wanted to be blown, and despite my TMJ, they got really freaking snotty about it. When confronted with the ill do you if you do me, got an almost universal whinge of but you pee out of *there* I think I had 2 guys perform cunilingus on me voluntarily that were under the age of 30. The pressure to blow was pretty much universal to the female friends I had in school, and the pretty much universal reluctance to reciprocate as well.

[even sven]

Actually, I think the replacement rate theory has a lot of weight.

In a lot of societies- from modern Sub-Saharan Africa to ancient China- some level of homosexuality was accepted as long as one also had a family. You'd be surprised how many gay and lesbian people I met in remote African villages. But for small-scale farmers, each child adds to the family's ability to work the land and raises the standard of living. Furthermore, parents count on their children to support them in their old age. So to "opt out" of a standard family life would endanger the well-being of the entire family. They don't care if you are "fulfilled" or not- having and raising children is a duty, not a choice. But to some degree people are willing to turn a blind eye to what you do during your off time. I don't think any society has not had a thriving informal gay scene...even modern Saudi Arabia.

For evangelical religions (which, if you think about it, is basically Islam and Christianity) it's even more obvious. More babies means more followers,

One thing that may be a factor is that the few who can be openly gay and not go with the sham marriage must be fabulously wealthy by local standards. I know this caused a lot of confusion when I was in Cameroon. They saw that the few openly gay people were wealthy. They saw that their own corrupt politicians and gangsters were wealthy. They figured gay people must be doing something to get that much money, and since it was clearly a secret it must be something bad. The explanation they can up with is that gay people are members of secret cults.

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by Superhal

Imho, the status of gays reflects the status of women in a society. Of course, "fear of gays" is only and always "fear of homosexual men."

You can tell how homosexuals will be treated in a society by how women are treated. Are women equal in terms of income, behavior, status, etc.? Regardless of how you think women are treated, how they are really treated is reflected in attitudes towards gays.

For example, if you ask a man why they would be opposed to homosexual rights, the usual answer is that they don't want to be approached by gay men on the street, propositioned, or even possibly raped. Why would a straight man have this fear from gay men? The reason, in essence, is that a man doesn't want to get treated like a woman in that society.

Therefore, throughout history, women have had a lower status in society, and men have always feared being treated like women. In fact, being treated like a woman is just about the worst thing to do to a man.

Well aside from the whole rape thing, I'm not sure how true that is.

In some societies, shaman were frequently gay men or at least bisexual, the blend of masculine and feminine made them more attuned to the spirit world (or so people thought). Being homosexual was not a big deal in many Asian societies as long as you could perform your filial duties and provide your parents with grandchildren (preferably male children), if you were a lesbian then people generally didn't even notice as long as you got pregnant. If your homosexuality interfered with producing children then it became a big deal.

I think the hatred people have of homosexuality is a combination of everything people have mentioned, but I will add one more thing, demagoguery.

We have seen people try to blame homosexuals for everything from 9/11 to Katrina to the earthquake in Haiti, there is nothing that strengthens a group more than a common enemy, we're not really allowed to pick on Blacks and jews anymore so we blame everything on the gays.

When people ask why bad things happen to good people, someone comes along as says, its is God's righteous anger at our permissive attitudes towards homosexuality (somewhere along the line it became too difficult to try and explain original sin or the lessons of Job and it became easier to blame the gays).

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by aruvqan

From what I understand many gay men are *not* into anal at all, and it is all hands and mouth.

Although, it does boggle me, men are absolutely grosed out at the thought of giving a blow job but they will pretty much badger women into blowing them [and in many cases refusing to *return the favor*]

Well men are not as grossed out at the thought of licking pussy as they are at the idea of sucking cock. I think its one of the consequences of heterosexuality. I think the "not returning the favor" attitude is the result of being male. If a gay man could get away with having his cock sucked without sucking cock, wouldn't he try, despite how much porn stars seem to enjoy the sucking of cock, how much fun could it really be to jerk your head back and forth like a chicken pecking for seeds while a penis stabs the back of your throat?

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by astro

Wow - Foolish myths about real world sexuality are everywhere.

I jibes pretty well with my experiences through college. After college it was a routine part of foreplay... then I got married.

Originally Posted by Der Trihs

consider the practice of "correctional" rape, where men try to convert a lesbian to heterosexuality by raping her.

I can't imagine that its very effective at converting lesbians into anything other than lesbians with kids. Incredible cunnilingus from blind man with a swimmer's body is probably a better bet.

Originally Posted by Hermitian

Wow, I always thought the reason was simple, but no one has mentioned it here.

When I first learned about gay men, I asked my parents "uh... I'm not sure how the parts all fit together..." I was told that men used other men's anuses or mouths.

I don't know. A lot of guys I know really like the idea of getting their cock sucked or sticking it in a girl's ass and they are raging homophobes.

[Thudlow Boink]

Originally Posted by jayjay

First of all, the concept of a set sexual orientation is relatively recent. Most people would have considered the idea that there was a subset of people who were homosexual to be very weird and counterintuitive. "Homosexual", the word, wasn't even coined until the 19th Century.

I am not a historian, but this is my understanding as well. Which makes the OP's whole question somewhat anachronistic.

[Rigamarole]

I think it goes beyond just being "different" and can't be explained away by the "not like us" theory. We have an evolutionary drive to reproduce - the reptilian brain reasons that anyone lacking that drive must be damaged in some way and they are actually hurting our species' chances of survival by failing/refusing to reproduce.

When you ask any question that starts with "why" and has "people" in it, you have to look at the reptilian brain theory. It usually contains the answer.

[panache45]

Originally Posted by Damuri Ajashi

If a gay man could get away with having his cock sucked without sucking cock, wouldn't he try, despite how much porn stars seem to enjoy the sucking of cock, how much fun could it really be to jerk your head back and forth like a chicken pecking for seeds while a penis stabs the back of your throat?

First of all, there are many gay men (and straight women) who enjoy sucking cock, but for a variety of reasons don't want reciprocation. I am eternally grateful that there are men like that in the world.

I have even known some straight men who enjoyed sucking cock.

And you seem to have a rather distorted notion of what oral sex is like. You've either been watching the wrong porn, or never been with anyone who enjoyed doing it.

[sqweels]

People are afraid that it's contagious.

Sexual arousal is a rather involuntary response. The existence of homosexuals makes homosexuality a reality, so heterosexuals worry that exposure to it might someday trigger a response and they too will turn gay, with all the disgusting implications.

So they act out with hostility to the idea, to reassure themselves as well as others.

[FriarTed]

Originally Posted by Sage Rat

It's fairly unknowable. According to the Bible, God just came down from outer space and told Moses the rules, without feeling any particular need to tell us his reasoning. That means that we're left to guess what "his" (or the people who wrote the Bible's) motive was.

Looking through the Bible though, it doesn't seem to be so much that "gay" is bad so much as not doing your best to turn semen into babies is bad. Sex with men, sex with butts, sex with faces, sex with hands, etc. are all cases where it's pretty darn certain that a baby isn't going to be born. This could either descend from a philosophical view about life -- that wasting your seed is equivalent to murder -- or to a tribal view that more Israelites meant a stronger, safer nation and so it was the duty of every man to make as many babies as he could.

Except there are actually no Biblical laws against the bolded area- Rabbinical & Church teachings, yes- Biblical laws, no.

[willthekittensurvive?]

Originally Posted by panache45

I have even known some straight men who enjoyed sucking cock.

.

really flexible men I bet

[FoieGrasIsEvil]

Originally Posted by Laudenum

My question is why?

Because its an evolutionary cul-de-sac, and religions in the past needed followers so they forbade it, and now that the world is more populated and advanced, mostly western cultures have to a degree eschewed religion, less people give a shit what two other people do in their private lives?

[Punisher 11B]

Try to plug a lamp into a lamp and see if it works.

[Lanzy]

Because I was told to hate them.

I was raised in a little backwards almost out of time town on a tobacco farm in East TN.

My immediate family told me to hate gays, blacks, city slickers, rock music, non-fried foods, and most of all atheists. It took me a while to ask why, and I got answers that were as ignorant as the premise. As I got older I was told I was wrong to read books for fun, sing anything but hymns, dance ever, and women naturally hated sex and if someone didn't use a good lock they didn't care about it.

Then I went to college, the first in all generations in memory of my family to do so. Of my graduating class, less than 5% went to college of any kind. Then I joined the military and saw some of the rest of the world, and in my late 20's I just began to realize the ignorance I was raised with, by 30 I rejected everything. At my 20 year HS reunion I found that at least 90% of my class never left that town and pretty much were as mired in stupid beliefs as when I left.

All this rambling, if you made it this far is my answer.

Because people are raised in ignorance and they tend to stay that way because it is hard to fight your way out of it. I suspect to maybe lesser degrees and slightly larger towns this holds true.

[kayaker]

Originally Posted by friedo

On the other hand, we don't tend to throw people in jail for sodomy any more.

While we may not throw people in jail for sodomy, we definitely put people in jail accepting that they will likely be sodomized.

[Marley23]

Originally Posted by kayaker

While we may not throw people in jail for sodomy, we definitely put people in jail accepting that they will likely be sodomized.

That doesn't really have anything to do with the issue. I think a better response to friedo's point is that anti-sodomy laws are still on the books and were only ruled unconstitutional a few years ago. And just the other day people on this board were discussed efforts (at least in Texas) to start enforcing those laws again.

[Damuri Ajashi]

Originally Posted by willthekittensurvive?

really flexible men I bet

Those men never make it out of bed in the morning.