# Secular problems with homosexuality **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 7, 2000, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393 "2000-08-07T07:47:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Ted](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/db5fbb/32.png) [@Ted](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ted)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2000, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/61 "2000-08-09T00:40:12Z")
I can’t imagine how much it’s got to suck to deal with people like that all the time. Sorry if I hit a sore spot with anyone in this. I guess, my major point in this wasn’t that homosexuality was anything like the other things, but that some people _felt_ that it was. Actualy, when you get right down to it, a lot of the stuff I (and some others) were arguing was that things like beastality and the rest seem to have their orgins in religous, personal, or social contexts - rather than a logical shared moral structuer. We don’t like em, because we don’t like em. Simple as that. I think some people feel the same way about homosexuality. And blacks And jews And women And anyone else in general. _shrug_ we all have our own little irrational hates. Some of us are just better at being obvious about it. I’m sorry that you have to bear the burden of so much of it. ---
**Author:** ![beakerxf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc79bd/32.png) [@beakerxf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beakerxf)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2000, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/62 "2000-08-09T01:11:28Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ted \* > \*\*I can’t imagine how much it’s got to suck to deal with people like that all the time. > > Sorry if I hit a sore spot with anyone in this. I guess, my major point in this wasn’t that homosexuality was anything like the other things, but that some people _felt_ that it was. > \*\* I enjoy the intellectual discussion as much as the next person and I have calmly debated homosexuality many a time. It’s just starting to take on a level of futility. We argue and argue and argue, and it never seems to get anywhere. So, after all of the discussions, combined with a rather futile (and disillusioning) day at work put me into a mood where being compared to those who screw corpses and small children suddenly seemed…personal. I just got tired of always having to take the defensive position. Tired of having to somehow _prove_ the veracity of my very being. I realized I was putting myself in the position where others can define my value. …and I was venting stress. Don’t worry, I’m feeling much, much better now. 😃 Rather empowered, in fact. [cue “I am Woman”] Let’s just try to take another track of debate, eh? Let’s analyze homosexuality by itself in a secular manner and decide whther it fits into this society or not. Compare the pros and cons of letting homosexuals be homosexuals as opposed to trying to reshape them into heterosexuals. ---
**Author:** ![BlackKnight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/eb8c5e/32.png) [@BlackKnight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BlackKnight)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2000, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/63 "2000-08-09T03:44:06Z")
> [@](#): > > BlackKnight: > > > [@](#): > > > > Are you claiming that objective morality is impossible from a secular standpoint? Also, are you claiming that objective morality is possible from a religious standpoint? > > My stance is that the only way there could be a true objective measurement of goodness or evil of a given act is if a deity dictated it. Otherwise any measurement of right or wrong is subjective. Example: we could use whatever dictionary we wanted to use as a reference for our definition of “Good”. Whatever we decide to use as our definition is irrelevant to the definition of “Good” as accepted by another culture. Thus the word, “Good”, if not objectively defined by a higher power is subjectively defined by a given culture. Please note that I am **not** saying that religion provides an objective moral measurement although I’m sure that many religions portray their teachings as such. \*\* I feel guilty about responding again (because this issue isn’t really the topic of the OP) but I just had to say something quick. If a god defined right and wrong, why is that any less subjective than if a person defined right and wrong? The “higher power” argument doesn’t work, unless one is willing to accept that might makes right. Even if that was the case, it would still be subjective because a different “higher power” might decree different moral rules. If one **does** accept that the only way for morals to be objective is for them to be defined by a higher power, can’t society be this higher power? Just ruminating. E-mail me at [stopthelies@hotmail.com](mailto:stopthelies@hotmail.com) if you want to discuss this more, because I think I’ve used up enough space on this board. :o ) ---
**Author:** ![Kyberneticist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dc4da7/32.png) [@Kyberneticist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kyberneticist)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2000, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/64 "2000-08-09T04:08:49Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ted \* > \*\* > > > [@](#): > > > > The difference is symbolic. A corpse was once human. We respect the recently, and recognizably human dead to maintain the boundaries of morality. It is a problem with humans that our empathy is strongly bound to form and appearance, so anything strongly tied to human (like a recently dead corpse) falls under that category. > > That sounds religously suspect to me. 😉 > > > [@](#): > > > > Not just any inanimate object, surely you feel some twinge of empathy at seeing a dead human, someone who was once like you? Anything approaching respect perhaps? > > If not, your morality is either highly reasoned, or non-existent. I prefer it when people have moral “reflexes”… > > _shrug_ I still think your “empathy” is an offshoot of religious notions. If I see a dead body now, sure I feel sad, If I see somone screwing a cow, I think they are demaning what it means to be human. > From this I can understand how somone would feel that homosexuality is wrong. They would feel the same way about somone who is still sleeping with his wife four years after she’s died. Both of them are along the lines of love, but _some_ people think it demoralizes humanity. They would think that it’s not showing respect to sleep with somone of your own sex to humans. > I don’t see how you can say one is completely religiously motavated, while the other is not. > \*\* Both of your responses I would almost consider insulting. 🙂 No, I am not religious, I am not providing religious motivations, I am actually providing secular reasons for why eugenics of the mentally handicapped is wrong, necrophilia is wrong, and late-term abortions (unless greater harm would be done otherwise) is wrong. I am simply saying that that feeling we refer to as “empathy” is strongly tied to the physical appearance of the thing we are empathizing with. We think, “gosh, that looks just like me, I bet it thinks and feels like me!”. It’s why a humanoid appearance on a robot gains more response. It’s the human tendency to anthropomorphize. If you weaken this sort of cheat sheet people use, you weaken the moral reflex. I want to live in a society where people automatically empathize with me, not withhold judgement until I can show otherwise… > [@](#): > > \*\* > By the way, I have run across a dead person before. When I was much much younger. Point of fact is that I didn’t feel sad, I felt curious. I didn’t know who this person was, or what had happend. I knew he was dead, but more than that, nope. \*\* That’s fine. Now if you’d thought - “Gee, a dead person, bet that warmed up it’d just be like screwing an drunk I slipped Rohypnol to, but without anyone being harmed by it!” - I’d be worried… ---
**Author:** ![capacitor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e47774/32.png) [@capacitor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/capacitor)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2000, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/65 "2000-08-09T04:31:38Z")
Hmm, seems the arguments are reaching an impasse. Let me spark it with a new one, probably turning the argument upside down. What if there is a severe overpopulation/undersupply problem in the future? Wouldn’t being gay be a virtue then? Would this non-reproductive sex appeal to more people, and in fact encouraged, as an answer to the ocerpopulation problem, in the same way that proscribing it was and answer to populating sparse agricultural communities? Men and women tend to hang out together, committed or not, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Ted](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/db5fbb/32.png) [@Ted](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ted)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2000, 8:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/66 "2000-08-09T08:54:15Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Kyberneticist \* > > Both of your responses I would almost consider insulting. 🙂 Doh! Sorry. I really didn’t mean to do that. I appologize if I did. I’ve had a … fairly messed up week. > [@](#): > > No, I am not religious, I am not providing religious motivations, I am actually providing secular reasons for why eugenics of the mentally handicapped is wrong, necrophilia is wrong, and late-term abortions (unless greater harm would be done otherwise) is wrong. I am simply saying that that feeling we refer to as “empathy” is strongly tied to the physical appearance of the thing we are empathizing with. We think, “gosh, that looks just like me, I bet it thinks and feels like me!”. > It’s why a humanoid appearance on a robot gains more response. It’s the human tendency to anthropomorphize. > If you weaken this sort of cheat sheet people use, you weaken the moral reflex. I want to live in a society where people automatically empathize with me, not withhold judgement until I can show otherwise… Yeah, I can understand that. But I think empathy and disgust come from the same source. For some reason we feel sleeping with the dead is an abomination. Wheter that comes from feelings of empathy or not, I don’t know. But I can see how it could. “This person looks like me, and the like, they must be just like me.” can easily carry over into: “This person looks like me, and the like, they obviously must have somthing wrong with them becuase they sure don’t _act_ like me.” I suspect that some people would understand homosexuality under the same pretext. Secular reasoning. I realize the difference between consensual and non-consensual sex of course… they might or might not. But either way I think they’d find it irrelavnt. _shrug_ I’m not going to argue it anymore though. I think too many people are getting offended. And it’s not really my postion anyways. ---
**Author:** ![Sequela](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bc79bd/32.png) [@Sequela](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sequela)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2000, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393/67 "2000-08-10T12:08:10Z")
Another reason, not that this is a particularly legitimate reason, IMHO, for the prejudice against homosexuals, lesbians in particular relates to the fears of those in power. Historian Lillian Faderman writes extensively on cultural and political changes of the social perception of women who 1) loved each other and expressed this in loving, romantic, sexualized terms; 2)lived together in long term comitted relationships in which they shared all aspects of their lives (generally including sleeping in the same bed) over the last 150 years. OF course there were and likely are some that protest that such historic women (many of them leaders in the arts, politics and social reform)were but platonic best friends, not “lesbians” as we understand them today. However, even among most contemporary lesbians, love and emotional intimacy play a far larger role than the physical sex act per se (icing on the cake so to speak). Anyway, Federman points out the benign, tolerant non-pathological way such relationships were regarded prior to World War I. Known as “Boston Marriages,” they typically involved two women who were either independently wealthy or were one of the early educated professional women, i.e.,teachers, nurses and social workers. This meant that they could afford not to be supported by a man and thus had the economic option of not marrying for the first time. And many did, without raising any particular moral outrage. However, after the war in which women began working otherwise male jobs and did so compentently and the “Roaring 20’s” which saw a general reaction against the sexually repressive Victorian moral culture, lesbians began to find themselves the subject of texts on psychoanalytic psychopathology (Klein and Deutch, for example). Suddenly these independent middle class women-loving-women became a threat to family values and the larger social order. And thus begins fifty years of large scale political-psychiatric presecution of those who love outside the usual gender boundaries. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/secular-problems-with-homosexuality/28393.md?page=3)