I am a gay, married man. Devout episcopalian. Dog dad to 4 pups, foster parent and a policy writer for a major bank. I am boring. BORING BORING BORING. My wanton activities with my husband include sex on a very very irregular basis (we are married, after all)lots of Netflix, lots of cleaning, visiting our extended families, walking the dogs, reading, cooking and that’s about it. A big night is Chinese Food and watching the Carbonaro effect. So, straight friends, what is so fascinating and repulsive?
I think there is no such thing as homophobia as no one is afraid of us, just repulsed . But why? I’m trying to wrap my head around this Kim Davis situation and trying to be a Christian and ‘forgive’ her ignorance, but. I just am over it. Is homo-hatred taught or innate? Are homophobes afraid they may like the things that I’m doing with my husband? What is it?
All our gay and lesbian friends are functionally indistinguishable from our straight friends. (50-something middle-class suburbanites mostly, with either adopted or bio-kids from one or the other).
I consider it extremely rude to think to much about what any other couple does in private. it is no one’s damn business how my Wife and I play, therefore it is none of my business how you and your partner/ spouse play.
Judging from the homophobes I’ve known in real life as well as the famously homophobic public figures I’m aware of, I don’t think homophobia is fear of gay people as much as it’s fear of gayness. It sounds like a fine distinction, but it’s a big difference. At least talking about male homophobes. It’s fear that I might be gay. Or catch the gay. Hence the large cadre of male homophobes who have no problem with lesbians, and may even find them “hot.”
Because stupid people are one denominational. When they hear gay, they don’t think about Netflix or walking the dogs like you mention in the OP. All their poor little pea brains can think of is anal sex. And eww, that’s “icky”. So they gotta hate.
Don’t know. I actually tend to prefer folks who are gay, not specifically for that reason but because I tend to prefer people who are different in some way that tends to broaden their serious experience base.
But my guess is that it comes from religious teaching. I like the theory I recently read in “The Righteous Mind” that a propensity for religion evolved because it facilitates forming groups of “us” and “them”, and generating hatred of other groups which unites our own group. A recent article in Scientific American says we appear to have taken off as a dominant species when we started guarding shellfish beds in prime coastal territories, and forming groups that hate one another. This mechanism has blossomed into everything from sports teams to corporations to dictatorships to, yes, churches (at least as I interpret it all).
Why religion picked on orientation in the first place I don’t know, but perhaps it was because most of us are hetero and may have resented potential targets dropping out of our dating candidate pool.
This is another one of those cases where I realize that I would make a lousy bigot, because I’m just too lazy.
How can someone work up the energy to worry about other people having anal sex? I mean, if it comes up in my own daily life, that’s one thing. So far that has only happened a couple of times, with mixed outcomes. I can take it or leave it, I guess. But whether the guy next door is doing it? I couldn’t be arsed to care one way or another if you paid me.
That’s the one thing I’ll never understand about certain kinds of bigotry. How does one find the energy and motivation?
My take on it is a bit of xenophobia, you are different and foreign to them to a certain degree. You threaten their little bubble of life, the neat little box they have put life into of how things should be. You are also a source of fascination as you are living outside the bubble, you are showing them what is possible, this the interest.
Also, in modern times perhaps no other activity or lifestyle has earned the reputation as ‘worst sin’ or the prime example of what sin is then homosexuality. It is what the masses can call to to state their personal righteousness by condemning homosexuality and homosexuals. It is something society seemed to agree on (though that is quickly changing), this is the transference of sin that Jesus bore. The people yelling to crucify Jesus were simply stating righteous condemnation of themselves for their own personal sins, but placing it on a innocent man to suffer and die.
As such it is fear based, by blaming you and making your actions to be sinful they are blinding themselves of their own ugliness and what they have done wrong, what skeletons of sin they have hiding in their closet. The fear is looking at themselves, they would rather look at you.
Going more into transfer of sins on a innocent, usually they will assume the worst, as they were taught, and that will justify their actions, and rumors will spread about what you are doing, but as they get to know you and your husband, they will slowly find out that their view was inaccurate and unfounded, including them placing their sins on you, that finding out is what convicts them of their sins, particularly of how they though of you two, and that will create a level of compassion, which is a brotherly type of love, maybe not that strong, but they will be sorry for what they assumed, it will be a good sorrow however as it is corrective and positive, and also a draw as people are usually drawn on some level to what they need in life.
People like Kim Davis (and Glenn Beck, et al) seek reasons to explain why their passionately held if poorly substantiated and often bizarrely framed beliefs predicated on some absolute authority are not universally shared. The easy way to assign culpability is to identify some person or group as responsible for “represssing” their belief system, promoting a conflicting or contradictory belief, or otherwise undermining their established principles. Homosexuals are just another in a long line of persecuted groups who are claimed to be responsible for <whatever> because of their supposed agenda, even though only a radical fringe minority of homosexuals want anything more than the modest legal and administrative benefits accorded to any two people of opposite gender who propose to establish a household, long term relationship, family, et cetera. The claim that expanding the legal definition of marriage to include same sex relationships is somehow undermining conventional marriages or the “nuclear family” is absurd on its face, as those institutions were facing challenges rising from the sweeping social changes of available birth control, women working in professional careers, greater socioeconomic mobility, no-fault divorce laws, et cetera, for decades before anyone started seriously discussing recognizing the legal right for homosexuals to marry.
The only tenuously rational argument–that allowing gay people to marry is a “slippery slope” that may eventually lead to group marriages, human-bestial unions, et cetera–is countered by the fact that marriage is, from a practical standpoint, a social and contractual institution which can be redefined as best suits the social structures and accepted practices rather than dogma laid down by people in robes and funny hats, and the most progressive view is toward acceptance of relationships which are fair and equitable to all parties who engage in a union in informed free will (about which that cannot be said of many “conventional” marriages). Pragmatically, homosexuals are forming long-term unions (and have done so since time immemorial, albeit not as openly or with as much acceptance) and many own real estate and significant financial portfolios in joint venture as well as adopting children, so it makes great sense from a legal standpoint to recognize these unions for what they are and extend the existing legal framework to cover the transfer or separation of assets and estates in the case of death, separation, or legal incapacitation.
This issue could be and was previously skirted around by referring to such relationships legally as “civil unions” and providing at least a roughly comparable legal framework to avoid offending the readily offended, but really all this was doing was creating a “separate but equal” framework with inconsistencies. The upshot of recognizing same sex marriage is that it formally expands the multibillion dollar wedding industry to a whole new market segment, for what that is worth, and the states to recognized such marriages early gained the economic advantage of having such celebrations performed and taxed in their domains.
Meanwhile, Fox news watchers and the hyperreligious right can still get upset about the “War on Christmas” and any number of other manufactured outrages, and the thrice-divorced and verifiably adulterous Kim Davis can sit on her ass in jail being smugly self-satisfied with her “sanctity of marriage” hypocracy while anyone with the least bit of critical thinking ability recognizes the situation as more astutely amusing than a Tina Fey rendition of Sarah Palin stumping for presidential office on the grounds of her foreign policy experience. Good comedy is hard to come by in these days of mildly amusing Judd Aptow movies and limp Ted sequels, so it’s really a plus for everyone.
What always gets me is how they pick and choose which biblical and religious prohibitions to draw the line at. I’ll bet she eats pork and it is hard to imagine a clearer biblical injunction than that one. I’ll bet she is in favor of capital punishment, which is a clear violation of one of the commandments. I read somewhere that she has committed adultery which, if true, violates another one of them. As far as I am concerned, they can put her back in jail and throw away the key.
I saw a cartoon the other day that depicted a supermarket checkout clerk refusing to check out a package of condoms, saying, “I am Catholic and my religion forbids it” and then suggesting she go to register 8. But then she notices the bacon and adds that that clerk is Muslim and would refuse to pass that. Where does this all end. If this woman were an employee, she could be fired. As an elected official, that is not possible. She wants to martyr herself in jail, let her.
There is a certain term for a person like this written in the letters which allowed Malvolio to (mis)recognize his wife handwriting, and although we aren’t allowed to use it in police society, it is most applicable in this case.
Having been inside the sexuality debates within the Lutheran Church, I would say for some it is what we called the “ick” factor or what you call more a repulsion. But for many against homosexuality it really is a fear. The why becomes something hard to study because of the length of discussion it takes to get down to bedrock. Back in the old Ecunet message board days the one discussion went on for almost the life of the system (about 10 years). You really needed to go back and read from Page One forward to start to get a clearer picture.
From what I’ve seen I would say some could be innate but for the most part its a learned behavior; and in some people it is a true fear. It all comes down to that old “they (whoever they happen to be to that person) are different from us and a threat to our future”. Way back when (and sometimes now) it was immigrants, often it is racial or ethnic minorities, religious differences can often be the fear. The one I grew up with was the “Red Menace”. Ignorance of other people or ideas is often the root but politicians/religious leaders bending that ignorance to their betterment (playing off the fear) is what keeps it alive for generations.
There may be a certain level of “fear of the unknown” hardwired into us; at one time I am sure it could have been a useful survival tool. But I would argue that the time for that ended long ago - at least a hundred of years ago if not thousands. But trying to convince some homophobe of that? Not an easy task. Look at the honk-offs we had in our respective denominations (I’m ELCA) and the splintering we have both had and you can see that.
Envy. If I were gay, I could have more in common with my partner. Maybe we’d be more likely to want to watch the same stuff on Netflix. We could share clothes and have unprotected sex with no fear of unwanted pregnancy. Gay people would invite me to parties and instead of a football game being on TV, everyone would be watching Top Chef and competing to see who could bring better appetizers (okay, that’s a stereotype, but it does happen and I have been lucky enough to attend).
The sexual aspect just seems weird because people can’t understand how someone can enjoy something they think is gross. Even eating mushrooms can elicit comments of “ew, how can you like that?” from others.
A sect, whose chief devotion lies
In odd perverse antipathies;
In falling out with that or this,
And finding somewhat still amiss;
More peevish, cross, and splenetick,
Than dog distract, or monkey sick.
That with more care keep holy-day
The wrong, than others the right way;
Compound for sins they are inclin’d to,
By damning those they have no mind to
My take on this is that, back in the day, when the middle-aged white guy up at the front of the room told everybody what to think and believe, they did it. If that guy thought something was bad and shouldn’t be done, he said so, and they bought it. If he said people should be shamed or shunned or driven out of town or drowned in the river, they did it, because that’s what the guy that’s telling them how to live their lives said to do.
This practice has gotten a lot of bad press in the past while, so it’s dying down, somewhat. The bottom line is, it’s not that these people don’t want gay people to get married, or that they don’t want them to have sex… they don’t want gay people to exist, and they’re not allowed to kill them any more, so instead they go out of their way to make life for gay people as horrifically unpleasant as they possibly can in hopes that they’ll go back into the closet and stop troubling all these right-thinking people with their evil, evil ways.
You have sex with your husband? How sinful! Tell me more!
Just kidding, but sometimes that seems to be the right wing attitude. Honestly, I don’t get it. I spend exactly ZERO time thinking about people I know having sex or what they do in their relationships. The mindset that simultaneously obsesses about such things while claiming to abhor them is a complete mystery to me.
