What about bisexuals? They certainly choose when to engage in gay or hetero sex.
Yeah, but we didn’t choose to be bisexual.
That’s a different question. I, as a straight man, could just as certainly choose to have gay sex (well, I could choose to try). I just wouldn’t enjoy it (I assume, not having tried). While bisexuals can certainly choose which individuals they have sex with, whether they choose to be attracted to both sexes or not is far from certain.
While the different schools of Shari’a prescribe homosexuality to varying degrees ( with punitive measures ranging from the incredibly harsh to the more moderate, if still massively unfair ), homosexuality apparently continues to be not at all uncommon in the Muslim world. Though certainly in the closet, if anything it might be easier to camouflage in many Arab countries where physical contact between Arab men is not as tied up in cultural machismo as it is in the west. To quote P.J. O’Rourke:
Good-fellowship in the Middle East can be a bit unnerving. You’d best get used to being gripped, hugged, and even nuzzled. I was taken aback the first time I saw two fully armed militiamen walking down the street holding hands.
From the very entertaining Holidays in Hell ( 1988, Vintage Books ). Emphasis added.
In the medieval ME/NA the male upper class, cushioned from reproach by wealth and power, wasn’t shy about extolling homosexual contact between men, which took on an almost ancient Greek air:
Despite strong Shar’i disapproval, the sexual relations of a mature man with a subordinate youth were so readily accepted in upper-class circles that there was often little or no effort to conceal their existence. Sometimes it seems to have been more socially acceptable to speak of a man’s attachement to a youth than to speak of his women, who were supposed to be invisible in the inner courts. The fashion entered into poetry, especially in the Persian. The narrative poetry, indeed, conventionally told of love affairs between men and women; but the person to whom the lyric love verse is addressed by male poets was conventionally, and almost without exception, made explicitly male.
From The Venture of Islam:* Conscience and History in a World Civilization - Vol. II, The Expansion of Islam in the Middle Periods* by Marshall G. S. Hodgson ( 1974, University of Chicago Press ).
- Tamerlane
From what I have been told by people from Islamic countries, homosexuality definitely goes on. They are just discreet about it. Look at it this way: like homosexuality wasn’t around in the US 50 years or more ago because it was looked down up socially? Also, because it is so proscribed by Islam this can actually make it easier for gays to stay off the radar. Unless someone has absolute proof that another is gay, even hinting someone is will be seen as horrible slander. Thus best to keep your mouth shut. And, given that in these cultures homosexuality will be done very privately, gonna be hard to have absolute proof.
I hear oppressive Islamist states being criticized all the time. Where have you been?
It is astounding that such an ignorant and ill-informed statement could even be made in Straight Dope Great Debates. I have no idea what an immoral fallacy even is, let alone what it has to do with logic. The notion that two people, in love, facilitating goodness between each other, could be immoral is absolutely Neanderthal in its conception. Due respect, but you have liberalism mixed up with something else. Liberalism is not the hand-wringing wimpiness that it has been made into by the ad campaigns of right-wing cavemen; it is the very essence of America. Liberal and liberty come from the same word: liber = freedom. Speaking of fallacies, I think you should examine your conservative myopia for its rather obvious flaws. Where is the love of “freedom” you trumpet so loudly in the oppression of innocent people who seek nothing more than to share in the American dream and the fruits of liberty? I don’t expect this argument to change your mind, because that is not where the problem lies. Nothing can be done about a mind that is guided by a bleak and wretched heart. If you’re so afraid of gay marriage, then don’t marry a man. But you have no moral or ethical right to obstruct peaceful honest people who merely seek to pursue their own happiness in their own way.
Erm, Sol is gay, I believe; he was being sarcastic. Stating what the OP merely wishes to insinuate, as it were.
Either this is another example of Lib’s opaque sarcasm that I’m missing, or he failed to notice that SolGrundy was being sarcastic.
Given that we know virtually nothing about the moral nature of Neanderthals, don’t you think it would be better not to perpetuate the commonly held, and probably incorrect, view that they were a depraved, non-human species?
Even rereading it, I see no sarcasm, but I take your word for it. My apologies to SolGrundy. Still, my point remains, and if a conservative or religious fundamentalist should make a similar argument in earnest, please reference him to my post. Thanks.
Why is it you liberals are always so quick to support the Neanderthals? Tell that to the brave Cro-Magnon soldier who last week was cut down in the prime of his life by the spear of a cowardly Neanderthal terrorist. They don’t worship the sun like the Cro-Magnons, they worship the earth. Earth-worshippers only know hate and violence. We should throw our spears at ALL the Neanderthals and let them sort it out.
I suppose that Neanderthals hate our freedom, too, right???
Don’t try to tell me that a religion where every guy gets down on his hands and knees five times a day is anti-gay! 
Originally posted by Tamerlane
You mean unfair like this?:
“As to the issue of how the homosexual person is judged in an Islamic State, the Companions of Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessing be upon him differed among themselves on this issue, and this led to different views maintained by Muslim Jurists. For example, in the Hanafi school of thought, the homosexual is punished through harsh beating, and if he/she repeats the act, death penalty is to be applied. As for the Shafii school of thought, the homosexual receives the same punishment of adultery (if he/she is married) or fornication (if not married). This means, that if the homosexual is married, he/she is stoned to death, while if single, he/she is whipped 100 times. Hence, the Shafii compares the punishment applied in the case of homosexuality with that of adultery and fornication, while the Hanafi differentiates between the two acts because in homosexuality, the anus (a place of impurity) may also be involved while in adultery (and fornication), the penis/vagina (which are reproductive parts) are involved. Some scholars hold the opinion that the homosexual should be thrown from a high building as a punishment for his crime, but other scholars maintain that he should be imprisoned until death”.
http://www.islamonline.net/fatwa/english/FatwaDisplay.asp?hFatwaID=76474
Yes. Unfair is the word, I guess.
Unfair and monstrously inhumane, yes. However as your own cite notes:
It is true that some of the scholars disagreed with these punishments not because of doubt that these actions constitute a crime, but because of a lack of divine textual stipulation for a worldly punishment.
In Hanafi Islam, the most widespread madhab, punishment varies on interpretation :
The Hanafi school does not consider same-sex intercourse to constitute adultery, and therefore leaves punishment up to the judge’s discretion. Some scholars of this school also specifically rule out the death penalty, while others allow it for a second offence.
The Hanafites, named for Abu Hanifa (699-767), put greater emphasis on individual reasoning and local circumstances. It taught that homosexuality was wrong but did not merit physical punishment because another supposed hadith of Muhammad said Muslim blood should be spilled only for adultery, apostasy, or murder.
And technically you must have four eyewitnesses to convict under any madhab.
Still any punishment for homosexuality is barbaric in my view, even if it were something as minor as a fine no matter how many eyewitnesses. Several countries still have it on the book for the death penalty ( rarely enforced I believe, but still there ).
But then all the Abrhamic religions come out looking rather bad on this topic, with Islam being the worst, but only be degree.
- Tamerlane
Eyewitnesses? Ah, yes. I see. I think I’ve heard that before about another madhab.
Unfortunenately some imams in the Netherlands are of the opinion that gays should - indeed - be thrown head first from a high building.
But there ya go, some religions look rather bad, huh.
Tamerlane: While the different schools of Shari’a prescribe homosexuality to varying degrees […]
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Sorry to go all grammar-police here, but this is actually saying exactly the opposite of what you meant to say.
gum: Unfortunenately some imams in the Netherlands are of the opinion that gays should - indeed - be thrown head first from a high building.
But there ya go, some religions look rather bad, huh.
Including, I guess, Christianity, some of whose “imams” in the US don’t mind publicly suggesting that a straight guy should kill a gay guy just for looking at him in a suggestive manner (cf. the current pit thread on Jimmy Swaggart).
You won’t catch me defending fundamentalist interpretations of Islamic teachings that criminalize homosexuality. But let’s not forget that until the last few decades, the overwhelming majority of interpretations of Judeo-Christian teachings also criminalized homosexuality, and very many still do. Let’s not get all holier-than-thou about this as though the problem is unique to Islam.
John Mace, why do you hate the Mid-Paleolithic?
I don’t know about Muslims generally, but I’ve always understood male homosexuality to be very a very widespread practice among the Arabs – almost as much so as with the ancient Greeks. Am I wrong?