Why most religions hate gay people?

Great Debates
1

I was visiting a site, and noticed a really good article on how the hatred of homo-sexuals is ill-founded among religion.

http://www.teenadviceonline.org/articles/

Hopefully that link works. The article is called “embracing homosexuality.” Take the time to read it if you wish, and if you did, what do you think?

I think it is totally legit. I personally like these 2 passages:

MATTHEW 7:1-3
"Do not judge others, so that God will not judge you, but God will judge you in the same way you judge others, and he will apply to you the same rules you apply to others.

JOHN 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life

So what do all you religious people have to say? And do not say that homosexuals are not born gay, because while some aren’t, most are.

2

Frankly, I’m siding with you ssj.

I think those that oppose homosexuality conveniently use religion or religious beliefs to support their own prejudicides so they don’t have to confront those prejudices or even their own feelings about sexuality.

Because homosexuality makes them uncomfortable — and there are a lot of reasons for that, including fear that they themselves might become homosexual — anything from a peer group to “The WORD of GOD” that appears to tell them that “Homos are bad” comforts them and tells them that their prejudices are OK and do not need to be challenged.

Which is why they freak out when a homosexual says, “God loves me just the way I am.”

3

I’ll take Walter Wink’s “Homosexuality and the Bible” any day to explain why it shouldn’t matter.

Esprix

4

About the Lev. thing. Most of the laws that he made were thrown out long ago. It would make sense to throw out all of them, or keep all of them.

What really disturbs me is how people are trying to combine church and state. There was something in there about courts never condeming a homosexual to death, eventhough the old testament demands it. That shouldn’t even be an issue!! Church and state are seperate, no excuses!!

What i find even harder to beleive is that some Christians are demanding the death of every homosexual. That is just plain disturbing.

5

I think it has to do with memetic evolution - the reason most religions tend to share certain rules is that the religions that DIDN’T died out with their worshippers. A group of people who don’t have the meme ‘Killing is wrong’ are going to be very unpopular with those who do believe that, and are also going to lose more population through violent crime. Same thing with dietary restrictions and incest taboos - if you have two populations who are identical except that one believes it is wrong to marry your sister and to eat types of food that carry disease and the other believes that is OK, the first one is going to have an advantage and over several generations overwhelm the latter. If you have one society that accepts that 10% or so of it’s population has no interest in the opposite sex and lets them live their lives as they see fit and another who thinks it is a sin and forces that 10% to take wives and raise families as a way of fitting in, the second is going to have a higher birthrate.

6

And much unhappier, too. The population growth would be marginally higher, though, yes. Though many societies in history got around that by the social standard that gays would still have wives and raised childeren, and truely loved them, just not as much as they could love a mate of their own gender.

But with the world population past 6 billion and expected to double in less than 50 years, IIRC, I think population growth has reached a level of minimum concern for society (Many, in fact, are faced with the problem of trying to -decrease- population growth). That’s severely outdated reasoning, and if that’s the best that someone can throw at us, we should be in good shape :slight_smile:

7

**
I read the article and I’ve heard simliar arguements to the Church’s stance on homosexuality in the past. He did have a few that I hadn’t heard before.

**

I don’t think he’s any more legit then others who pick and choose specific sections of the bible to further their cause. Also I think this person’s conclusions are a bit strange.

“1.Homosexual orientation was never mentioned and that has to be taken into account.
2.Homosexual acts among heterosexual people is certainly forbidden by more then one place in the bible.”

What he’s saying is that the Church is right to forbid heterosexuals from engaging in homosexual activities. But at the same time they have no authority to forbid homosexuals who were born that way from engaging in homosexual activities. Excuse me? I just don’t agree with his conclusion.

**

I think we should keep in mind that the bible is open to various interpretations. Take the above passage for example. A lot of people interpret this to mean that we have no right to judge other men. Personally it appears to me that we have a right to judge other men but God will hold us to the same standards. Judge, and prepare to be judged.

I’m an atheist but I admit to enjoying learning about the bible. Not because I’m interested in debunking it or anything I just consider it part of history like I would the Tao or Islam.

Marc

8

My personal theory? A large part of how many religious organizations prove their worth is through boasting about their large membership. Since it is much easier to bring people into a religion through familial contact then through conversion during adulthood, families are encouraged to have many children, avoid divorces(can’t add to the population while you’re bar-hopping, y’know!), and even avoid contraception in the cases of some groups. Since a gay relationship doesn’t usually add the population coffers, it has no worth in their opinion.

IMHO, of course.

9

I think the OP is making an assumption in the title that might not be true…that most religions hate gay people. Traditionally, homosexuality has been frowned upon by Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and Hinduism has also historically condemned homosexuality, but I don’t think Shinto does, for example, or Buddhism, or the religion of the ancient Greeks, or Romans, or Celts, or most Native American nations and tribes. I guess I’d just like to see evidence that most religions do hate gay people.

10

While no rational person in 2001 should be basing their life decisions on a collection of essays written 1900 or so years ago, I always liked lesbian comedian Lynn Lavner’s take on the bible. “The bible has seven rules about gay people and over two thosand rules for straights. That doesn’t mean God loves heterosexuals any less, just that they need more supervision.”

11

Religion is supposed to be about faith but often ends up simply as a means of control over society.

The greatest control to have is that over ones sexual affairs, do that and you really have power.

12

As much as I disagree with Christians who claim homosexuality is evil, I must admit that I have never heard of a Christian who wants all homosexuals killed. Perhaps you could tell us who these people are?

13

ssj_man2k:

Well, some of us take the “keep all of them” option.

14

http://www.godhatesfags.com

15

Most institutionalized religions are patriarchal. Not patriarchal in the sense that roses are red (i.e., that they have that characteristic) but in the sense that heat is hot (i.e., that the characteristic is inherently an aspect of the noun, it couldn’t NOT be that way and still be what it is).

If you have already given a lot of thought to patriarchy as a sociopolitical structure, you probably know what I mean already. If not –

a) patriarchy is more than just ‘male supremacy’; it is ‘father rule’ and is oppressive and exploitative towards younger males. (of course if you keep them confused and distracted, they don’t interpret it that way)

b) patriarchy organizes sexuality and reproduction so as to use them them to control other facets of life and social order. younger males in particular are controlled by dangling the possibility of access to females in front of them and then making that access available only to those who work hard for the older men and put up with some rather obnoxious treatment and a hierarchy of social inequality.

c) Opal and other females might note that a necessary precindition to being able to do that is possessing control of the females first. patriarchy is more than just male supremacy but it sure as hell IS male supremacy nevertheless.

d) If you haven’t already figured it out, young gay guys, failing to be controlled by such a system, could constitute a bit of a disruption to this system. In particular, consider the other younger males, the ones I said don’t necessarily figure out how they are being taken advantage of if you keep them distracted and confused–how do you think they will react if gay guys are visibly doing well and are free from this mechanism?

e) On the other hand, if you can divert a lot of their frustration and anger directly ONTO the gay guys, you get a lot of really cool concurrent patterns–

1=The gay guys aren’t “visibly doing well”, they are being hunted and hurt and hated and killed so folks are less likely to think of them as “free” from anything that the other guys are subjected to;

2=The intense hate for gay guys reflects back upon guys in general who put a lot of additional energy into proving they are heterosexual, both to the rest of the world and to themselves–which makes it far less likely that they will sit around contemplating their circumstances as young hetero males in a patriarchal society working for the older guys.

3=Any residual sex role nonconformity among young males that could lead to falling out of step can be associated with homosexuality, which immediately makes both the nonconformists and the behavior socially unacceptable, and makes it good and normative to penalize them and discriminate against them the same way folks do with gay guys themselves.

16

AHunter3, great post. Definitely an angle I hadn’t considered before.

As for the OP, I really think it ought to be pointed out that officially no religion institutionally hates homosexuals. I am sure individuals do, but among christian religions the official line generally runs to something like “love the sinner, hate the sin”. Even the Phelps people say “God Hates Fags”, not "We Hate Fags.

17

Andros, thanks for the link. I really cannot beleive that someone would spend so much time on something like that.

I dont suppose you got that Micheal Moore show where he took a mobile home full of “homosexuals” cross-country and ran into some of those godhatesfags people. A most amusing situation to say the least.

18

I think this is the most successful thread i’ve had yet lol.

I think the problem is that most religious people beleive being gay is a choice. I didn’t choose to be gay, i just am. I think they will be more tolerant when they can accept that.

Personally, (this may be offensive to some people) i think that gay people are just god’s way of population control. We’ve already dominated the earth, as he said to do, but now we are in danger of over-populating it. But there have been gay people since the beginning of civilization, so i don’t know really what to think now. All i was taught was that God loves, not hates.

19

What we’ve of course seen are a number of different reasons logically for a religion to admonish homosexuality for its own gain… but i wouldn’t think that sort of thing would be any surprise, what I was hoping to see were religious people coming up with justifications for this based on spirituality or “faith” other than “bible says so” … just saying that by now I think we’ve sufficiently stated the governmental reasons

20

I’d still like a cite that shows that either most religions or most religious people hate gay people.