# Would you date someone who thought being gay/lesbian is wrong? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 8, 2015, 12:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892 "2015-10-08T00:54:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/6bbea6/32.png) [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Living_Well_Is_Best_Revenge)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/61 "2015-10-08T15:17:58Z")
> [@Reluctant\_A](#): > > I’m not going to accuse this sentence of being full of straw, but it appears to have a few straw-like properties. > > To me, rejecting someone as a romantic partner because she thought that homosexuality was morally wrong doesn’t sound anything even remotely like only dating someone who always agree with me on social issues. I wouldn’t dump a woman because she didn’t agree with me about UHC, or about whether or not to decriminalize drugs. I wouldn’t even dump a woman who disagreed with me about child-raising; hell, I married a woman who disagreed with me about child-raising. But, agreeing with me that “gays aren’t evil” is kind of a big deal to me. Exactly. This isn’t a “social issue” to disagree about. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/62 "2015-10-08T15:24:50Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > How old is she? > > I would definitely give different credence to one who held those views at 22 then 32, or 42. We all have a lot of stupid ideas at 22, is what I’m saying. On the other hand, not a lot of people under 35 thing being gay is “wrong”. IIRC 70% of under-35s approve of gay marriage. Of the remaining 30%, I’d WAG that only a fraction are adamantly opposed to gay marriage and homosexuality in general. Most probably haven’t thought very hard about their position at all and just use whatever their parents and community believe as a default. In my specific situation, it’d be very hard to find someone really opposed to homosexuality in my social circles. Even if I define my dating pool fairly widely (under 35, educated, living in or near a city in New England) I’d encounter very few potential partners that are strongly opposed to homosexuality. And far fewer if I limited my dating pool to more convenient social circles (people who share my geeky hobbies and interests, people I’d meet at the grad student bar…) So, to answer the OP, I’d say no. Someone near my age that’s strongly opposed to homosexuality would also have an entirely different value system than my own. ---
**Author:** ![joyfool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/df788c/32.png) [@joyfool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joyfool)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/63 "2015-10-08T15:28:59Z")
> [@Living\_Well\_Is\_Best\_Revenge](#): > > Exactly. This isn’t a “social issue” to disagree about. Good Lord, yes. If I were a lesbian, I could even date a woman who was pro-life to my pro-choice as long as she wasn’t constantly out campaigning for legislation against it or fire bombing clinics. Because that would still be a philosophical / behavioral difference, not something that is innate and can’t (not shouldn’t) be changed. Disagreeing with homosexuality goes to the very core of someone’s being. It would be like if my potential partner had a problem with my being Caucasian / female / blue eyed. Just no. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/64 "2015-10-08T15:36:34Z")
My wife and I have been together for 27 years, so my dating days are way behind me. But if that wasn’t the case, no, I wouldn’t date someone who believed homosexual conduct was morally wrong. You’ve got to have shared or at least compatible values, worldview, etc. for a relationship to work, and that would be a total deal breaker. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/65 "2015-10-08T17:06:41Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > Go back to Russia, commie. > > Regards, > Shodan > > I sure hope this wouldn’t be necessary, but 😉 Nope, not necessary at all. It’s an honor to be faux-insulted by my esteemed colleague, **Shodan**. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![purplehearingaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7bcc69/32.png) [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/66 "2015-10-08T17:50:20Z")
If you’re thinking of a long term relationship with this woman and having kids too , you might want to think what if one of your children is gay . No I wouldn’t for the reason I stated . ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/67 "2015-10-08T18:01:25Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I grew up in an era where people were considered free to have their own opinions and their own beliefs without being condemned for them… You grew up in an era where being gay was literally against the law. ---
**Author:** ![Grrr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/grrr/32/146_2.png) [@Grrr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grrr)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/68 "2015-10-08T18:18:40Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I grew up in an era where people were considered free to have their own opinions and their own beliefs without being condemned for them. You mean, you grew up in an era where people where allowed to think gays were morally corrupt with out being condemned for it. I’m pretty sure this era you seem to have such an affinity for would not look kindly upon folks that advocated for gay rights or acceptance. ---
**Author:** ![lazybratsche](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ba8739/32.png) [@lazybratsche](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lazybratsche)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/69 "2015-10-08T19:26:01Z")
> [@purplehearingaid](#): > > If you’re thinking of a long term relationship with this woman and having kids too , you might want to think what if one of your children is gay . No I wouldn’t for the reason I stated . Huh. Yeah, that should have been more obvious to me. I could deal with a hypothetical “should the kids go to church” discussion, and reach a reasonable compromise. I don’t think there’s any compromise to the ~10% chance that the possible mother of my children will think one of them is a sinner that will burn in hell unless they live a life of denial and self-loathing. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/70 "2015-10-08T20:25:51Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > You grew up in an era where being gay was literally against the law. Was homosexuality against the law, or acts of sodomy? I don’t recall ever hearing of anyone being arrested or imprisoned for being a homosexual, but I could be wrong. Certainly there were plenty of gay celebrities around who never got arrested for it that I know of, and where I live in middle America there were well-known gay bars around town and I don’t remember them ever being raided or any of their patrons arrested. There were sodomy laws on the books, yes, but they were rarely enforced and they applied to heterosexual couples too. > [@Grrr!](#): > > You mean, you grew up in an era where people where allowed to think gays were morally corrupt with out being condemned for it. No, I mean I grew up in an era where people were taught that everyone has a right to their own opinions and beliefs, just like I said. That included the right to be critical of homosexuality, yes, but that was only one manifestation out of literally hundreds in which people honored other people’s right to think and believe as they wished. And even then it was possible to change people’s thinking, as increasing rights and freedoms for blacks and the end of segregation demonstrated. Nowadays people bitch about and condemn everything under the sun that other people think, say or do, up to and including whether [Kermit the Frog is sexist](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11841008/feminists-angry-kermit-the-frog-new-girlfriend.html) because his new girlfriend is younger, slimmer and more attractive than Miss Piggy. It’s ridiculous! ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/71 "2015-10-08T20:32:17Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > No, I mean I grew up in an era where people were taught that everyone has a right to their own opinions and beliefs, just like I said… > And even then it was possible to change people’s thinking, as increasing rights and freedoms for blacks and the end of segregation demonstrated. Oh yes, people were so wonderfully tolerant of other people’s opinions that children going to school needed federal marshals to protect them from a hateful, angry crowd. Let’s see what your tolerant era looked like to a six year old trying to attend school below. Yeah, some people complaining about a TV show is so much worse than threatening to poison a six year old. > [@](#): > > As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled…Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her; because of this, the U.S. Marshals dispatched by President Eisenhower, who were overseeing her safety, allowed Ruby to eat only the food that she brought from home. > Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said “scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.” > The Bridges family suffered for their decision to send her to William Frantz Elementary: her father lost his job, the grocery store the family shopped at would no longer let them shop there, and her grandparents, who were sharecroppers in Mississippi, were turned off their land. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/72 "2015-10-08T21:01:59Z")
> [@Pantastic](#): > > Oh yes, people were so wonderfully tolerant of other people’s opinions that children going to school needed federal marshals to protect them from a hateful, angry crowd. If I’d said people were wonderfully tolerant you’d have a point. But I didn’t so you don’t. You’re also equating behaviors with opinions. I explicitly said that I would accept opinions that didn’t agree with mine provided that the person holding those opinions didn’t try to cause harm to anyone. The situation you’re referring to involved an infinitesimally small percentage of the country’s population. (And a very small percentage of that town’s population at that. A great many people then recognized and were appalled by the inhumanity of institutionalized racism and that’s why progress was made toward ending it. Believe it or not there was a lot more going on in the minds of most people back then than questions of race and homosexuality. Every society has bad, dangerous and harmful elements within it. Today we have a much larger instance of crime than existed back then and it’s been even higher than now over the past few decades. And I’ll guarantee you drug use over the last fifty years has caused more human misery and loss of life than racism did in the fifties and sixties, but you don’t hear anyone trying to define today’s society by those problems. It was the same in the sixties. Racism and disapproval of homosexuality existed but they weren’t the overriding elements of life in most people’s minds. And at least the attitudes that did exist toward these issues were inherited from a couple centuries’ past practice rather than self-inflicted like the drug problems and criminality we have today. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/73 "2015-10-08T21:11:44Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > It was the same in the sixties. Racism and disapproval of homosexuality existed but they weren’t the overriding elements of life in most people’s minds. If by “most people” you mean “most heterosexual white people” then you may well be right. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/74 "2015-10-08T21:17:38Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > No, I mean I grew up in an era where people were taught that everyone has a right to their own opinions and beliefs, just like I said. I must have missed the part of the thread where people were advocating for lobotomies and re-education camps for this hypothetical date. Seems to me like you have once again mistaken freedom of speech for freedom from criticism. Re the OP: I don’t imagine the situation would ever come up. ---
**Author:** ![Gatopescado](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gatopescado/32/5711_2.png) [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/75 "2015-10-08T21:19:16Z")
I’m pretty sure my wife wouldn’t like the idea. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/76 "2015-10-08T21:23:40Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > If by “most people” you mean “most heterosexual white people” then you may well be right. Certainly that’s what I mean. They’re the group being incorrectly and primarily labeled as racists and homophobes, and what I said was to indicate that most rarely gave either issue a thought. Therefore to attempt to define that era’s society as racist and homophobic is incorrect. Racism and homophobia existed then just like crime and drug problems exist now, but I doubt you’re going around talking about how horrible today’s society is because because of them. Instead you likely view them as a couple of problems floating in an ocean that comprises society as a whole. Same thing then. Racism and homophobia were problems, but only a couple floating in the ocean that comprised society then as a whole. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/77 "2015-10-08T21:44:45Z")
Maybe? But I’m sure the lady would not necessarily want to date me when I walk with my church in the Atlanta Pride Parade this weekend (yes, we do Pride in October) and considering I always wear a “Lutherans Welcome All” bracelet. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2015, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/78 "2015-10-08T21:47:55Z")
Getting her “morality” from religion would be a deal-breaker for me. Aside from that, it would still ruin her in my eyes. My brother married a devout Catholic. Till the day he died, she never knew what an atheist he was (he was open about it to me). I could not live with such a woman. For one thing, she was highly judgmental. ---
**Author:** ![ekedolphin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ekedolphin/32/10003_2.png) [@ekedolphin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ekedolphin)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2015, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/79 "2015-10-09T00:32:18Z")
Deal-breaker for me, because my sister is bisexual. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2015, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892/80 "2015-10-09T04:03:38Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > The situation you’re referring to involved an infinitesimally small percentage of the country’s population. (And a very small percentage of that town’s population at that. If it was really such an infinitesimally small percentage of the town’s population, why didn’t the town’s police force protect her? Or the state police? You can pretend that the hateful acts were done by a tiny minority if you want, but racism was so ingrained that the local and state police forces refused to protect a six year old girl trying to go to school, and Federal Marshals had to take over the job. You clearly believe that people in the era of segregation, bans on mixed marriages, and jailing homosexuals were open-minded, and I’ve provided a historical example of the kind of open-mindedness that was actually practiced, so I’m done with this sidetrack. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-you-date-someone-who-thought-being-gay-lesbian-is-wrong/733892.md?page=5)