he hatred of homosexuals and homosexuality is a recurring theme throughout human history. But why? It hasn't always been the case; there have been societies that accepted men with men, or women with women, and while the modern world (most of it, anyway) is about the most accepting of variety in sexual preference in the history of the world, there are still plenty of people who go into an immediate purple-faced lather at the thought of homosexuals. A full discussion of why this is goes well beyond the scope of this blog, but since the issue comes up from time to time in various blog entries, usually in response to some sort of news item about gay bashing, I can at least archive my comments on it in one handy place. And this page is that place.

More recent additions are added on top.

December 23, 2003

A link my stepdad sent me is pretty funny.  It's a vote on the AFA website about gay marriage, asking if you think it should be illegal, legal, or support civil unions.  The AFA is a rabidly anti-gay/pro-Christian group who no doubt intended the vote to be a way for their members and readers to denounce those evil faggots and dykes and their desire to be married, when everyone knows that God Almighty intended that sort of holy union solely for a man and a woman.  After all, G-d made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

The funny part is that people who strongly dislike the AFA (like my stepdad and myself) have gotten ahold of the link and passed it around, to the point that as of Monday morning, the tally probably isn't quite the resounding victory for tradition that the AFA had in mind.

I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and "civil unions"	35.05% (182125 votes)
I favor legalization of homosexual marriage	56.66% (294403 votes)
I favor a "civil union" with the full benefits of marriage except for the name	8.28% (43032 votes)

Feel free to vote yourself, though you need to put in your name and a valid email address.  I assume the name can be fake though, if you don't want right wing Christian nuts putting you on their shitty email list.

December 6, 2003

Amusing and depressing court news from Kansas. The article is so short that I'll just quote the entire thing.

TOPEKA, Kan. -- An appellate judge questioned Tuesday whether the state has any reason to punish some illegal sex more harshly because it involves homosexual acts, saying some of the reasons advanced by the state were "utterly ridiculous."

A three-judge panel of the Kansas Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday in the case of Matthew R. Limon, now serving a sentence of 17 years and two months in prison for criminal sodomy, a conviction stemming from sex acts in 2000 with a 14-year-old boy. Both were residents of a Paola group home for the developmentally disabled; Limon was 18 at the time.

Had Limon been engaged in sex with an underage girl, he could have been sentenced to one year and three months in prison for the same conduct.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing Limon, argued that such different treatment represents unconstitutional discrimination against gays and lesbians. The state argued the Legislature has broad latitude in protecting children against sex crimes.

Presiding Appeals Judge G. Joseph Pierron peppered attorneys for both sides with questions, challenging their arguments. But he suggested to Deputy Attorney General Jared Maag that Maag could not provide any rational reasons for the different treatment of similar illegal sex acts.

Pierron said the two reasons the state advanced were promoting marriage and encouraging procreation, as well as protecting public health. "The first two seem utterly ridiculous," Pierron said from the bench.

September 11, 2003

I browse the best recent shots on Photo.net a couple of times a week, and usually get nothing more than eye candy out of it.  Some attractive female nudes, lots of pretty nature photos, good techniques and ideas for taking better pictures myself.  (Well, cropping them and making them better in PS before I post them; my digicam is far too blunt an instrument for any real accurate aiming with the naked eye.) But I do not go there for controversy, since there seldom is any.

I've seen some prudes get up in arms over female nudes that show more than they (the prudes) think should be shown, and occasionally there will be an artistic photo of a child who is nude or partially nude, often just in the background, which will set some kiddie pornophobe off.  But this picture that's among the most rated of the past week blows all the rest away.

Before you click to it, let me warn you that it shows a naked man leaning against a full length mirror.  The man is flaccid, the reflection of him is erect, with the images merged in Photoshop. I found it sort of clever but relatively unremarkable, and would have quickly moved on to the next photo, until I saw the incredible list of comments about it.  And those are what's really interesting about it, and the reason I posted about it here.

The photo itself is very mediocre, aside from the clever concept.  It's not well lit, the framing and cropping are crowded, the angle is not very good, etc.  And if you look in the author's folder, you'll see that the rest of his stuff isn't very good either, in aesthetic terms.  He's basically just putting male nude models into the sort of poses he sees female nudes photographed in, but he's not good at finding the right lighting, angles, etc.  I'm not saying I could do any better, I make no claims to photographic skill, but I've seen thousands of photos on that site of the human form, and I can judge if it's a good, mediocre, or bad picture.

One thing I notice looking at that guy's portfolio now is how much better I am at evaluating the quality of a nude photo when the subject is a man.  I get no eroticism from it and can coldly calculate the angles, lighting, composition, etc.  The female nudes I can do that as well, but my first reaction is always to the model, and I have to ogle her for a minute before I can pull back and become rational and analyze the rest of the work. And I must admit that my impartiality is always going to be suspect if I'm comparing a photo of a woman I find really hot vs. one I'm in different to.  Or one of a man.

Anyway, you can read the comments on that photo yourself, but I was surprised how uptight so many people were.  Half the guys are giving off this 14 y/o in the locker room homophobia; I mean you can almost see the visible lines or anxiety radiating from them as they regard the big scary cock pointing at them.  There are plenty of other people who find it upsetting and say it's porn, without giving off a homophobia vibe, and they potentially have a point, but their hypocrisy is overwhelming.  As many of the non-uptight posters say, there are thousands of female nudes on there, lots showing visible labia (which seems to be the porn-o-meter equivalent of a male with an erection?), and I've never seen any of those shots get more than a few tongue-clucking posts about them being too explicit. And I've never seen one get any of the "save the children!" bullshit.

This is so bad I don't want to be a subscriber anymore.
The author could have posted this on a page that has a restricted audience. But to post it here, where anyone including children, who would not understand the motivations behind it, are able to view it is an unconscionable breach of one's responsiblity to society. In the future, I would ask the other PhotoNet community to refrain from rating this genre so that it becomes buried deep in the PhotoNet oblivion insted of being undeservedly boosted to the Top Page. Mr Hamilton's juvenile selfishness would be better placed elsewhere.
-- Walter Tatulinski

Indeed, there are children that have access to this site, not that anyone seems to care. That being said, the debate above is ridiculous. Just look at the other 23 photos posted by this man and you will see that they are exclusively of men in various pseudo-erotic poses. I am a happily married woman and I love men. These photos just cater to homosexuals however and are disgusting. A woman does not want to see a man with his posterior sticking out invitingly, never mind consider it artistic. I am a little disappointed that other "normal" men can put up with this.
-- Irène Devissaguet

God forbid a child see a nude adult, standing in front of a mirror.  The horror!

The photo just before the above one, sorted by most ratings over the past week, is this one. And it's an overtly sexual image of a woman's crotch, as she pulls her shorts to the side, all but exposing her genitals.  Guess how many comments there are about the pornographic aspects of it, or how innocent children might be exposed to this depravity?

And true, it's not actually showing any nudity, but it's highly suggestive.  It's also a vastly better photo, in terms of aesthetic execution, with the interesting washed out colors, the odd angle, etc, but that's all beside the point.

Two photos further down the list we see this close up topless female photo. Zero comments expressing any outrage.

Five further down we see this photo of two naked women, with elements of bondage, submission, dominance, and sexuality.  Not to mention lesbianism! Zero upset comments.

I think you see my point.

July 3, 2003

This story broke a few days ago, but I never actually got around to reading it until yesterday afternoon, and upon reading it again today, I found it interesting enough that I had to comment. It's an article about Bill Frist, the Republican Senate leader, discussing his support for a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting gay marriage.  His alleged reasoning:

"I have this fear that this zone of privacy that we all want protected in our own homes is gradually — or I'm concerned about the potential for it gradually being encroached upon, where criminal activity within the home would in some way be condoned," Frist told ABC's "This Week."

"And I'm thinking of — whether it's prostitution or illegal commercial drug activity in the home — ... to have the courts come in, in this zone of privacy, and begin to define it gives me some concern."

I wouldn't mind disagreeing with them; it's just that they don't have anything approaching a coherent argument.  All of their stated reasons are clearly just poor excuses intended to thinly-veil their bigotry, and that's just unacceptable.  I'd respect social conservatives more if they just came out and told the truth.  Here's my imagined version of that truth-telling:

Republican dude talking: "Look, I hate fags.  The thought of a man sucking my cock or doing me up the ass makes me physically ill.."

*Pauses to vomit noisily into a potted plant.*

"Sorry about that, but just the idea of sliding my turgid organ into the tight, oiled ass of a muscle boy..."

*Vomits again, pausing to be sure the cameras get a good angle for the national news.*

"Excuse me.  As I was saying, the thought of gay sex is like a finger down my throat. In addition, I really dislike gays in every way.  Their clothing, lisping, motorcycle guys wearing g-strings in pride parades, and fucking Nathan mild-mannered Lane smiling everywhere, getting AIDS just to earn some sympathy... you know, the whole thing.  So anyway, I hate and fear them, but since outright bigotry isn't a real big vote getter, I have had to camouflage my hatred with nonsense about 'protecting the traditional family' or 'the sanctity of marriage'.  No more! Today I'm here to say that I hate fucking faggots, and I'm proud of it.  Thank you, and I'm off to get a nice heterosexual cheese burger.

Now wouldn't Frist saying that be better than doublespeak like this?

"I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament, and that sacrament should extend and can extend to that legal entity of a union between — what is traditionally in our Western values has been defined — as between a man and a woman."

The sheer bald-faced hypocrisy of him is somewhat amazing.  He's complaining about the Supreme Court overturning an individual state's anti-sodomy law, while advocating a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, largely to make it illegal for individual states to permit it.  Uh huh...

If you're wondering, the proposed wording for the amendment would go something like this:

"Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any state under state or federal law shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups."

A constitutional amendment must be approved by 2/3 of the House and Senate and 3/4 of the states, which means there's no way it would ever happen, making this entirely a conservative pipe dream.  But I guess it gives them something to wank off over at church meetings and such.

The whole opposition to it amuses me for several reasons.  For one thing, all of the stated reasons are like the ones Frist drags out here, and they are obviously bullshit.  Stuff like, "protecting the family" is just a code word for opposing the newest social issue of the day.  Women's voting, women's rights, gay rights, bans on child abuse, underage sex, rock and roll, etc.  Conservatives are always opposed to societal change, always say it will end Western Civilization, and then 10 years later when nothing bad has happened they get all up in arms over the next thing.

Another popular reason is what Santorum said, that somehow by legalizing or legitimizing gay relationships/marriage, we're weakening societal morals or bonds.  I guess that's an opinion shared by some, but it's never made any sense to me as anything other than a stealth way to keep anti-gay bigotry going.  The literal interpretation is that if heterosexuals see gays living together happily and legally, they'll (the heterosexuals) fall apart.  Or feel threatened.  Or something.

I simply don't see how A = B.  It's like saying that if we raise the speed limit from 55 to 65, people will start shoplifting, since we've legalized law breaking.

What fascinates me about it is trying to figure if anyone really believes this.  I mean really, honestly, someone thinks that if gays are allowed to marry, it will destroy the societal fabric? Why?  How?  If you are secure in your own feelings and beliefs, what would you care what other people were doing, if you didn't want to do it?

I assume the people who are worried about this (assuming any really exist) think that they'll be fine, since they are strong and one with Jesus.  They probably think that other people, however, will be unable to take it and will... what?  Divorce?  Cheat?  Beat their wives and children? (Oh wait, that last one is okay by the Bible.)  Does someone out there, a person who honestly doesn't hate/despite/strongly dislike homosexuals, really give a shit if gays can get married or not?  You can certainly dislike it for whatever reasons of hard or soft bigotry, but how can a person really be worried about it?  I just don't see it.

The easy/knee-jerk reaction is to say that if they are so worried about their reaction, or think that "the children" will be corrupted, then they must have a lot of personal issues.  Latent homosexuality they repress into a self-loathing form of homophobia, or something like that.  I think that's a bit too simple of a solution, but it's satisfying to think it at times when someone conservative is saying something especially stupid.

My personal opinion is that all of the politicians making this sort of stand are doing it purely for personal gain, thinking it will endear them to the conservative, old-fashioned, homophobic voting bloc.  Or else they are of the same mindset as the simpletons they are trying to get to vote for them, and just have never really given it any thought, along the lines of "why".

This sort of issue is the type that moralizers like to cast in terms of black and white, or try to interpret Biblical verse to support.  Those are basically grown up versions of "because I said so," by which I mean it's something that the person asserting it can't logically back up or defend, and therefore has to retreat to dogma or tradition, things that don't have any logical basis either. Asserting anything because it's "traditional" is a very slippery slope.  You don't have to go back too far into "tradition" before you've got women forbidden higher education or voting rights, blacks kept as an underclass and kept from voting and even kept as slaves, children working full time at the age of 12, and so on.  Cherry-picking the "tradition" you want from 50 years ago, while ignoring all of the other "traditions" from then and a bit earlier is a sure way to invalidate your argument in a hurry.

But of course when I say "invalidate your argument" I mean invalidate it to intelligent people engaging in critical thinking.  The audiences such politicians are pandering to are not intelligent, or if some of them are, they are certainly not engaging in any sort of critical thinking.  Not that this is an unusual state of affairs for a politician; the person who gets elected is most often the one who can tell the most people what they want to hear, and what people want to hear is very seldom the truth.

Speaking of gay (mostly) sex, here's this week's sex column by Dan Savage, in which he focuses exclusively on santorum issues.  If you've blissfully forgotten, "santorum" is the newly-coined name for a messy byproduct of anal sex, named after the gay-hating senator of the same name.  The entire article is way, way, way over the TMI line, but still may be somewhat interesting to you.  I read it with occasional winces.

True, anal sex is a beautiful thing, just like babies.  However I'm not exactly itching to read a long article about afterbirth and placental sack slime and ooze bubbling out of an umbilical cord.  I think you see my point.  And if not, you will once you've read even 1/5th of the article.

March 27, 2003

Here's a topic that I've discussed indirectly a number of times, but somehow never actually addressed head on. Homophobia.

It's prompted by another email that came in today, from a gay man, no doubt inspired by yesterday's gay porn'ish update. The silly little gay test he mentions is linked to here, and was mentioned 3 days ago, on the 24th.

People are so infuriating.

I shared the Gay Test link, which I thought was pretty funny, with a friend from work, and now he's mad at me for insinuating that he is gay.

Can you shed any light on why that makes the average man angry? I don't know if you are the best choice to answer this, since you are perhaps the most issue-free person I know, but at the same time, that quality means I can ask the question without causing offense or a "gay-panic" thing. And I can't ask anyone in where I live, people are too wound up about it.

Do you harbor homoerotic feelings? I'm not trying to "convert" you, (I'm not even sure how that works), but if you do that would explain your casual attitude about it. I know I don't harbor any heteroerotic feelings. Answer, don't answer, up to you. I was just wondering.

I read this mail this afternoon just as I was getting my thoughts sorted for the D2 column, and thought about it while making lunch, and had a whole blog essay planned out.  Unfortunately I had to do the D2 thing then, and after that dash off to get bike riding done in the daylight, so it's now 14 hours later and I don't have the thoughts or inspiration.  Alas.

So what makes some guys "homophobic?" Assuming the person in question isn't like 13, when they are nearing the summit of Mt. Homophobia, it's hard to answer.

Teenaged boys are probably the worst reflexive homophobes, and in that case the term is literally accurate.  They are phobic about being homos, or being around homos, since they are new to sexuality and unsure just what they are and what they'll be, etc.  I'm not sure why it's considered such a horrible fate to possibly be gay when you are that age, but it just seems to be the way of boys at that age, passed down through time and rediscovered anew every day.

As for adults, the term "homophobe" isn't really accurate.  I can't believe that every man (or woman) who "hates fags" is actually afraid of them, or afraid of becoming one himself. Men have a lot of insecurity issues, but I don't think worrying about becoming gay is one of them, for that many guys. 

Now obviously "homophobe" is just a term that's taken on a whole "anti-gay" meaning, beyond the literal definition of it.  "Racist" is another such word, since the technical dictionary definition of the term isn't necessarily bad. To quote from Webster's.

rac•ism \"rÀ-'si-z€m also -'shi-\ noun (1936)

1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

The first part of definition 1 is defensible. It's not real correct, since it's confusing the nurture that develops particular traits in races, with nature, which says they are predestined.  But everyone is a racist to some degree until you get to the "inherent superiority of a particular race" part.  Have you never thought that Jews were good with money, or Asians with math, or Blacks with dancing, or Whites with becoming money-grubbing CEOs?  Those are stereotypes and generalizations, but they are all technically racism, of a type.  The term doesn't have to mean "white guy who hates black people".  Just to illustrate how twisted the meaning of the term has become, you'll often hear it called "reverse-racism" when black hates or discriminates against a white.

That's obviously a stupid and inaccurate term, since "racist" just means you believe that various traits are associated with various races. Any person of any race can believe this about any other race, and there's never anything reverse about it.  Reverse racism would actually be non-racism, wouldn't it?  I mean the literal definition of the term.

I'm not campaigning for "racist" to be returned to a not necessarily offensive term, I'm just pointing out that it's used as a label and weapon and tag, and often doesn't mean what it's said to mean. "Bigot" is the word people should usually be using, for what they mean when they say "racist" but since everyone knows what they mean, I suppose we'll get by with this bit of grammatical inexactitude.

And this relates to the initial topic since "homophobe" is just a term used for any anti-gay person at this point, when what they basically mean by the term is a person who hates or at least dislikes/discriminates against gays. Whether they are afraid of gays or not. So my point is that we could use a better term, but that in a lot of cases, mostly with the young or the insecure/immature, a "homophobe" really is a homophobe.

To get back to the question at hand: 

I shared the Gay Test link, which I thought was pretty funny, with a friend from work, and now he's mad at me for insinuating that he is gay.

Can you shed any light on why that makes the average man angry?

I can't say why that would make someone angry.  I guess a person with no sense of humor wouldn't think it was funny that the "No" button on a "Are you gay?" question was impossible to click on. But I'd think they would at least realize the absurdity of it and that it was a joke, even if they didn't think it was funny themselves. But I'm assuming the angry guy in this case does have some sense of humor, or else the emailer wouldn't have sent it to him.

Possibly the angry guy really is afraid he's gay, or might be gay, or maybe he got really drunk in college and did something he's always since regretted and worried about what it might make him. But that's reading a lot into the issue.

To look at it more generally, I think a lot of guys are just really stupid and still hung up on the insecurities they had as teenagers. Where "gay" was an all purpose insult, and connoted effeminate and wimpy and dumb and weak and everything else, on top of being a cocksucker. Some people never get over their inner 13 y/o.

And to tie back into the homophobe/racist issue, I think a lot of them just hate gays.  Look at it as a parallel to racism, meaning "hates a race".  If you told a racist white guy that you thought he was black, he would probably get pretty pissed off.  Especially if he wasn't totally light-skinned to begin with.  He might be worried about the whole "one drop of blood = impurity" thing, and the same principle goes for whatever race a racist hates.  Hispanics, Jews, Italians, whatever.  And in that case, you either are or are not a given race, based on things you have no control over and can not change.  Ever.

Being gay or not probably seems even more frightening to a hater, since while you can't become black, you certainly can become gay.  So they probably are a literal homophobe, worried about consorting with gays, since they fear they might become one themselves?

The other question in the email was:

Do you harbor homoerotic feelings? I'm not trying to "convert" you, (I'm not even sure how that works), but if you do that would explain your casual attitude about it. I know I don't harbor any heteroerotic feelings. Answer, don't answer, up to you. I was just wondering.

I don't really know what this means, to be honest.  I mean duh, I know what "homoerotic" means, but what exactly is he asking here?  If I am aroused/attracted by sexy men?  If I think about sex with men, but aren't really tempted?  If I like to show off for and be admired by gay men?

I'd answer no, no, and somewhat, if those are the three questions.

I don't find men erotic, no.  I don't find a naked or sexy posed man sexy.  I can mentally associate guys in tight or revealing clothing with "sexy", to a hetero woman or gay man, but I don't find it sexy myself.  And I can't really judge male attractiveness, and especially not sexiness.  Malaya asked me tonight if I knew how sexy I was, and my answer was honest.  "No, I have no idea if I am or not."  And I don't.  I don't think of myself as sexy, or even as attractive, since I just can't view men that way.  I can only think of pictures of men that a woman told me was sexy, and then try to compare myself or a picture I'm seeing to that past "he's sexy" image.

The various "gay porn" shots from yesterday were mostly absurd or silly, but I could see that some people would probably find them "sexy".  But it's hard to judge what women will like, since they are often so picky and arbitrary. The whole "We like to see you nude/sexy when we want to see you nude/sexy, and the rest of the time it will piss us off." is hard to predict.

Whereas hetero men are always interested in seeing a sexy photo, even if they don't like the woman in it, have no interest in her personally, etc. And I suspect that goes pretty much the same for gay men, seeing other men.  Being as men are pigs, and very visual in our desires and attractions.

To clear up my "somewhat" answer to the question if I enjoy men thinking I'm sexy... well, what part of "somewhat" don't you understand?

Everyone likes to be wanted and desired and admired.  Pretty women enjoy hearing that they are pretty, and grow to expect it, and will often string along "safety net" type guys, men they have no interest in dating and who they think of as "friends" largely because that guy will perpetually reinforce their ego and the idea that they are beautiful. She might enjoy talking to him also, but it's fun to be wanted even if you don't want in return.

And I'm guilty of that to some degree.  I don't really think of myself as sexy, and I've never had a surplus (any) women hanging around just hoping for a look at me or a chance to screw me. But I'm sure I would enjoy it if it ever happened. And while I have a no interest in screwing a man, I do enjoy hearing that I'm sexy or hot or whatever, if the person saying that is a guy, and therefore less interesting to me sexually than any woman. Even though it's not fair to keep teasing some guy that I know will never be anything other than teased by me. Makes me feel a bit like a nasty hot chick.

And yes, I'm a whore. We've established that already.

March 28, 2003

I didn't get any mails about the homophobe discussion thing yesterday, but looking back over it now, I left out a couple of things.  In fact I just edited it somewhat, since I wrote it all in one go and with zero proofreading, and some parts were garbled.  Damn I need to go over about 7 months of updates and article things.  *sigh*  So much I need to do, and so little of it ever gets done.

Anyway, one thing I didn't address in the homophobe comments was why some people hate.  I just dealt with fear of becoming gay, or dislike/hatred of gays.

Also, as a gay reader ICQed me, you don't really "become" gay.  It's predetermined, and some people take a long time to accept it, and some never accept it and suffer through unfulfilling heterosexual relationships their whole lives, consumed with guilt over their gay thoughts.  And some people are truly bisexual and can enjoy men or women.  But the vast majority of humans are sexually attracted to one gender or the other, and you can fake it, or deny it, but you can't change what you are.  Not gay to straight, or vice versa.  So me saying "become gay" isn't exactly true, though you could certainly start doing gay stuff, or bisexual stuff.

Anyway, my point was that for the (men) who are so worried about gays, they probably are somewhat worried about "becoming" gay.  By which I mean doing gay stuff, which is what they are so worried about, being uptight about their own sexuality or sex in general or maybe having bi impulses and forever denying them.

Yes, off track again.

What I was going to add was why they hate.  Hate is, almost by definition, illogical, so you can't really explain it. If you analyze why you hate something, you'll usually find that you no longer hate it, since you grow to understand it too well to cling to immature emotions like hate, or you see what what you really hate is some part of yourself, something you dislike or feel guilty or worry about in yourself that you see the hated person or thing personifying.

But not always, it is possible to honestly hate something or someone, objectively coming to that conclusion based on their actions or behaviors.  I've known people who were just total dicks and yeah, I could understand that they were acting out their private demons and they had a lot of issues and probably deserved pity and compassion since nothing anyone else did would hurt them as badly as they hurt themselves.  But all of that understanding didn't make me want them to be run over by a bus any less.  Some people deserve hate for the evil and cruelty of their actions.

Obviously, just being gay doesn't qualify for this.  So anyone who hates gays is hating something in themselves.  Their sexual insecurity, their prudishness, their fear of people who are different, whatever.  I can't explain it any more than that, since I don't feel that way about any race, gender, sexual persuasion, etc. I hate actions, and sometimes people who consistently carry out evil actions, but I don't generalize that to entire groups of people without evidence to feel that way.  And yes, I've been called "too openminded" in the past.

The other homophobe motivation that I didn't mention at all is religion.  The general interpretation of most varieties of Christianity is that god hates fags, as that particular psycho church claims.

Hardly anyone is so consumed by rage as to agree with those Westboro Baptists, but even most moderately religious people are of the "hate the sinner, not the sin" mindset, and they therefore hate homosexuality, since they think the Bible (or Koran) tells them to do so.  I'm not going to go into the whole argument about modern interpretations of ancient edited scripture, so I'll just accept that for the point of this discussion, the Bible does say that homosexuality is bad.  You could point out that if God were really so concerned with it he would keep our genes from causing some people to be gay, or that he would have worked it into the much overrated Ten Commandments, but I just said I wasn't going to go into that argument, damnit. Stop poking me!

Anyway, I'm just saying that this is another "valid" reason for homophobia.  If you are religious, you are supposed to do whatever your religion tells you to do. And if you believe (rightly or wrongly) that homosexuality is evil and a sin and a temptation sent by Satan, then you have an obligation to hate it.  And whether you apply that hatred to the person who practices it is up in the air, but we know that most people are generally pretty ignorant and stupid, and differentiating between "sinner" and "sin" is way beyond their mental capabilities.  And homophobia is the end result.

And I'm acting as though people are more principled than I think they are.  I suspect that most homophobes are just generally queasy about it, for whatever reason, and are somewhat religious, and think that gives them an excuse for their hate.  After all, God wants them to hate.  Of course those same people are breaking about 8 of the 10 commandments on a weekly basis without giving it a thought, but then misinterpreting religion has always been a convenient way to add weight to whatever evils humankind wanted to perpetrate in the first place.

I will, once I get around to article'ing, combine this bit with yesterday's, and turn it into a semi-cohesive homophobia discussion.  Expect that some time between this weekend and the eventual entropy of the universe.  (Which most theory now says will never actually occur.)

October 14, 2002

A Bay-area high school is going to perform a play about the murder of Matthew Shepard in Wyoming (he was the gay guy who hit on some rednecks who lured him out to the wilderness and beat him unconscious and handcuffed him to a fence where he froze to death).  Gutsy play material.  What happened to just doing Grease for the 400th time? Anyway, some Kansas preacher who is featured in the play has sent a fax to the school, with the following kind words.

Shortly after the school's decision, Phelps -- whose character is depicted in the play -- sent a fax to the high school saying the school was "fag-riddled" and that "God hates Newark High." He has promised that his church will send protesters to the play, which debuts Nov. 8

I'm guessing this is the GodHatesFags.com guy, who is certifiably insane, and who had church members out picketing the trial of the rednecks who killed Shephard, but that site is down right now so I can't check to see if it's the same church.  However with an easy Google check on Rev. Fred Phelps, the first result points to a Yahoo group that answers my question:

Society > Issues > Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations > Hate > Hate Groups > Christian

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