This is where it leads: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/3969763.stm Presumably, the people behind such crimes think that homosexuality is 'wrong', 'unnatural' and a 'sin'. I wonder how they ever came to hold such views?
Because there is a reason for everything in nature even loathing of homosexual acts. For example we know why people feel sexual jelousy because it is to protect their bloodline, so that their partners children are only their own. Maybe there is a similar explanation to the inbuilt loathing of homosexualty. Maybe in prehistoric times homosexuals were seen as useless to a tribe because they did not produce offspring at at time when production of offspring was important due to the high death rate amongst early humans.
Well I certainly don't feel that way about homosexuals, so I think it's safe to say that biology isn't at work. I think homophobia is created more by social conditioning.
Yeah... I get the logic. There's just one problem though: It's bollocks! That's like a fucking cannibal eating yr children and saying he did it because, anciently, humans were short of food. I'm not saying that this isn't maybe why homosexuality is stigmatised in society, what I'm saying is it is no excuse at all. People seem to tolerate a helluva lot of other stuff which would be unnatural and useless to tribes: you never hear of anyone getting beaten up for having polycystic ovaries, and very very rarely for being just a lazy ****. The issue is kind of important to me. My explanation has been that certain sections of society are basically intolerant, who would be unable to see the connection between them beating up a minority because they don't like them, and them potentially being beaten up for being tossers.
Absolutely disgusting acts of prejudice induced violence. I agree, I think homophobia is very much to do with social conditioning....
hmm, I've often wondered if I'm a homophobe or not to be honest, reason being that on a moral level I have no objection to homosexuals at all but on a different level I always have a twinge of fear when I'm around gay men (not with women though) maybe it's just egotistical paranoia about my anal virginity or maybe I have ingrained prejudices from my upbringing that I am having a hard time getting rid of. What do you guys think? Am I an unwilling homophobe or just someone who has a few things which I need to sort out in my head?
Lol, fraid not, I did experiment a bit when I was younger though and found out for sure that the gay life isn't one for me!
I've heard from enough people (don't know the specifics though) that homosexuality has only been severely reviled when religions have started losing followers and tried to unite people. There does seem to be a tiny mote of human nature that can be fooled into thinking that 10% of men now having kids - 10% of men from a race of six billion - would somehow lead to the downfall of civilisation. (It would probably be a very good thing, actually.) I've heard the argument countless times that homosexuals will lead to the human race dying out, and it's usually a line cast by religious zealots in audiences on talk shows. If you think about it in terms of species survival, killing someone on the grounds that they might not have kids doesn't make much sense. I think that, while many may not be entirely liberal and acceptant of others' differences, most people have the potential to live and let live. But these people are able to be persuaded by either a majority opinion or even the impression of a majority. IMO, religion pillories homosexuality, free-thought, and other forms of human self-exploration, because it encourages people to look outside the established paradigms of their baser instincts. If you profit from people's faith in a religion that maintains those paradigms, it is in your interest to silence any voice that might encourage people to view your rules from the perspective of someone who doesn't live by them. [/ramble]
Seriously though..... I think many men feel threatened by homosexuality. I think it challenges their masculinity. Nothing wrong with that reaction in itself, so long as it isn't allowed to develop into homophobia. Personally, I had gay friends from a fairly early age, so I've always been comfortable around it.
Everyone gets that. It's got nothing to do with any male fear of penetration or social conditioning, it's just that pretty much all gay guys are total cunts.
hmm, I don't think religion plays the biggest part in homphobia these days, it certainly plays A part but not the biggest. I think that the biggest supporters of homophobia are the middle and lower classes, purely because they tend to be the ones I hear calling eachother queers as an insult and being arrested for hate crimes.
Religion isn't such a big part of people's lives as it was. However, not so long ago, people set a lot more score by religion, so when the church told them gaying was a sin, they believed it. Centuries of that kind of indoctrination isn't going to go away in 50 years or so of secularisation [word?]. It's not that engrained though. Chaucer's Cantebury Tales features a gay character (either the Pardonner or the Summoner, probably the Pardonner), and the light hearted treatment of this suggests that it was regarded as a vice on the same level as being a drunk or a slut; not good, but not that bad either. And homophobia is widerife I'm not denying that homophobia is common among the lower classes, but the upper classes a) make up a negligible percentage of society, and b) are just as bad.
I think that's a large part of it, but I think that the origins of homophobia are actually much simpler. Prejudice is an expression of the tribal mentality. We stigmatise those who are different from us in order to validate our own position in the tribe. Thus, we hate queers, niggers, pakis, hippies, goths, skaters, lefties....... whatever faction you like. And all those prejudices allow people to 'fit in' and joke with their mates about how lucky they are not to be a queer, ****** etc etc etc. Homosexuality is much easier to stigmatise than anything else because it's so intrinsically alien to our own (heterosexual) experience.
I think it's not so much that it's alien, but it's very useful. It's a lot easier to accuse people of being faggots than darkies, because there's not a great deal of visible evidence (unless the guy suffers from anal leakage). It's a good catch-all, like Communism.
yeah but then there's the inground fear that a lot of men have around homosexuals, I think you're right to say that some men feel that as being an assult on their masculinity etc whic makes that a pretty good place to start looking when you're trying to find the root cause of homophobia but the problem is that this is so ingrained it's even become part of religions, can it even be stopped or are we dealing with an overexaduration of a natural reaction common amongst the magority of men?
That's a very good point, actually. When you think about it, a lot of homophobia seems to originate from men trying to prove how straight they are.
Well it's the only institution that actively stigmatises homosexuality, and as the religion of the majority of the western world, I'd say that's a pretty big fucking role. I can't help thinking it'd be more productive of you to be arguing that christianity should drag itself into the 20th century rather than arguing about the exact portion of blame that it deserves for the current situation.
true, I do agree whole heartedly that the church is way behind the times and needs to sort its act out, I was just trying to add another side to the debate as the issue of christianity and homphobia has been covered quite a lot recently
