Gay-Hatin' Gospel (pt. 2)

The Bible gives us the word "shibboleth,"* but the Bible is more than a book of shibboleths. So how did gay-hatin' come to be the "most-common perception" of Christianity?

Theory No. 2: Inner Demons

This theory has the virtue of being true. Or, at least, of being true in some cases -- some very notable, high-profile cases.

The idea here is that many of the loudest, angriest and most single-minded preachers of the anti-gay gospel doth protest too much. They are self-loathing closet cases, denouncing homosexuality because they are homosexuals and they hate this about themselves. From Roy Cohn to Ted Haggard and Larry Craig, there are dozens of verifiable examples of this dynamic -- and many, many more suspected but unconfirmed cases.

Only Sayin' provides an excellent summary of this theory, along with a rundown of some of the more notable recent examples, in a post titled, "Why Social Conservatives Can't Keep It in Their Pants.

But for a succinct summary of this dynamic, you can't beat this from Ted Haggard himself:

"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life."

So, clearly, this is a real phenomenon. We've seen so many examples of this lately, so many self-loathing closet cases exposed as members of the anti-gay leadership, that it reminds me of that scene in The Man Who Was Thursday, when the protagonist succeeds in infiltrating the secret society of anarchists only to look around the table and realize that every single member of its leadership is, like him, an undercover police officer

Yet despite the startlingly large number of cases, it's surely not quite as pervasive as Thursday's dilemma. It can't be true that every officer in the anti-gay army is secretly a member of the group it seeks to oppose. The religious right/social conservative movement certainly seems to include a larger-than-average number of closeted homosexuals in its leadership, but even if the movement is gayer than Disney World, we're still only talking about a minority of its leaders and followers (a significant minority, but still less than half).

A significant number of leading social conservatives also seem to be warring against inner demons that have nothing to do with homosexuality. These folks are tormented by an impressive variety of freaky heterosexual appetites. Consider Sen. Vitter's alleged diaper-play with prostitutes. Or the deeply sad case of the former aide to Jerry Falwell who was found dead due to a baroque autoerotic asphyxia mishap.** The interesting thing about these folks is that instead of lashing out at those who share their particular appetites, like Ted Haggard did, they turn their animosity toward homosexuals too. I can't begin to explain the psychology at work in this bit of substitution, but in their case it seems something like a mix of the inner demon theory and the safe target theory is at work.

The repressed and tortured psyches of Ted Haggard and David Vitter also don't explain why so many have been willing to follow these leaders in their "warring against" their inner demons. They can't all be self-loathing closet cases. Nor does this theory explain why others with apparently milquetoast, plain-vanilla sexual appetites -- people like Pat Robertson or the late Jerry Falwell -- should be even more vociferous in their condemnations of the Big Gay Menace. For them it seems less a matter of self-loathing and projection than simply your garden-variety hatin' on the outsider.

So while I'm certain that the inner demons theory is valid in many particular cases, I think it's more of a contributing factor than a sufficient explanation of the entire phenomenon of gay-hatin's newfound prominence as the central perception of American Christianity.

Next up, the theory favored by the gay-haters themselves: The Innocent Backlash.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* The condensed version of the story, from Judges 12:

"Art thou an Ephraimite?"
"Um, no?"
"Say 'shibboleth.'"
"Sibboleth."
"Aha! Die Ephraimite!"
"Oh sit."

** At least we can say, as they always do of mountain-climbers or skiing casualties, that he died doing something he loved. General rules here, kids: 1) Always have a spotter, and 2) If it takes more than 10 minutes of prep time, you're probably doing it wrong. The intricacies of this poor soul's preparations calls to mind a line from Prick Up Your Ears:

"Have a wank? Have a wank? I can't just have a wank. I need three days' notice to have a wank. ... It's like organizing D-Day. Forces have to be assembled, magazines bought ..."

Of course that story didn't end well either. Both are tragedies posing as black comedies. The Rev. Aldridge, after all, didn't really die doing something he loved, but something he hated, yet couldn't stop himself from doing. (The second wet suit, after all, suggests that the first one wasn't really doing it for him.) Unable to come to terms with his own inner freak, he declared war on everybody else's. Misery loves company, they say, though the sad truth is misery is pretty miserable no matter how much of it you manage to inflict or project on others.

Comments

[Rozzen]

But then, I've proved your point about Merkins not knowing the words to the National Anthem.

Well to be clear I don't think the point is so much Merkins, but Terry Pratchett's observation that the second verse of every national anthem goes :

"Ner ner ner ner ner ner
Hner ner ner hner ner ner
etc "

until the chorus, which everyone then sings very loudly.

Hence, a lot of high-ranking Krishnas were gay, and in positions of great power over their followers; abuses followed as inevitably as night does day.
Huh... I think you'd want to rethink that sentence...

[Ecks]

Humble is something that this atheist admires in the best class of religious people. But it has a really bad rap in America, and I'm not 100% sure why. Humble doesn't mean spineless or self-loathing. Far from it. There is this sentiment - I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm tempted to summarize it as "If I don't puff myself up then nobody will think well of me." It's sad really, and shows quite a lack of faith in one's fellow people. And in psychology. People tend to think you're cool, I'm slowly coming to learn, when you love them in a genuine non-threatening way, not when you puff yourself up with pride.

[Nenya]

Typepad just ate my post, sigh. I was going to remark on G-Do's analysis above, about people who feel their sexual desires are perverted ending up lonely and hating people with the same desires to are allowed to be happy. It reminded me of the book "Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America" by Mel White, who used to be a ghostwriter for leaders in the religious right but has since come out as gay. He points out in that book that gay kids of his era (and far too many now, too) weren't allowed to do the simple things that teenagers do to prepare themselves for adult romance--go on dates, admit attraction, hold hands, kiss. If you're not supposed to fall in love with the person you're in love with, what do you do when you have an argument or break up or get your heart broken? Who can you talk to? Where can you get advice for how to tell the difference between lust and love? If the entire gender is off-limits, how do you get to figure out which of the people you're attracted to are jerks and users and which are good people? He says that he himself ended up emotionally stunted, and when it all came out in his thirties and forties (when he finally allowed himself to feel the attraction for men that he had been trying to stuff down for decades), it nearly destroyed his life. If he'd been able to learn what to do with romantic and sexual feelings when he was young, like most straight kids get to, he wouldn't have ended up facing it all at once and making the kinds of stupid, romance-and-hormone-crazed decisions that are normal at 17 but life-shattering in middle age.

He did finally surface from the mess he was caught in, and is currently happily partnered with a great guy (and is still on good terms with his ex-wife, even--she wrote the intro to his book). But how much easier it would have been if he'd been taught he was normal when he was fifteen! One can hope that perhaps more people like Ted Haggard will end up coming to themselves and ending up happy--certainly more of them are likely to do so now than a few years ago, I think, as society opens up and becomes less afraid of gays. It's such a waste of human lifethough.... :(

Can't wait to see how Fred's next theory's going to come out! I guess we have LB Friday to tide us over until then. ;)

[Scott]

If all evilvangelicals are secretly gay, then gays aren't "the other" mentioned in pt. 1. Besides, everyone likes railing against "the other" - how many leftist screeds talk about "the rich" or "the top 1%" or "the top 5%", which the listener is supposed to know he will never join? Aren't homophobes "the other" in the sense of "us good liberals would never do that"?

This is always an interesting test for Evangelicals, since our culture has broadly accepted divorce and any large church will have innumerable divorced people in it.

I dared a gay-bashing fundie pastor at my PCUSA church to preach against divorce, which Jesus explicitly forbid, and just got some nervous laughter in response.

They did take over the Southern Baptist Convention certainly, and have strong roots in the Assembly of God, but they don't currently control the United Church of Christ, the United Methodists, the Presbyterian Church (USA)

Not for lack of trying. The fundies who took over my last PCUSA church (and it will be my last church) are currently covering up for the ex head pastor's adultery, theft, stolen sermons, etc.

[Jesurgislac]

Scott: I dared a gay-bashing fundie pastor at my PCUSA church to preach against divorce, which Jesus explicitly forbid, and just got some nervous laughter in response.

Good for you! ;-)

[cjmr]

Weirdest homily I've heard lately was our deacon preaching against divorce. Weird because twenty-some years ago, before he became Catholic, he and his then wife divorced. I think Mrs. Deacon had also been divorced.

-----
*goes back and rereads*

Wait a sec. Was that Scott actually being sensible?

[pepperjackcandy]

Wouldn't that be "Christianity=homophobia"?

As in "If you are a Christian, you're a homophobe" and not "If you are a homophobe, you're a Christian"?

I don't think either way is correct, because according to the symmetric property of equality, both "Christianity=homophobia" and "homophobia=Christianity" are the same thing.

"Christian ∴ homophobic," maybe?

[Jesurgislac]

pepperjackcandy: I don't think either way is correct, because according to the symmetric property of equality, both "Christianity=homophobia" and "homophobia=Christianity" are the same thing.

Yes, that's certainly what many homophobic Christians claim. They argue that being homophobic is such a necessary part of being Christian, that if they are prevented from being actively discriminatory and hateful to LGBT people by law, this is an attack on their religious freedom. They are arguing that the practice of Christianity is the practice of homophobia.

[cjmr]

Whereas the rest of us need t-shirts that say "Christian =/= homophobic, damnit!"

[Jesurgislac]

cjmr: Whereas the rest of us need t-shirts that say "Christian =/= homophobic, damnit!"

But most of us know that.

Most of the Christians I know - some of whom I disagree with vehemently on many issues - agree that it's a perfect nonsense to present Christianity as homophobia.

But, the major Church leaders, some of whom have privately expressed their disagreement with this meme, are not willing to offend the homophobes in their congregations by saying so.

[twig]

Jeff;

Humility is the value that lets you get along with other people and implement things like "second opinions" and "other points of view".

It's a good thing irregardless of a religious connotation.

[twig]

Or regardless, even. Can't do a thing before noon, I swear.

[Francis]

how many leftist screeds talk about "the rich" or "the top 1%" or "the top 5%", which the listener is supposed to know he will never join? Aren't homophobes "the other" in the sense of "us good liberals would never do that"?

Speak for yourself! Top 1% - probably not (I simply don't care about money enough for that) Top 5% - I'm getting there fairly fast (I'm not 30 for a few more years yet). And yes, I do support taxes that will penalise me as I currently am.

I dared a gay-bashing fundie pastor at my PCUSA church to preach against divorce, which Jesus explicitly forbid, and just got some nervous laughter in response.

I knew there must be something I could respect you for. Good for you!

[wintermute]

The word is "disirregardless".

[nieciedo]

In my experience, at least, the thing that sends a lot of homophobic believers into a frenzy isn't all the love and commitment among LGBTs, though. It's the fact of ready access to sex without a lot of complications, even if what it takes to get one off is pretty esoteric. It's all the coming and going, so to speak.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I wish it were like that! I only wish my gay life was as exciting at the homophobic believers imagine that it is! If they knew that our lives were just as boring, frustrating, and miserable as everyone else's maybe they wouldn't envy then hate then resent us!

[twig]

The word is "disirregardless".

X D

[nieciedo]

If all evilvangelicals are secretly gay, then gays aren't "the other" mentioned in pt. 1. Besides, everyone likes railing against "the other" - how many leftist screeds talk about "the rich" or "the top 1%" or "the top 5%", which the listener is supposed to know he will never join? Aren't homophobes "the other" in the sense of "us good liberals would never do that"?

Scott does have a point. I firmly believe that "the rich" and "the top 1%" and "the top 5%" are evil. One cannot become rich except by either directly participating in the exploitation of the working class or by parasitically porfitting from it. Thus, "the rich" are all guilty -- if not personally then certainly by association. They are all thieves and murderers. They all must pay for their crimes against humanity.

If one is going to have an Other to demonize and hate, it's best to make sure that that "Other" is one that causes or threatens real harm to the rest of society. The rich are a cancer in the body of the human race and need to be removed.

[Chuck]

nieciedo: The rich are a cancer in the body of the human race and need to be removed.

If we're taking that "top 5%" on a global scale, nieciedo, that would include most of America, methinks. Do you have particular plans for our destruction, or should we all just commit honorable seppuku?

[Angelika]

nieciedo: I firmly believe that "the rich" and "the top 1%" and "the top 5%" are evil.

What? - I, too, have little fondness for people who enrich themselves at the cost of others, or are suffering severely of the vice of avarice.

However, there are ways of becoming rich by honest hard work or just luck, and I can't see anything wrong with that. Moreover, there are many rich people who use part of their fortunes to sponsor public causes in way that would not be possible just with public funds.

[Francis]

Niciedo:
are all guilty -- if not personally then certainly by association

Lovely standards you are using if guilt by association is your yardstick. Because of course my girlfriend (working 70+ hours a week within the education system (currently doing research and organisation as a few years teaching in an inner London comprehensive almost shattered her)) and I (working for the NHS, and having saved several lives (I'm not a doctor) and the taxpayer many times my salary) are direct parasites on the working class. And between us we're in the top 10% for households before the age of 30 (and probably going up from there).

I'm ... curious as to where you stand that you think that you can paint with a broad brush like that. (Other than in the middle of New York - which probably puts you in the top 5% across the world).

[McJulie]

One cannot become rich except by either directly participating in the exploitation of the working class or by parasitically profiting from it.

What about the creative professions?

Stephen King, for example, actually made his millions by selling a lot of books to a lot of people. I don't think getting them to spend money on books could really be regarded as exploiting the working class.

(Even when that book is The Tommyknockers...)

[Ursula L]

Some of the problem may be that there is such a narrow definition acceptable sex (heterosexual, married) that it becomes harder to distinguish between the unacceptable forms of sex.

If "lust in your heart" which isn't acted on gets put in the same category as raping a three-year-old, (not heterosexual married, so therefore against religion) you're going to be extraordinarily stressed about normal sexual responses and desires. And you aren't going to be able to distinguish between meeting needs in a socially acceptable way or a socially unacceptable way, since everything is unacceptable.

Also, if you don't distinguish between thought ("lust in your heart") and behavior (acting on that lust), for people with a certain mindset, once you've lusted, there is no reason not to act, because the sin has happened. But since you aren't supposed to have the thought, it tends to discourage thought before action, increasing risk and poor choices in how you act on your desires.

Another thought - someone who is openly homosexual has generally put some specific thought into what their sexual interests are, and how they want to act on them. But the extremist understanding of "heterosexual married only" means that you don't think about your own sexuality, but let it be defined from the outside. So homosexuality is an example of a transfer of power over one's sexuality from one's religious leader to oneself, and if it is acceptable in that situation, it is acceptable in other ways - personal decisions to marry outside the faith, or to divorce, or to marry someone when the pastor advises against it. If you take the command "Come, follow me" with the pastor/church as an earthly substitute for Jesus, then the believer/congregant is expected to follow the pastor, not decide their own course.

I suspect that these types of ministers are Catholic wannabes - with themselves as infallible Popes of their own congregation.

[Keith]

There is this sentiment - I can't quite put my finger on it, but I'm tempted to summarize it as "If I don't puff myself up then nobody will think well of me." It's sad really, and shows quite a lack of faith in one's fellow people.

The thing you can't put your finger on is good old fashioned American brand self-promotion. You're never going to be famous unless you toot your own horn and no one gets famous for being humble. so humility gets tossed aside (or at least squelched down real deep) in favor of self-aggrandizement.

[Eoghan]

Alex Saint: "What I'd like to know is why Christianity and a whole lot of other religions are paying more attention to itty-gritty details like one litty teensy verse in one out of a billion books instead of realizing that religion is basically about love and community and doing good unto others."

I think that one reason at least may be precisely because a "whole lot of other religions" and non-religious ethical systems are basically about love and doing good unto others.
When Thorvald the Bloodsoaked is extolling the virtues of slaughtering everyone within axe range then you can indeed know Christians by their love, by their love. But when nearly everyone in the world is, at least nominally, embracing the idea of "an it harm none, do as ye will," Christian ethics based on loving others is not very distinguishable from any other ethics. So, to feel like belonging to a special and exclusive set, you need to focus on those few things that are really unique about your religion.
Why such vocal and influential Christians picked homophobia as their defining feature, I don't know, but once picked, the need for an exclusive moral differentiator from the nearly universal ethics of the modern world, reinforced that choice and turned it into the key focus area of the religions.

[twig]

When Thorvald the Bloodsoaked is extolling the virtues of slaughtering everyone within axe range then you can indeed know Christians by their love, by their love

there are days when this blog is just entertaining as hell.

[Angelika]

Ursula Also, if you don't distinguish between thought ("lust in your heart") and behavior (acting on that lust), for people with a certain mindset, once you've lusted, there is no reason not to act, because the sin has happened. But since you aren't supposed to have the thought, it tends to discourage thought before action, increasing risk and poor choices in how you act on your desires.

There seems to be an awful lot of miscommunication within Christian teaching. The basic idea is to forbid oneself to think of other people as sex-objects or humans of lesser value, so one is less tempted to actually treat them that way.

To my experience, allowing my mind to circulate about a certain topic all the time, e.g. how extremely bored I'm by my job, does not at all help to resolve the issues, but rather makes me more obsessed with the idea and more unhappy. In fact, by having my thoughts circling that way, I even get less efficient in solving the actual problem, because I waste so much mental energy on the griping on how unhappy and bored I am. If other people get involved into my problems I notice that as long as I force myself to see in my opponent a human loved by God, rather than a hindrance on my path to happiness and a pain in the butt to boot, I'm not very likely to ever engage into actions that would harm that person, but much more likely to find ways to resolve the conflict in a mutually beneficial way. Similarly, I guess it should work for sexual lusting: a mindset focusing less on one's own need for sexual fulfillment and more on the respect due to the possible partner, is less likely to produce rape or adultery.

[hapax]

FWIW, the whole "lust in your heart" meme comes from the Sermon on the Mount, specifically as part of an entire passage in which Jesus exhorts his followers to a righteousness that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, that is "to be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect." So, along with inner lust being equated with acting on adultery, anger is equated with murder, swearing with idolatry, etc. The counterpoint is to not only give to the needy, but to give everything to anyone who asks, to love not only your friends but also your enemies, to turn the other cheek, and so forth.

So not only is the thought taken for the deed, a standard of perfection is set which is frankly humanly impossible.

[Nope]

Fred is totaly a closet atheist.

[Slashdot]

Is there a slacktivist effect? I just tried to go to http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=7&chapter=12&version=31&context=chapter and the web page had this message:

"The Bible Gateway has detected unusual behavior accessing this translation, and will therefore not display the requested passage."

[Tlazolteotl]

As you think about and write about this issue, I do also hope you are keeping in mind the rate of child sexual abuse. I would not be surprised at all if sexual or non-sexual violence (especially within more "patriarchal" families), and failure to address the problem or even talk about it openly as a society, have a lot to do with targeting gays. Consider how widespread the notion that gay = pedophile is: since we don't discuss the dynamics of sexual abuse openly, people have a need to understand what happened to them or within their families. So it would make sense to explain the abuse of a boy by an older male as "homosexuality" though studies have shown the dynamic to be, like rape, about power rather than sexual attraction.

Anyway, I hope you will consider this as your are thinking about these issues.

[Geds]

Slashdot: Okay, that's just weird...

I'm kind of sad that I'm jumping in here now, because I want to respond to so much, but also toss in a somewhat on-topic anecdote. I think I'll do the anecdote, then see about responding later.

Anyway, I was talking to this girl. She's nice, seems fairly intelligent, good crazy (um, I have a concept of "good crazy" and "bad crazy" as it relates to women in whom I might be interested. It's a long story, but it sums up as, good crazy = fun, not quite normal, never entirely sure how they'll react to things, keeps you on your toes whereas bad crazy = reasonably good chance she'll stab you with something because you looked at her funny/the voices in her head said to/her ex-boyfriend totally deserved to get stabbed with an icepick so you do, too, since that one thing you do kinda reminds her of something the ex did this one time. I like good crazy. I run from bad crazy.), and, to put it delicately, hot. Things were going along just fine.

Then she told me she had run in to some anti-gay preacher-types while she was going somewhere with a gay friend of hers. She then told me that she has some pretty strong feelings on the subject, but that she'd, "Never sit down and tell you you're going to Hell for that to your face." My well-honed closet fundie instincts kicked in and started waving red flags all over the place. Then she hit politics and said, "I like Bush." I actually, unabashedly, pulled a, "Hey, look at the time," sort of stunt right then and there.

Either way, this got me thinking about something. She's not the first person I've met who strongly believes homosexuality = big, bad sin and yet is friends/acquaintances with gay people and not a fan of people who stand on street corners and scream about eternal damnation. The whole thing where you can say, "I think my friend so-and-so is going to Hell for being gay, but I wouldn't say that to him," seems to indicate a mental disconnect.

Most fundamentalism is built around indoctrination. The group says, "We hold these beliefs and anyone who doesn't is damned." A lot of the people who follow along do it out of a genuine fear of being damned or because they haven't actually put much thought in to the topic beyond what the party line says before, so they assume that's the way things are. I tend to see this because I grew up in an indoctrinating sort of church and I've spent the past few years distancing myself and unpacking all the subconscious cues in an attempt to get rid of them.

I actually only recently got around to dealing with my own feelings towards homosexuality, partially because it was really far down on the list of things that were personally important to me in healing, but also because I'd spent so long with that disconnect of, "I think the Bible says this is wrong, but I don't buy any of the arguments, so I won't condemn anybody for it," that I figured I could just strip out the first part of the idea and leave it at that. Mostly I could, but I did eventually have to deal with it in an overall re-understanding of the Bible (I also had a weird thing where for a while I went with one of those stock phrases that says, "I'm okay with it, just as long as no one is hitting on ME." Then I realized that the second part of that sentence actually negates the first part. So now I think, "I'm okay with it, just as long as no one expects me to participate").

Um, now that I've spent a really, really long time writing in circles, I tend to think (using anecdotal evidence, yes, but what other kind can there be?) that you don't necessarily have to have a lot of closet homosexuals railing against the very sin they fear most. You just need to hit a critical mass and make railing against homosexuality a key part of the indoctrination process and eventually widespread anti-homosexuality will sustain itself. It takes a great deal of self-awareness and desire for change to overcome that. It's not an easy task, but in my experience it's completely worthwhile. I also hope, for her own sake, that the girl I was talking to figures that out eventually, too.

[nieciedo]

Can't a guy engage in some good old-fashioned class hatred once in a while? :-(

It would be better for everyone to be poor than our current situation of some being rich while everyone else is poor.

I would have no problem whatsoever sacrificing what meager luxuries I enjoy to level everyone off with equal distribution of wealth (such an undertaking is probably impossible, but let's entertain it for the sake of argument).

One may ask, then, why I don't give up said luxuries to the poor. That's a fair point. However, why should make sacrifices when the rich aren't giving up theirs? To be fair, it has to be all or nothing.

[Geds]

Can't a guy engage in some good old-fashioned class hatred once in a while? :-(

Class war's over.

We lost.

[Bruce Baugh]

Nieciedo: Ack, I gave the wrong impression. I don't know any GLBT people leading lives in which there is a bountiful cornucopia of nookie without complication. I should have said that closeted self-loathers imagine such lives, without suggesting that I think they're right about it. Thank you for laughter and response of just the sort to spur me on to the correction - seriously, very welcome.

[Raka]

Geds: Class war's over.

Since when does the end of a war mean the end of hatred as well?

[Bugmaster]

It would be better for everyone to be poor than our current situation of some being rich while everyone else is poor.

No, it would be best for everyone to be rich. This, in a nutshell, is why full-on socialism tends to fail: everyone ends up poor (except for a few key people who decide how the wealth should be distributed).

[no-one]

No, it would be best for everyone to be rich.

if everyone was rich, who would do the work?

[Fade Manley]

if everyone was rich, who would do the work?

Robots!

Hey, I can dream, right?

[Jeff]

Was that Scott actually being sensible?

Well, other than "The super-rich are super-cool and deserve every penny they steal get", yeah.

==================================

Humility is the value that lets you get along with other people and implement things like "second opinions" and "other points of view".

I wouldn't call myself humble, but I can appreciate and learn from other points of view (I've even agreed with Jesu from time to time [waves]). I see intellectual honesty and curiousity as different from humble.

[Geds]

Ack, I gave the wrong impression. I don't know any GLBT people leading lives in which there is a bountiful cornucopia of nookie without complication. I should have said that closeted self-loathers imagine such lives, without suggesting that I think they're right about it.

Ironically enough, there is a certain amount of truth to your original statement about sex without complication.

To someone who takes the words to heart that looking at someone with lust is the same thing as adultery, any sexual thought at all is terrifying. I doesn't matter if the thought is homosexual, pedophiliac, BDSM, furry, or incredibly vanilla and appropriate missionary sex with the man on top and woman on bottom as God intended. Thinking about sex is a sin. Sinning in any case means 1.) God's going to stop loving/protecting you, 2.) you, personally, are driving the nails in to Jesus' hands (because he died for you, after all, and took all your sins, so any additional sins just mean additional punishment for Jesus and how could you do that to someone who loved you enough to die for you?), or 3.) both.

The homosexual man (and it's rarely the lesbian. Nobody thinks about them), especially Gay Pride Parade or Will & Grace version of the homosexual man that is the most common depiction in American culture, does enjoy a less complicated sex life than the uptight fundamentalist.

G-Do actually hit the nail on the head earlier:

Imagine that you were born with some bizarre sexual appetite. Suppose further that you grow up in a deeply religious, fundamentalist community. You want to learn about your fetish, so when you're an adolescent, or a teenager, you try bringing it up with your parents, friends, and mentors. But you quickly find that people just aren't comfortable talking about it: sometimes you get funny looks.

But that doesn't actually go far enough. It doesn't have to be a bizarre appetite or a strange fetish. You're not allowed to talk about sex at all except in the context of, "Gee whiz, I can't wait until I get married so I can have sex." Then, during the spring of junior year, everyone at your Christian college gets engaged because they've been dating for a couple of years and it's the right thing to do and now they're desperate for sex. Eventually you learn that marrying because you're desperate and went to the same college doesn't actually equal a good reason and now you're trapped in a loveless marriage because you're not allowed to get divorced because that, too, is a mortal sin.

The outed gay man, however, is allowed to think about sex whenever he wants and have sex with whomever he wants (well, whomever he can get in bed with) and stop having sex with that person and go on to someone else whenever he wants (again, exaggeration, I know that relationships rarely actually work that way, but the point is that it can be broken off).

It's the exact same root as the fear of the liberated woman, whether we're talking about feminists or nymphomaniacs. She can have a job that's not raising kids in the home and take birth control pills or have abortions if she doesn't want to have kids. She's free to think about sex however she wants to and choose whichever partner she wants (and can get), then break it off if she has/wants to.

In both cases it's an issue of liberated sexuality vs. enslaved sexuality. The sex life of the liberated gay man or liberated woman is complicated for the simple reason that sex is always complicated, but complexities are usually easier to deal with when they can be put out in the open and worked through.

The straight-laced fundie for whom sexual thoughts = sex = sin doesn't have that option. And that repression is the root of a lot of the problem.

[Ecks]

1 The men of Ephraim called out their forces, crossed over to Zaphon and said to Jephthah, "Why did you go to fight the Ammonites without calling us to go with you? We're going to burn down your house over your head."

Nope, bible gateway lets me to the page just fine. Either I'm not a proper slacktivite, or it's just being weird to you (pick your own attribution).

Sorry to hear about the girl Geds. Sadly the dating world is full of otherwise attractive people who have issues lurking below the surface. One of my early 30's friends got quite depressed about dating at that life stage, because he thought that almost all the worthwhile people were either taken, or were scarred from prior relationships not working out in ways they often hadn't dealt sufficiently yet with. Then he met this perfect girl, fell in love, she moved across the continent to be with him. Then it turned out she was an incest survivor and while a wonderful human being had all kinds of emotional trauma, distrust, etc, from this that made any close relationship more or less impossible. She went off for some much needed therapy to try to get straightened out, leaving him to read a book and discover that he was a classic co-dependent, and start his own course of therapy.
And then everyone lives happily ever after.
(OTOH I've met a 30 year old who is quite wonderful, and who's bumps and scars are no serious impediment to a meaningful relationship, so mileage definitely varies).

Raka, heading for the top 5%? You're aware we're talking somewhere north of 150K (in the US), right? Just checking. I'm getting an advanced degree from a business school now, and even that has me looking at maybe the top 15%.

With resepect to class war, we socialists are not obliged to believe in equality of outcome, only equality of opportunity, and not-too-ridiculous stratification of outcome. If some people are richer than others, that's fine. But currently in the US, the richest 20% are LUDICROUSLY richer than the bottom 20%. There's no advantage to this of any kind, and plenty of disadvantage. It doesn't help anybody, rich or poor. Other countries (and even the historical US) have had far more reasonable ratios.

[Ecks]

rich. This, in a nutshell, is why full-on socialism tends to fail: everyone ends up poor

Bugs... that's COMMUNISM. Canada, for example, is a socialist country, in which not everyone is poor. In fact, the Candadian poor, while living no life of roses and honey, are far better off than much of the American poor. And frankly our money is worth more than yours right now, and our life expectancy is as long or longer, so we can't be doing something all that horribly wrong on the economic front.

[Raka]

Geds: Raka, heading for the top 5%

Raka is nowhere near the top 5% and on no vector that leads there in the foreseeable future. Did you intend this for Francis?

Bugmaster: No, it would be best for everyone to be rich.

I believe Pratchet put it best:

"And if every man on the shores of the Circle Sea had a mountain of gold of his own? Would that be a good thing? What would happen? Think carefully."

Rincewind's brow furrowed. He thought. "We'd all be rich?"

The way the temperature fell at his remark told him that it was not the correct one.

[Raka]

Ecks: that's COMMUNISM. Canada, for example, is a socialist country...

Not really. Socialism is communal control of the means of production, which is true to some extent in Canada. It's also true to some extent in the US, and any other nation where redistribution of wealth takes place in one way or another. Canada leans a bit more to the socialist side than we do, has a few more socialist policies and tendencies and whatnot. But it's still significantly more capitalist than it is socialist. When the majority of your income is not taken as taxes and you are free to spend it on goods and services not provided under explicit government control, you generally are still in a mostly-capitalist nation. Even Scandinavia falls short.

Communism is differentiated from socialism mostly in its form of government and exercise of power, not in its economic policies and philosophies.

[MikailBorg]

I don't know any GLBT people leading lives in which there is a bountiful cornucopia of nookie without complication.

I know a few SGLBT people leading lives in which there is a bountiful cornucopia of nookie, but never is it without complication. I've come to suspect that's an inevitable part of the bargain.

[Geds]

Raka:

Since when does the end of a war mean the end of hatred as well?

True enough...

Also, Geds: Raka, heading for the top 5%, um, that was Ecks, not me.

[Raka]

Raka: When the majority of your income is not taken as taxes and you are free to spend it on goods and services not provided under explicit government control...

Okay, that may or may not be a valid rule of thumb, but it's an absolute CRAP definition for the difference between capitalism and socialism.

[cjmr]

Ecks,

Yeah, but it's cold up there.

-----

Or then there's Douglas Adams:

"...Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high leel of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship's peanut."

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.

"So in order to obviate this problem," he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and...er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."

[Raka]

Geds: um, that was Ecks, not me

Um, can I pretend that I did that deliberately as some attempt at humor? Y'know, misattributing my correction to the original misattribution?

Yeah, I wouldn't believe it either. Let's forget about the whole thing and commence with hitting Francis up for money.

[Geds]

Let's forget about the whole thing and commence with hitting Francis up for money.

Done. I'll bring the baseball bat...