Does homophobia = Christianity?
Submitted by Heather on July 07 1999 at 20:31:12
In reply to The sad truth Submitted by Triple Q on July 07 1999 at 18:29:06
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First, a slight historical dispute: Christianity didn't start as a family religion. It started as an anti-family religion. Remember all those passages where Jesus said that family obligations were less important than obligations to God? And remember Paul saying that any Christian who has the guts shouldn't get married? Early Christianity broke radically with the Jewish tradition of family being all-important – clerical celibacy tells you that right away. Just about every religion in the world condemns homosexuality in some form or another, and every religion in the world, without exception, exalts heterosexual marriage. The question is how receptive any given religion is to non-marital relationships. Some religions are very receptive to such an idea, some are tolerant, and some (including Christianity, traditionally) are hostile. Incidentally, this is true of secularism as well. Some forms of secularism have been very hostile to homosexuality. There's not a lot of opposition in the church to the idea that Christians must be celibate or marry; there is, however, a great deal of opposition to the idea that marriage cannot take place between homosexuals. So I'm afraid your view of the options that same-gender-attracted Christians have – true as it may be in your neck of the woods – is not true everywhere. There are a lot of happy gay Christians, actively involved in their churches. There are also – this shouldn't be hard for a celibate boylover like you to understand – a lot of happy celibate homosexuals within the Christian Church. Though both parties struggle with various issues, neither party thinks of the Church as a place for "self-imposed hell." This isn't to deny that there's a great deal of bigotry in the Church. There is, and it has ancient and despicable roots. It's fair to say that most of the homophobia in the Western world today has been caused by Christians. I'm just not convinced, though, that homophobia would be absent if the Church suddenly disappeared. If you look at the pre-Christian Western world, there was a lot of homophobia directed against same-age homosexual partners. As a boylover, you would have experienced tolerance in the ancient world (I say "tolerance" rather than "acceptance" because you're old enough that, in the ancient world, you should have been married by now). Your gay friends would not have received equal tolerance, and your lesbian friends would have been lucky not to have been stoned. So bigotry has no simple origins. A final note: homophobia and rejection of homosexual behavior are not the same thing. I reject boylove sex, but you may have noticed that I like one or two boylovers. :) Heather |