Does the Bible forbid homosexuality and abortion?

[southernhybrid]

You are obviously blinded by your beliefs Lion. No point in arguing with you. I read that nasty book when I was young. It always bothered me as a child that I was told to believe such horrible stuff, but being a child, I believed what I was told to believe. Luckily, I was able to see the light in my late teens and early teens. But, I do realize that many people need some type of mythology to get them through the day. I just wish it wasn't such a harsh, sexist, often hateful mythology as that in much of the Christian holy book.

I will add that the verse in Exodus only says not to kill. It says nothing about ending a pregnancy. It says nothing about a fertilized egg or a fetus being the same as a living child. It says nothing about who or what isn't supposed to be killed, so I could interpret that to mean that we should all be vegans and never kill any living thing.

The Bible can be interpreted however the reader wants to see it, as it's an ancient book of mythology, nothing more and nothing less. Prior to the movement that politicized abortion, I never knew of a Christians who made a claim against abortion. Nope. That's why all the Christian nurses who I worked with in the late 70s and early 80s never seemed to have a problem with abortion, at least not when it came to the choices of other women. That's the way it should be.

And, even if the Bible did condemn abortion, which it obviously doesn't, one's religious beliefs should never be forced on those who don't share those beliefs in a democratic society. There are human universals, but anti abortion and anti homosexuality beliefs have never been universal beliefs.

 

[Bronzeage]

You are obviously blinded by your beliefs Lion. No point in arguing with you. I read that nasty book when I was young. It always bothered me as a child that I was told to believe such horrible stuff, but being a child, I believed what I was told to believe. Luckily, I was able to see the light in my late teens and early teens. But, I do realize that many people need some type of mythology to get them through the day. I just wish it wasn't such a harsh, sexist, often hateful mythology as that in much of the Christian holy book.

I will add that the verse in Exodus only says not to kill. It says nothing about ending a pregnancy. It says nothing about a fertilized egg or a fetus being the same as a living child. It says nothing about who or what isn't supposed to be killed, so I could interpret that to mean that we should all be vegans and never kill any living thing.

The Bible can be interpreted however the reader wants to see it, as it's an ancient book of mythology, nothing more and nothing less. Prior to the movement that politicized abortion, I never knew of a Christians who made a claim against abortion. Nope. That's why all the Christian nurses who I worked with in the late 70s and early 80s never seemed to have a problem with abortion, at least not when it came to the choices of other women. That's the way it should be.

And, even if the Bible did condemn abortion, which it obviously doesn't, one's religious beliefs should never be forced on those who don't share those beliefs in a democratic society. There are human universals, but anti abortion and anti homosexuality beliefs have never been universal beliefs.

The proscription against killing seems oddly unspecific, especially when compared to the list of things one must not covet. There's no list of who one must not kill, or of anyone exempt from the rule. A few books forward and we learn that "Saul has killed his thousands and David his tens of thousands." No one seemed upset about that.

As for specificity, consider "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." That's pretty clear, to the point that all the paintings of Moses walking down the mountain with the stone tablets are prohibited by those very same tablets.

What it comes down to, even the most sincere believers who use the Bible to justify their actions, happily disregard any scripture that prohibits something that is a social norm.

 

[ideologyhunter]

What it comes down to, even the most sincere believers who use the Bible to justify their actions, happily disregard any scripture that prohibits something that is a social norm.

In his essay 'Superstition', Robert Ingersoll provided a long list of the ways Bible believers have made a spectacle of themselves over the centuries, claiming support for contradictory positions. Here is an edited version of this passage:
"Millions of men have wasted their lives in the study of this book -- in trying to harmonize contradictions and the explain the obscure and seemingly absurd...Probably no two of its readers have agreed as to its meaning...By the same book they proved that nearly everybody is to be lost, and that all are to be saved; that slavery is a divine institution, and that all men should be free; that polygamy is right, and that no man should have more than one wife; that the powers that be are ordained by God, and that the people have a right to overturn and destroy the powers that be; that all the actions of men were predestined -- preordained from eternity, and yet that man is free; that all the heathen will be lost; that all the heathen will be saved...that there is no salvation without baptism; that baptism is useless; that you must believe in the Trinity; that it is sufficient to believe in God; that you must believe that a Hebrew peasant was God; that at the same time he was half man, that he was of the blood of David through his supposed father Joseph, who was not his father, and that it is not necessary to believe that Christ was God...that heretics should be killed; that you must not resist evil;...that you should lend to all who ask, and that one who does not provide for his own household is worse than an infidel."
I have given about a third of the passage.
Ingersoll could have added: that prayers are to be made to Mary the intercessor, but that all such prayers are to be damned as idolatry; that a Christian must be a pacifist and noncombatant, but then again a Christian is justified if he serves in his country's military; that God is on our side/their side/no one's side; that adherence to the Law is done away with, but every 'jot and tittle' is still in force; that God commanded circumcision forever and ever as a sign of faith, but that no man must be circumcised; that we should have prayer in the public sphere, but you should do your praying in private.
An omniscient and infallible God, holding all the wisdom in creation, could not inspire, create, or preserve a written message that people could follow with consistency and intelligibility.

 

[Politesse]

What it comes down to, even the most sincere believers who use the Bible to justify their actions, happily disregard any scripture that prohibits something that is a social norm.

In his essay 'Superstition', Robert Ingersoll provided a long list of the ways Bible believers have made a spectacle of themselves over the centuries, claiming support for contradictory positions. Here is an edited version of this passage:
"Millions of men have wasted their lives in the study of this book -- in trying to harmonize contradictions and the explain the obscure and seemingly absurd...Probably no two of its readers have agreed as to its meaning...By the same book they proved that nearly everybody is to be lost, and that all are to be saved; that slavery is a divine institution, and that all men should be free; that polygamy is right, and that no man should have more than one wife; that the powers that be are ordained by God, and that the people have a right to overturn and destroy the powers that be; that all the actions of men were predestined -- preordained from eternity, and yet that man is free; that all the heathen will be lost; that all the heathen will be saved...that there is no salvation without baptism; that baptism is useless; that you must believe in the Trinity; that it is sufficient to believe in God; that you must believe that a Hebrew peasant was God; that at the same time he was half man, that he was of the blood of David through his supposed father Joseph, who was not his father, and that it is not necessary to believe that Christ was God...that heretics should be killed; that you must not resist evil;...that you should lend to all who ask, and that one who does not provide for his own household is worse than an infidel."
I have given about a third of the passage.
Ingersoll could have added: that prayers are to be made to Mary the intercessor, but that all such prayers are to be damned as idolatry; that a Christian must be a pacifist and noncombatant, but then again a Christian is justified if he serves in his country's military; that God is on our side/their side/no one's side; that adherence to the Law is done away with, but every 'jot and tittle' is still in force; that God commanded circumcision forever and ever as a sign of faith, but that no man must be circumcised; that we should have prayer in the public sphere, but you should do your praying in private.
An omniscient and infallible God, holding all the wisdom in creation, could not inspire, create, or preserve a written message that people could follow with consistency and intelligibility.

Are you arguing that there is never a correct answer in any of these disputes, simply because there is disagreement? Yes, perhaps it would be convenient (albeit boring and patronizing) if we had direct access to the mind of a Perfect Being, and They simply resolved all of our social, philosophical, and theological disputes for us without our having to work for it. But given that this is obviously not the case, what is our next step?

I know for a fact that Robert Ingersoll was not such a fool as to imagine the religion was the true cause of these disputes. He was an agnostic, like myself, and had a much more nuanced view on the position of any given person in their society, and the complex role religion plays in that relationship.

 

[ideologyhunter]

"Never a correct answer"? Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's a subjective matter. But that's a side issue, isn't it. The thrust of Ingersoll's passage is the incoherence of scripture and the incoherence of the orthodoxies he looked at.

 

[Politesse]

"Never a correct answer"? Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's a subjective matter. But that's a side issue, isn't it. The thrust of Ingersoll's passage is the incoherence of scripture and the incoherence of the orthodoxies he looked at.

Ingersoll was skeptical of all orthodoxies. A good man.

 

[southernhybrid]

"Never a correct answer"? Sometimes that's true. Sometimes it's a subjective matter. But that's a side issue, isn't it. The thrust of Ingersoll's passage is the incoherence of scripture and the incoherence of the orthodoxies he looked at.

Ingersoll was skeptical of all orthodoxies. A good man.

Yup. And, unlike many of my atheist friends, I don't have a problem with cherry picking from the Bible. the Bible is deeply ingrained in American culture, especially Southern culture. I am just annoyed when those who believe in the Bible literally try to make sense out of all the conflicting passages.

There are some things in the NT that are pretty much in line with much of Humanist philosophy. I just think there are much better books to read then the Bible. Plus I think I read most of it when I was a child. It was mostly boring for me.

While much of the Humanist philosophy is very idealistic, it's a decent philosophy to try and live by, and it's fine to cherry pick that philosophy as well.

 

[J842P]

Are you arguing that there is never a correct answer in any of these disputes, simply because there is disagreement? Yes, perhaps it would be convenient (albeit boring and patronizing) if we had direct access to the mind of a Perfect Being, and They simply resolved all of our social, philosophical, and theological disputes for us without our having to work for it. But given that this is obviously not the case, what is our next step?

No, there is no correct answer because it is clearly fiction. It's like asking [/I]who is Tom Bombadil, really[/I]? It is a simply a huge waste of time to expend much energy in trying to reconcile it, unless it is simply your hobby. Then go ahead, I enjoy reading about these things. But to take it seriously as any sort of guide to our social or philosophical disputes? Pure madness.

 

[Politesse]

The use of the phrase "clearly stated" in the discourse of religious conservatives/atheists discussing the Bible is always interesting to me. It's a bit like seeing the phrase "authentic" on the marquee of an ethnic restaurant. It's not just likely that whatever follows is probably untrue; it's damn near certain that what follows will not be true. Carrier is true to form, saying variations on the term "clearly" so many times in the article that it starts to lose whatever meaning it might have had simply through repetition. And yet, none of the things he describes as being so incredibly "clear" actually are, and as usual he trots out many outright lies to support his interpretation of the text. I mean, the Bible states plenty of things clearly. Love your neighbor. Don't eat shellfish. Saul was a bad king. Jesus turned water into wine. If you need to take a field shit, bring a trowel. None of these things are controversial. Why? Because all of them are, in fact, very clearly stated. So clearly stated, in fact, that no one bothers to describe them as very clearly stated. It would be redundant and rhetorically meaningless to describe any of those things as "clearly stated", just as a Mexican restaurant in downtown Durango doesn't need to describe its menu as "authentic"; the word only has rhetorical value .

Naturally, neither of his primary points concern things that are clearly stated in the text. Clear statements about the status of homoseuality and abortion would look like the following:

"Homosexuality is forbidden."

or

"Homosexuality is permissible."


"Abortion is permissible."

or

"Abortion is forbidden"

​

It seems to me that if it takes you several thousand words of argument to try and make your point, and vast numbers of people continue to disagree with it when you are done, then your argument may be right, but your presentation of it is not very honest from the outset, as whatever else your point may be, it obviously is not clearly stated in the text.

To be honest, if someone is asking permission to invlaidate my marriage or deny me the right to an abortion on the sole basis of a religious text, I think the standard of evidence should be pretty high that the text does, at least, actually say what my interlocutor is claiming that it does. If there's any dispute as to what the text says or means, I really don't think it is a good idea to base laws on it until the ambiguity is resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

 

[Bronzeage]

The use of the phrase "clearly stated" in the discourse of religious conservatives/atheists discussing the Bible is always interesting to me. It's a bit like seeing the phrase "authentic" on the marquee of an ethnic restaurant. It's not just likely that whatever follows is probably untrue; it's damn near certain that what follows will not be true. Carrier is true to form, saying variations on the term "clearly" so many times in the article that it starts to lose whatever meaning it might have had simply through repetition. And yet, none of the things he describes as being so incredibly "clear" actually are, and as usual he trots out many outright lies to support his interpretation of the text. I mean, the Bible states plenty of things clearly. Love your neighbor. Don't eat shellfish. Saul was a bad king. Jesus turned water into wine. If you need to take a field shit, bring a trowel. None of these things are controversial. Why? Because all of them are, in fact, very clearly stated. So clearly stated, in fact, that no one bothers to describe them as very clearly stated. It would be redundant and rhetorically meaningless to describe any of those things as "clearly stated", just as a Mexican restaurant in downtown Durango doesn't need to describe its menu as "authentic"; the word only has rhetorical value .

Naturally, neither of his primary points concern things that are clearly stated in the text. Clear statements about the status of homoseuality and abortion would look like the following:

"Homosexuality is forbidden."

or

"Homosexuality is permissible."


"Abortion is permissible."

or

"Abortion is forbidden"

​

It seems to me that if it takes you several thousand words of argument to try and make your point, and vast numbers of people continue to disagree with it when you are done, then your argument may be right, but your presentation of it is not very honest from the outset, as whatever else your point may be, it obviously is not clearly stated in the text.

To be honest, if someone is asking permission to invlaidate my marriage or deny me the right to an abortion on the sole basis of a religious text, I think the standard of evidence should be pretty high that the text does, at least, actually say what my interlocutor is claiming that it does. If there's any dispute as to what the text says or means, I really don't think it is a good idea to base laws on it until the ambiguity is resolved to the satisfaction of both parties.

It would be nice if it were so clear cut, but if it were, we would be left to argue over the definition of homosexuality and abortion. Neither terms are obvious. Is homosexuality only physical acts between persons of the same sex, or does this include emotional attachments which remain non sexual. This doesn't get us close to the problem of defining which physical acts cross the line.

One of the more predictable elements of human society is our laziness. This means we don't go to the trouble of creating rules and taboos when there's no threat. Another predictable element is our stubbornness. This means the taboos and rules stick around long after the threat has vanished from our lives. Not every society faced the same threats, so homosexuality is taboo in some, and not in others. Some societies threw unwanted babies(girls and deformed boys) off a cliff. Sacred is, as sacred does.

My curiosity makes me wonder, what was the threat that homosexuality posed? Human morality and moral codes are based upon insuring the survival of the group, in the environment they face. Human survival depends upon the cooperation of the group. The needs and desires of the individual are secondary. It would be a very long time before human society raised their standard of living to the point a luxury like individuality could be supported.

So, the question remains, why was homosexuality seen as a threat? In my limited circle of friends, I know several homosexuals who have children, so that's one idea that doesn't hold water.

 

[Politesse]

My curiosity makes me wonder, what was the threat that homosexuality posed? Human morality and moral codes are based upon insuring the survival of the group, in the environment they face. Human survival depends upon the cooperation of the group. The needs and desires of the individual are secondary. It would be a very long time before human society raised their standard of living to the point a luxury like individuality could be supported.

So, the question remains, why was homosexuality seen as a threat? In my limited circle of friends, I know several homosexuals who have children, so that's one idea that doesn't hold water.

I think the biggest problem they had with homosexuality in the ancient world is that from the perspective of a strictly patrilineal society, it "crosses the streams"; you're joining two family houses together in a way that doesn't make it clear which party is the dominant one. The modern reader, coming from a neolocal society with routine bilateral inheritance often fails to realize just how important (and one-sided) family identity was in the ancient Eurasian world. When a woman married, she left her birth family permanently for all intents and purposes; she went to live with her husband's extended family, taking an automatically subservient role to its own matriarchal hierarchy, and her labor belonged to that family as a whole from that point onward, though her reward was a right to a share of that family's material resources and a promise of inheritance for any child she might bring into the marriage. Even if her husband died, she still belonged to his family, a point the Bible makes abundantly if awkwardly clear (she was supposed to marry his brother in that case to preserve the family line). And marriage was, itself, not an expression of love, but rather a demonstration of mutual trust and goodwill between two family patriarchs. The children being thus betrothed did not normally have any say in the matter whatseover. In polygamous societies, men were sometimes allowed to choose their second wife by preference, but never the first. At least, if they had any property to inherit. Slaves, having no property or rights within the family as such, were often allowed to marry for love as long as they didn't expect that marriage to bear any legal weight. Homosexual acts are therefore always in a bit of an awkward position in the ancient world. Greece and Rome tolerated them in some cases and condemned them in others, and when you look at it as an economic question it makes more sense why. Acts between men in which a very clear power dynamic existed - older men with youths, soldiers with prisoners of war, masters with slaves, anyone with a eunuch or prostitute- were generally accepted, as it was very clear who was in charge, and the subjected partner had no way of claiming any legal rights on the basis of the relationship. All female relationships seem to be more or less ignored; ancient prohibitions against lesbianism really only appear in cases where the woman is "depriving her husband" as a result of them. But put together two adult men with property like my man Hadrian, and you got yourself a serious political scandal at best, and likely a formal suit. In Judea, such acts were simply forbidden, partly due to the inheritance problem and partly because it was assumed that all men of adult age would be one half of a heterosexual marriage and homosexual marriages don't seem to have existed, which would make any sort of homosexual dalliance an act of adultery as well.

Remnants of that attitude persist despite the general decline of patrilineal social rules generally. My partner and I are still occasionally (and rudely) asked "which of us is the woman", or worse "which of us is the bottom". The question isn't about who has a literal vagina is it? It's about who is in charge. Who makes the decisions. Who owns the house. Which one are the kids named after. The patriarchal system may be on life support is not quite gone yet.

 

[Rhea]

One of the more predictable elements of human society is our laziness. This means we don't go to the trouble of creating rules and taboos when there's no threat. Another predictable element is our stubbornness. This means the taboos and rules stick around long after the threat has vanished from our lives. Not every society faced the same threats, so homosexuality is taboo in some, and not in others. Some societies threw unwanted babies(girls and deformed boys) off a cliff. Sacred is, as sacred does.

My curiosity makes me wonder, what was the threat that homosexuality posed? Human morality and moral codes are based upon insuring the survival of the group, in the environment they face. Human survival depends upon the cooperation of the group. The needs and desires of the individual are secondary. It would be a very long time before human society raised their standard of living to the point a luxury like individuality could be supported.

So, the question remains, why was homosexuality seen as a threat? In my limited circle of friends, I know several homosexuals who have children, so that's one idea that doesn't hold water.

In a way-back evolutionary sense, what’s wrong with homosexuality? I’ve thought about this a bit and my personal take is that homosexuality represents a potential MASK that makes Alpha’s very very uneasy. It is a condition of Alpha’s not knowing who their rivals are, and having to risk turning their back and being wrong.

What makes me think this is the completely different ways men react to gay men vs gay women.

They do not care very much about gay women. This is not a threat. This is not even a loss of potential mate because Alpha’s don’t consider “no” a valid reason to be thwarted.

But gay MEN on the other hand - you are asking me to accept that you are not a rival, even though you look like a rival, and you ingratiate yourselves with the women because they sense you are not a threat and so they let down their guard around you, but you have all the equipment (ability to fight me, ability to impregnate them) that makes you a rival. And I am on guard the whole time you are around, pretending to not be a rival, and I just can’t tell by looking and that makes me very very agitated. I feel that I am in the presence of a masked rival, it tears at my sense of control and that makes me lash out.

My 2¢

 

[lpetrich]

A lot of people find homosexuality very gross and repulsive, for whatever reason, and I don't think that we should beat anyone up for that. Like:

Peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum Definition - (Latin) "That horrible sin, among Christians not to be named" - referring to homosexual acts

 

[rousseau]

I'd put my money on an evolutionary pressure away from the same sex and an evolutionary pressure toward the opposite sex. Men who see absolutely no value in other men outside of bare necessity for survival don't waste their resources on them, and put all their resources toward women. I don't think homosexuality was ever a threat, but evolving a disinclination to be intimate with or repulsion by intimacy with the same sex would have huge metabolic advantages.

 

[Politesse]

In a way-back evolutionary sense, what’s wrong with homosexuality?

What makes you think there is anything wrong with homosexuality from an evolutionary perspective? We evolved certain pleasure centers that only two men or two women working together can really satisfy for one another, I think that says enough about Mother Nature's vote (Or God's, if you subscribe to natural theology). All primates engage in homosocial sexual relations at least occasionally, ourselves included. Our social prohibitions against homosexuality are just that, social prohibitions. Thye are entirely optional, and if you ask me, rather maladaptive. Forcing gay people to closet tends to lead to very unhappy and thus less productive family units in those cultures that apply lethal pressure on the issue. Prohibitions against homosexuality have concentrated in historical empires that also have severe demographic crises, and struggle with overpopulation to the point of occasional episodes of mass starvation, as many here well know.

 

[rousseau]

I'd put my money on an evolutionary pressure away from the same sex and an evolutionary pressure toward the opposite sex. Men who see absolutely no value in other men outside of bare necessity for survival don't waste their resources on them, and put all their resources toward women. I don't think homosexuality was ever a threat, but evolving a disinclination to be intimate with or repulsion by intimacy with the same sex would have huge metabolic advantages.

Put another way. Put almost any heterosexual man in the same room as a beautiful, very fertile woman, and he'll have no control over his physical response to her presence.

So I don't see why the reverse wouldn't be true too. Evolution wants to steer females and males toward each other. Any social results are likely just a reflection of this predisposition.

 

[Politesse]

I'd put my money on an evolutionary pressure away from the same sex and an evolutionary pressure toward the opposite sex. Men who see absolutely no value in other men outside of bare necessity for survival don't waste their resources on them, and put all their resources toward women. I don't think homosexuality was ever a threat, but evolving a disinclination to be intimate with or repulsion by intimacy with the same sex would have huge metabolic advantages.

Put another way. Put almost any heterosexual man in the same room as a beautiful, very fertile woman, and he'll have no control over his physical response to her presence.

So I don't see why the reverse wouldn't be true too. Evolution wants to steer females and males toward each other. Any social results are likely just a reflection of this predisposition.

Interesting qualifiers. Did you know that not all cultures consider the same features beautiful, and that fertility in humans (unlike in most animals) is neither visible to the naked eye nor predictably associated with beauty? Your culture has taught you to look for certain features and respond to them in a certain way, while treating men and "ugly" women stand-offishly. Those aren't your instincts, they are a reflection of your society.

In a religious society, people seek to justify their social systems by imagining that gods have endorsed them. In a secular society, it is "evolution" that must play this legitimizing role, whether or not it makes any more sense to attribute agency and purpose to the gradual shifts and turns of a gene pool than it did to attribute it to the thunder or the eclipse. It has the added benefit of making other cultures seem inhuman for falling to answer their "natural" calling, just as they used to ignore the directives of the gods.

 

[rousseau]

I'd put my money on an evolutionary pressure away from the same sex and an evolutionary pressure toward the opposite sex. Men who see absolutely no value in other men outside of bare necessity for survival don't waste their resources on them, and put all their resources toward women. I don't think homosexuality was ever a threat, but evolving a disinclination to be intimate with or repulsion by intimacy with the same sex would have huge metabolic advantages.

Put another way. Put almost any heterosexual man in the same room as a beautiful, very fertile woman, and he'll have no control over his physical response to her presence.

So I don't see why the reverse wouldn't be true too. Evolution wants to steer females and males toward each other. Any social results are likely just a reflection of this predisposition.

Interesting qualifiers. Did you know that not all cultures consider the same features beautiful, and that fertility in humans (unlike in most animals) is neither visible to the naked eye nor predictably associated with beauty? Your culture has taught you to look for certain features and respond to them in a certain way, while treating men and "ugly" women stand-offishly. Those aren't your instincts, they are a reflection of your society.

I'll grant you that culture offers some level of flexibility (maybe a lot of flexibility), but it's absolutely not true that fertility is invisible to the naked eye. I think what you're going for is that ovulation is invisible, but fertility isn't.

In a religious society, people seek to justify their social systems by imagining that gods have endorsed them. In a secular society, it is "evolution" that must play this legitimizing role, whether or not it makes any more sense to attribute agency and purpose to the gradual shifts and turns of a gene pool than it did to attribute it to the thunder or the eclipse. It has the added benefit of making other cultures seem inhuman for falling to answer their "natural" calling, just as they used to ignore the directives of the gods.

I'm afraid you're overstating social causes and understating biological ones. I'll grant you social causes play a major factor in human societies, but you're really not doing biology justice.

 

[Rhea]

In a way-back evolutionary sense, what’s wrong with homosexuality?

What makes you think there is anything wrong with homosexuality from an evolutionary perspective?

I’m answering the question posed;

One of the more predictable elements of human society is our laziness. This means we don't go to the trouble of creating rules and taboos when there's no threat. Another predictable element is our stubbornness. This means the taboos and rules stick around long after the threat has vanished from our lives.

And a big part of my answer is how differently people, even in weird taboo-ey societies, treat mle homosexuals versus female homosexuals. They are treated differently. And it’s clear to me that one is treated like a threat and the other isn’t.

So... why? What in our brains makes us react like that. I’m exploring why. Making my suggestions to the discussion.

I think people react more negatively to male homosexuals than female ones because male homosexuals present a threat-level anxiety to the types of people who are obsessed with being alphas. Not because the mates have become confusing, but because the rivals have become confusing.

This has less to do with occasional homosexual behavior (as one would see in bisexuality, dominance or rape) but in exclusively homosexual behavior that suggests “let down your guard as a rival” bt they can’t, and so it feels like deception.

To be clear, I am not opining about how homosexuals act, I am opining about how (and possibly why) those who rage at homosexuals act. As per the conversation.

 

[rousseau]

I’m answering the question posed;

One of the more predictable elements of human society is our laziness. This means we don't go to the trouble of creating rules and taboos when there's no threat. Another predictable element is our stubbornness. This means the taboos and rules stick around long after the threat has vanished from our lives.

And a big part of my answer is how differently people, even in weird taboo-ey societies, treat mle homosexuals versus female homosexuals. They are treated differently. And it’s clear to me that one is treated like a threat and the other isn’t.

So... why? What in our brains makes us react like that. I’m exploring why. Making my suggestions to the discussion.

I think people react more negatively to male homosexuals than female ones because male homosexuals present a threat-level anxiety to the types of people who are obsessed with being alphas. Not because the mates have become confusing, but because the rivals have become confusing.

This has less to do with occasional homosexual behavior (as one would see in bisexuality, dominance or rape) but in exclusively homosexual behavior that suggests “let down your guard as a rival” bt they can’t, and so it feels like deception.

To be clear, I am not opining about how homosexuals act, I am opining about how (and possibly why) those who rage at homosexuals act. As per the conversation.

To me this argument is a bit too complicated. All we really need for homophobia to arise in any given community is reproductive value. If people have a strong, negative visceral response to intimacy with the same sex, and this helps them reproduce more, the trait will become amplified across a community. It doesn't have to be full blown homophobia, it can just be a tendency to want to be with women, and not men. To me this is the simpler explanation.

I believe the assumption of Bronzeage that homophobia arose for some type of material 'reason' might be questionable in the first place. There is often a tendency to observe a social phenomenon and give it a post-hoc rationalization when none is really needed. A good example of this is religion itself - it's easy to dream up a myriad of reasons why we practice religion, or why it might be beneficial, but in reality the practice is a reflection of human cognition with no real 'purpose'.

Similarly, it's very likely that over time people developed very acute instincts that tend to drive them away from homosexuality and towards heterosexuality. This predisposition has then been reflected in how some, but not all, cultures have developed. Culture is that way, because we are that way.

To address Politesse point a little more closely - what I was getting at in my prior post is that I can feel a physical response to some women, it's not chosen, and the intensity of the response corresponds almost exactly with number of child-bearing years left. I'm arguing that this is mostly a sub-conscious response. So to me it follows that we could also evolve a revulsion to the same sex. Towards the point you mentioned about culture - it is possible, and indeed very likely that different, isolated cultures have evolved responses to different cues. At the very least it doesn't make sense to me to give social causes any type of primacy over biological ones - this just doesn't make sense, because biology comes first.