Yeah, and where’d the traditions come from? Don’t say “religion” because it’s circular and vague.
No, it isn't circular. Organized religion is the conscious concerted effort to manufacture traditions and increase authoritarian obedience to protect those traditions. Religion takes various potentially dangerous things that exist prior to and independent of religion, like faith, authoritarianism, and fear and combines them in ways that enhance each other and their harmful effects.
the overt and near constant attack toward gays on the playground and schools up until recently was the result of those feelings being legitimized and enhanced by centuries of religious tradition of bigotry.
You know that’s true of all persons how? Because some religions enshrined it in their tenets so therefore all people do it cuz religion?
It doesn't have to be all people, just the vast majority. Religious belief is the strongest predictor of intolerance toward gays, even when controlling for other factors. Second place is political conservatism, and religiosity is one of the biggest predictors of that too.
This relationship exists at every level, whether comparing individuals in the same community, comparing States, comparing countries, or comparing a community to itself and how these variables change together over time, such as the non-coincidental drop in religiousness in America and increase in support for gay rights plus a notable decrease in social acceptability of the kinds of public attacks on gays we are talking about (both on the playground and public discourse. In addition, religion is one of the only plausible motives behind such strong anti-gay ideas and actions, which is why it is by far the most commonly stated reason given for efforts to deny gay rights.
Religion shapes culture and all the things people in that culture do (or at least the worst, most dogmatic things because it takes religion to make people dogmatic and bigoted)? Is it really that linear?
Nothing I said implies that. The impact of religion depends upon its social power, which includes the % of people who adhere to the religion, as well as how much those granted social authority promote it. Of course culture more generally also influences religion, but religion, especially the authoritarian structure true by definition of monotheism, is a particular type of manufacturer of culture that takes inputs from other sources and modifies them to produce something else. It is analogous to a factory that takes a raw material and outputs deadly waste. Your attempt to deny causal blame to religion is equal to saying that because the factory used natural raw materials and generally available technology, then the factory and its chosen practices are not the cause of the harmful waste, but rather the cause is nature and technology.
Also, your explanation is simplistically linear. You're claiming these attitudes are nothing but manifestations of natural psychological tendencies. If that were true, there would be no almost no variance in them between people, cultures, or over time. The variabiity shows these attitudes are culturally manufactured by particuarly elements of society whose influence varies between time and place (e.g., religion).
… religion, especially Abrahamic monotheism, is founded on … is the anti-thesis of… is the biggest factor that resists intellectual and moral progress …
Soapbox.
No. Historical fact, logical truisms. Faith is the very definition of anti-reason. Thus, any system that promotes faith as a basis of belief is inherently promoting anti-reason and thus opposition to all progress afforded by reason. In addition, authoritarianism is the most defining feature of Abrahamic religion and its God. The idea of a sentient being whose will is the source of all that is and all that should be, is the most authoritarian and thus anti-liberty notion a human mind could conceive. There is no way to promote such a God without promoting authoritarianism, and devaluing liberty and rational thought that depends on it.
That alone can be enough to cause harm and violence towards others, including gays.
I know religion creates a lot of problems. I know it had its influence in Mateen’s background. Though I don’t know it’s THE influence in everyone’s background.
I didn't say it was "THE influence in everyone's background." In fact, my argument assumes it isn't. Does everyone go around murdering 50 strangers because they are gay? The whole point is the explain variability in such hateful aggression toward gays. Why does it occur where, when, and via the people that it does? Religion is the best account for that. In fact, anti-religious views obviously do have strong influence on many people. Non-religious and even anti-religious cultural forces are what creates tolerance and acceptance of gays. That's why gays are far more likely to leave religion, and why the non-religious, and especially atheists are the more tolerant of gays than any religious group.
Your argument is a bit circular and vague and ideological, and reduces to a simplistic “cuz religion” with no references to the other things that shape personalities and cultures.
We are not talking about all aspects of personalities and cultures. We are only talking about what gives rise to the kind of extreme violence inspiring bigotry towards gays, specifically in the context of a modern world in which the evidence and rational thought all support a biological basis for homosexuality, and the moral decency and lack of objective threat of gays relative to others. My argument is fully situated within the complexities of culture, most of which today promote tolerance toward gays. So what aspect of culture is most responsible for continuing to promote hate despite all the other forces promoting tolerance? The answer is religion.
Your argument explains nothing. It provides not account of where homophobia comes from and why it varies.
Exactly what motivated Mateen isn’t really known the way some people, like you now, are pretending. From what I’ve seen, how it’s shaping out is that Mateen was actively gay, maybe wasn't all that troubled by it, had a lover (maybe a few), was married only out of duty, and possibly did the mass killing for revenge against Puerto Ricans and not out of “homophobia”.
That is irrelevant to the discussion. The discussion is about what causes the kind of anti-gay bigotry that would motivate targeting gays for murder? If Matten did not target gays and that was all coincidence, then that specific event is irrelevant to the discussion. If he did target gays for murder, then religion is the most probable cause for why he targeted them. It is made most probable by all the general statistical facts about religion and such attitudes, and knowledge that the history of these religions back to their founding documents display pro-violent bigotry toward gays, whereas no other common cultural factor in the society he lived in explicitly promotes such views.
But then again… in spite of the actual specifics … did he still, anyway, inevitably pick up from his religion that he must hate gays and was suffering terribly from his own gayness because that’s what religion does to people?
You say "pick up from his religion" as though Islam's homophobia is subtle and he'd have to have gone out of his way to interpret it that way. The Quran is unambiguous in its command to kill all homosexuals, and these ideas are rampant in the sermon's and public pronouncements of the most influential Islamic authorities. This is why homosexuality continues to be punishable by death in most countries governed by Islam. Anyone that could be validly categorized as Muslim would be aware that their religion and its God command violent intolerance of gays. They would have to go out of their way to choose to disregard this aspect of their religion, and therefore also disregard the core defining feature of their religion which is obedience to that God. IOW, they would have to be not much of a Muslim (or Jew, or Christian) to be accepting of gays. This is why, numerous surveys show that both gays and straights that are fully accepting of gays are not only far less likely to identify as religious, but are far less religious in any psychological or behavioral sense even when the label themselves religious. IOW, it isn't the label that causes the bigotry, it is actually believing the bigotry and accepting the authoritarianism that are definitionally inherent to the religion that matters. Just because I call myself a dog, doesn't mean I like my own balls.
Well, however many self-accepting religious gay persons (many thousands among Christians, Mateen’s self-proclaimed lover says Mateen thought the same) there are that adore their “religion of love” make that problematic.
No, it doesn't. Nothing in my argument presumes that using the word "religious" to label oneself, automatically makes that person an anti-gay bigot. My reply to the above comment explains this in more detail. In short, in every objective sense in which degree of religiosity and commitment to being Muslim or Christian can be measured, those who are accepting toward gays are less religious, regardless of their use of vague categorical labels about their religious identity.
So, possibly we're on the wrong track talking about homophobia at all. Maybe we just leap at that because it was LGBT people who were attacked by a guy from a religion we associate with sexual repression and with terrorism and it’s the easy explanation to say “oh look a religious guy attacking a group hated by religious people… must be religion”.
It's "easy" because it is rational and mountains of data and evidence make it a near automatic inference that comes to mind. It is easy to think that for the same reason it is easy to think that a person with a gunshot wound to the head was shot by the guy holding a gun and is the only person around. Maybe, it is rarely a pure coincidence and they just happened by with a gun after someone else shot the person. But if you guess he did it, you'd be correct most of the time.
BTW, if he killed puerto ricans out of racism, that doesn't exactly absolve religion, since it is a major causal force in increasing racism, and was designed to rationalize violence toward out-groups. Such extreme racism has more other non-religious sources in modern western society than does homophobia, so the connection is less reliable. However, someone that mass murders strangers because of their ethnicity is likely to be above average in religiosity.
Regardless, most of the discussion is about why he would target gays. Because of the massive empirical ties between religion and anti-gay violence, it is highly rational to think that his strong ties to a generally anti-gay religion and his targeting of gays were not coincidence. If it was coincidence, then his religion is still likely to matter because it promotes violence towards nearly all outgroups, not just gays.
Which is like saying “oh look somebody of this ‘color’ killed somebody of that ‘color’ in a very hateful way… so must be racism” when it might have just been highly personal.
Um, no. It is nothing like that. This cannot be personal. He murdered 50 strangers that he didn't personally know. Such mass shootings of strangers are typically fueled by some kind of twisted ideological worldview, whether shaped by religion, mental illness, or both (they tend to feed off of each other).
To see what Christianity would do if allowed total rule like Islam still rules in those countries just look to Europe in the Dark Ages and the Inquisition…
Yes, I know. I’m not defending religion. There’s homophobia and for many it’s religion-inspired. But I’ve wondered what inspired religion other than human nature. And I’ve wondered why people jump so quickly to their conclusions.
It isn't a quick jump. It is centuries of evidence showing that religion is and has been the primary source of homophobic bigotry that reaches violent levels.
It is not human nature to murder 50 strangers that pose no threat to you, knowing that you will die as a result. To claim "human nature" as an explanation for this is absurd and completely fails to account for when, where, how, or by whom such variable events occur, which means it explains nothing.
