Why is homosexuality seen as "wrong"?

My partner likes to see it from a different point of view...

First there are normal people then there are straight people

It's all in jest but makes all our straight friends chuckle

 

I've always seen it as being homosexual meant being different. Society, as a whole, doesn't do well with different. If you don't follow the norm, aren't within a set list of guidelines, you are threatening the status quo of society.

It not that it's wrong, per se, but it's not what society is used to, thus, they attack it. Just how I view it, though.

 

People got into the habit of seeing it that way and then people who wanted to find scapegoats found it was convenient to keep it that way. Much the same as attitudes towards women or those of races other than Caucasian. Then once you've convinced someone that the 'other' to them is their enemy then it's a very powerful thing. You just have to look at how the Nazis were able to convince Germans (and many others in the countries they conquered) that the Jews were their enemy. Propaganda that is centuries old is even harder to break but we are getting there!

 

What people don't understand is usually thrown into the "it's wrong" basket

 

Because we can't reproduce by the conventional method (Thank god), and there's not a woman in the picture to spend her fertile years barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen.

 

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” -H.P. Lovecraft

 

From the religious standpoint, if everyone were homosexual, no one would reproduce and therefore there would be no people to worship god, therefore homosexuality is a sin.

The problem with this logic is that, by this standard, celibacy would be just as much of a sin, yet many religious institutions flat-out condone celibacy. But luckily times are changing and many religious institutions are changing their views on this issue.

 

Because a book of fairy tales that some guys wrote, somehow became a religion... and in that book, everything they didn't like was "wrong" and should be punished and/or killed.

 

Yeah pretty much.

 

Because its in the interest of those with power to divide us.

 

Because people are morons.

 

This is a really easy question to answer: sexism.

Lesbians are bad because women are supposed to be sexual objects for the use of men. Gay men are bad because a guy letting himself get fucked is womanly (and we hate women).

 

The thing is, the people who are against homosexuality usually have a fundamental disagreement with that statement. They believe more than anything else in a God who has ALL of the positive aspects and NONE of the negatives, and that anything a person does is either good (if God wants you to do it) or bad (if He doesn't). Which makes it way too easy for them to say "The Bible says 'Its bad,' so its bad. End of discussion."

 

I think it's because of the universal "us vs. them" mentality that society has had since its beggining. It has a lot of reasons; fear, desire of power, ignorance, hatred, etc. And it falls into every single spectrum of social life (political, cultural, religious, you name it).

 

Mostly, it's religious and they can't tell you why, or reason through that, other than that's what they read in the Bible. Sometimes, it's societal and there's a high level of machismo in some families - i.e. all the kids are football players or baseball players, so they have to flout it in affirming their collective masculinity. Sometimes it's both the combination of religious and traditional expectations. I guess the straight person in those situations can get by just fine. However, I think that a closeted gay or bi guy in that double whammy scenario would really be tormented.

On a practical level, they don't like that you don't reproduce and are part of the PTA and such as it relates to rearing children. They can't relate to the free agent. It's something they both disrespect and are jealous of, I think. Also, since most gay/bi men (I can't vouch for lesbian/bi women) seem to, for the most part, have different interests and less encumbered lives, they are on different planes. I've found that I don't enjoy married folks as much as I once did.

However, I seriously wonder why who one experiences bodily friction and arousal with is such a big deal. It's not. That's why I've come to see this "issue" as something less critical than what religious people make it out to be. People need to lose those shackles of guilt.

 

From religious points, Leviticus calls homosexuality an abomination. But what most religious people don't understand is that "abomination" meant unclean back then, not what it means today.

From a nonreligious standpoint, people find it unnatural, and say that if everyone was gay the human race would die out (which should be the least of our worries with 7billion people).

Both standpoints are stupid.

 

Did you mean mormons? I'm sorry that was insensitive. Anyways back to the question. People don't like things that are different than themselves. They fear what they don't know. God loves all his children but people feel the need to paraphrase a book that was created 3500 years ago. I don't know. I think that's the main reason. People think it's not "normal" even though being "normal" isn't normal at all. A lot of people are uneducated about the LGBT community. A lot of times if someone comes out to them and they're homophobic, they become less homophobic as they become more educated. The media, crazy right wingers, and Christian literalists, have brainwashed people with BS "facts" telling people that being gay is "wrong" and that it's "not natural". We have no population problem. If anything, we're overpopulated and need more people to adopt. Also the part of the bible that says that homosexuality is a sin is voided in the New Testament. People that are literal Christians have clearly never read the bible.

 

A lot of it is through ignorance, especially in places such as Uganda. People like Scott lively preach their vile homophobia over there, and due to the poor level of education in Uganda they are more susceptible to such evangelism because they don't know anything else.

Its like that Out There programme Stephen Fry was in, that pastor he had an argument knew absolutely nothing about LGBT people but he claimed and was seen as an expert.

 

This.

I also object to the "keep the population" low argument. We aren't running low on resources.

That's just a myth cooked up by the companies that rule the world. It's not the size of a population that causes poverty - It's the management of economic resources, and poverty is caused by social and political conditions, not the population itself.

---------- Post added 28th Oct 2013 at 12:38 AM ----------

Also this.