Gay rights and related thoughts
Oct. 14th, 2006 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annabtgThe following has been going around in several of my friends' journals:
"Why is it that as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?"-Ernest Gaines
We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe or a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this.
It's made me think, do I or do I not believe in gay rights?
Personally, I believe very much in equal rights for everyone. I believe that everyone has the right to do what they want with their lives without being judged - as long as they don't judge others, too. I believe everyone has the right to have their own political, religious etc. beliefs, as long as they're not offending and derogatory to people who disagree with them. I believe in defending these beliefs and even trying to convert other people to them, as long as it's done with respect and has a reasonable approach, and it's not forcing, threatening or exercising any kind of pressure to the other person to accept your views. I believe in exchanging views, and learning what we can about each other's opinions.
These rights I recognize to everyone. Including gay people.
What's making it so hard to just repost these three lines without all this comment?
I think it's that I don't really like homosexuality. Now listen to me carefully: I have my own views on things, and I never thought of excluding someone because they disagreed with me on some points. Whenever political, religious or other differences made it impossible to get along with some people, it was because the other person just couldn't agree to disagree, and would either make fun of my beliefs or otherwise be annoying and patronizing. I've experienced that first-hand, and it was hurtful, which is why I *never* want to be like that myself.
The thing is, for some reason, different sexual preferences are kinda harder for me to accept than different political views, different religions or whatever. I think this happens because sexuality is more than a state of mind; attraction is something physical, and, biologically speaking, I find it abnormal that someone would be attracted by someone of the same sex so much. I mean, it's happened to me to find other women beautiful, even sexy, but there's an abyss from there to considering a homosexual relationship.
And I realize that the word "abnormal" sounds harsh, so let me explain myself.
For better or for worse, the man has evolved from the state of being an animal like all the others. Animals, as a rule, have the instinct to reproduce, so that the species would survive. Most of them don't mate for life. They don't live in organized societies - or, in any case, not as organized as ours.
When the man started living in organized societies, he adopted the model that his instict dictated him; the model that would allow him to reproduce. Heterosexual relationships are more natural than the homosexual ones, because they're driven by the reproduction instict. I've heard that some animals have homosexual relationships. I don't know if it's true or not, but the animal nature is so that there are no strings attached to the relationships, no birth control, and generally it can't be compared to the human of this era.
Now, when the human society evolved so much that survival was no longer a concern - because who thinks that humans are going to become extinct anytime soon? - the homosexual relationships were given space to grow. And because the heterosexual relationships (at least in the western civilization model) have become long-term and there have been legal rights given to the heterosexual couples, the homosexual couples are requesting the same thing. When you look at it that way, it's only fair.
So "gay rights" are more than just the right to be different. If I support gay rights, I should also support gay marriage. That's a tough one. Religiously, I don't; I'm an Orthodox Christian, and our church's texts clearly require a man and a woman for a wedding to take place. Marriage, however, in today's society, has lost the religious significance it used to have, so I'll look at it from a civil rights perspective instead.
From that perspective... no. I see nothing wrong with it. Living together, sharing their belongings... could be a man and a woman, two men or two women. No difference.
Raising kids? That's a more difficult one. Kids are the fruit of heterosexual relationships. You need a man and a woman to have a kid - unless you go for cloning. But strictly on the matter of raising one, if divorced/single parents can raise kids, why not gay couples, too? Having only a mother and no father couldn't be worse than having two mothers and no father.
What if accepting gay rights brought over an explosive rise of gay people's numbers, and the minority became a majority?
This thought is disconcerting to me. It would mean a drastic change in the human society. Perhaps it wouldn't endanger survival, since we have developed methods of having children without having sex. But I don't think it might happen. Even if we accept that our society is going "backwards", with getting married easily thinking you can always divorce if it doesn't work out, the liberation of having sex outside of marriage and the right to be a single parent leading us back to the animal sexuality model, in that model heterosexual relationships have prevailed. So no worries there.
I guess the problem for me is exactly that: that we're going backwards. Personally, I like the sexuality model my religious faith dictates me, and I actually plan to follow it. I'd like this model to prevail. But I neither can, nor want to force it on anyone. If you want to have sex before getting married, it's your choice. If you want to have homosexual relationships, it's your choice. I believe I have the right to do what I want, just as long as I don't offend you. I recognize the exact same right to you, just as long as you don't offend me.
So I guess this means I accept gay rights too. Still, I don't like homosexuality, but I'm trying to follow a "hate the sin, not the sinner" policy. If someone's gay, for whatever reason, it doesn't mean they should be excluded from the society. Just as long as there's respect from and towards both sides.
See ya,
Anna.
"Why is it that as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands?"-Ernest Gaines
We would like to know who really believes in gay rights on livejournal. There is no bribe or a miracle or anything like that. If you truly believe in gay rights, then repost this and title the post as "Gay Rights". If you don't believe in gay rights, then just ignore this.
It's made me think, do I or do I not believe in gay rights?
Personally, I believe very much in equal rights for everyone. I believe that everyone has the right to do what they want with their lives without being judged - as long as they don't judge others, too. I believe everyone has the right to have their own political, religious etc. beliefs, as long as they're not offending and derogatory to people who disagree with them. I believe in defending these beliefs and even trying to convert other people to them, as long as it's done with respect and has a reasonable approach, and it's not forcing, threatening or exercising any kind of pressure to the other person to accept your views. I believe in exchanging views, and learning what we can about each other's opinions.
These rights I recognize to everyone. Including gay people.
What's making it so hard to just repost these three lines without all this comment?
I think it's that I don't really like homosexuality. Now listen to me carefully: I have my own views on things, and I never thought of excluding someone because they disagreed with me on some points. Whenever political, religious or other differences made it impossible to get along with some people, it was because the other person just couldn't agree to disagree, and would either make fun of my beliefs or otherwise be annoying and patronizing. I've experienced that first-hand, and it was hurtful, which is why I *never* want to be like that myself.
The thing is, for some reason, different sexual preferences are kinda harder for me to accept than different political views, different religions or whatever. I think this happens because sexuality is more than a state of mind; attraction is something physical, and, biologically speaking, I find it abnormal that someone would be attracted by someone of the same sex so much. I mean, it's happened to me to find other women beautiful, even sexy, but there's an abyss from there to considering a homosexual relationship.
And I realize that the word "abnormal" sounds harsh, so let me explain myself.
For better or for worse, the man has evolved from the state of being an animal like all the others. Animals, as a rule, have the instinct to reproduce, so that the species would survive. Most of them don't mate for life. They don't live in organized societies - or, in any case, not as organized as ours.
When the man started living in organized societies, he adopted the model that his instict dictated him; the model that would allow him to reproduce. Heterosexual relationships are more natural than the homosexual ones, because they're driven by the reproduction instict. I've heard that some animals have homosexual relationships. I don't know if it's true or not, but the animal nature is so that there are no strings attached to the relationships, no birth control, and generally it can't be compared to the human of this era.
Now, when the human society evolved so much that survival was no longer a concern - because who thinks that humans are going to become extinct anytime soon? - the homosexual relationships were given space to grow. And because the heterosexual relationships (at least in the western civilization model) have become long-term and there have been legal rights given to the heterosexual couples, the homosexual couples are requesting the same thing. When you look at it that way, it's only fair.
So "gay rights" are more than just the right to be different. If I support gay rights, I should also support gay marriage. That's a tough one. Religiously, I don't; I'm an Orthodox Christian, and our church's texts clearly require a man and a woman for a wedding to take place. Marriage, however, in today's society, has lost the religious significance it used to have, so I'll look at it from a civil rights perspective instead.
From that perspective... no. I see nothing wrong with it. Living together, sharing their belongings... could be a man and a woman, two men or two women. No difference.
Raising kids? That's a more difficult one. Kids are the fruit of heterosexual relationships. You need a man and a woman to have a kid - unless you go for cloning. But strictly on the matter of raising one, if divorced/single parents can raise kids, why not gay couples, too? Having only a mother and no father couldn't be worse than having two mothers and no father.
What if accepting gay rights brought over an explosive rise of gay people's numbers, and the minority became a majority?
This thought is disconcerting to me. It would mean a drastic change in the human society. Perhaps it wouldn't endanger survival, since we have developed methods of having children without having sex. But I don't think it might happen. Even if we accept that our society is going "backwards", with getting married easily thinking you can always divorce if it doesn't work out, the liberation of having sex outside of marriage and the right to be a single parent leading us back to the animal sexuality model, in that model heterosexual relationships have prevailed. So no worries there.
I guess the problem for me is exactly that: that we're going backwards. Personally, I like the sexuality model my religious faith dictates me, and I actually plan to follow it. I'd like this model to prevail. But I neither can, nor want to force it on anyone. If you want to have sex before getting married, it's your choice. If you want to have homosexual relationships, it's your choice. I believe I have the right to do what I want, just as long as I don't offend you. I recognize the exact same right to you, just as long as you don't offend me.
So I guess this means I accept gay rights too. Still, I don't like homosexuality, but I'm trying to follow a "hate the sin, not the sinner" policy. If someone's gay, for whatever reason, it doesn't mean they should be excluded from the society. Just as long as there's respect from and towards both sides.
See ya,
Anna.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 01:20 pm (UTC)See ya,
Anna :)
no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 06:24 pm (UTC)When the man started living in organized societies, he adopted the model that his instinct dictated him; the model that would allow him to reproduce. … I don't know if it's true or not, but the animal nature is so that there are no strings attached to the relationships, no birth control, and generally it can't be compared to the human of this era.
Homosexuals have been in society for a very long time, even if you discount the animal portion. The first example that jumped to my mind was pederasty.
The Greeks considered it normal for any man to be drawn to the beauty of a boy - just as much if not more than to that of a woman.
The bond between the two participants seems to have been based in part on mutual love and desire – usually sexually expressed – and in part on the political interests of the two families.
Same-sex relationships were a social institution variously constructed over time and from one city to another.
And it wasn’t just the Greeks. The Chinese, Japanese and Native Americans all differed from modern standards when it came to homosexuality.
Homosexuality in Japan, variously known as shudo or nanshoku, terms influenced by Chinese literature, has been documented for over one thousand years and was an integral part of Buddhist monastic life and the samurai tradition.
Among many Middle-Eastern Muslim cultures, homosexual practices were widespread and public. Recent work in queer studies suggests that while the visibility of such relationships has been much reduced, their frequency has not.
And while GLBTs might seem to have just sprung out of nowhere within the past few decades, they were always there. Depending on how a society developed, it was considered less and less acceptable. The “modern” society, to me, seems backwards in its treatment of GLBTs. The Greeks, the Japanese, etc., were structured, cultured and organized societies, and they were more than okay with homosexuals.
[I]n many indigenous cultures around the world, homosexual and transgender components of both the human and nonhuman worlds are routine … [A]boriginal cultures have accumulated a vast storehouse of knowledge about the natural world—including the sexual and gender systems of animals—over a period of thousands of years.
To me, it seems somewhere along the line we changed our beliefs, and it wasn’t a positive change.
Animals, as a rule, have the instinct to reproduce, so that the species would survive.
While we do have the natural instinct to reproduce, there are animals that exhibit homosexual tendencies. It’s only natural that these evolved with us. (Someone once told me that 12% of Seattle’s seagulls are gay, but I don’t know how accurate that is.) This and this were interesting articles on animal sexual variances and cultural attitudes.
I applaud you for looking at the marriage issue from a civil liberties perspective instead of a religious one. It takes courage to post such an open entry like this, and again, I think it’s commendable to respect others’ choices.
Like I said earlier, I don’t think this will drastically change your beliefs, if at all. This comment was simply food for thought. I know you were a little skeptical about my own preferences, but I get that it’s uncommon, and that it can be hard to understand. I don’t think any less of you for it – a lot of people give me weird looks when I tell them, but so long as they don’t try to set me up with anyone, everything’s cool.
Many quotes from <a href=" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homosexuality”>Wikipedia</a>.</font>
no subject
Date: 2006-10-14 09:26 pm (UTC)I'm aware that homosexuality isn't a new trend. I just believe that in today's society, where the human rights are so highly on the conscience of people, with the Constitution and all the laws about freedom of speech, of choice etc., there's more ground to talk about "gay *rights*". I mean, it's not the same discussing gay rights in an era and society where women are considered just a step above slaves, right?
And yes, I had heard about animals exhibiting homosexual tendencies. Didn't know whether it was true, but supposed it probably was. The thing is - the portion exhibiting them is very small compared to the entirety of the population. I mean, even if 12% of Seattle's seagulls are gay, it leaves out 88% that aren't. Not to mention, you don't know if the 12% is fully gay, or just... bi. (That's a weird way to categorize seagulls...)
BTW, regarding your own preferences - I guess I was just surprised, since I'd never heard of asexuality before. It was a completely new concept to me.
See ya,
Anna.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 04:48 am (UTC)But That does not mean I support/accept homosexuality in any way. I mean if tomorrow my best friend scomes and tells me he's gay I won't turn and leave him just like that. He'll still be my friend, but I wouldn't share his point of view when talking on sexuality.
I'm Catholic, and it goes against my religion and maybe most pof religions I think, unless you're agnostic.
I'm nos discriminative against homosexuals, but.. I don't like it.
no offeense you ppl, just my point of view
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 07:19 pm (UTC)See ya,
Anna.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 09:23 am (UTC)Personally, I'm for gay rights. I think they deserve the same civil rights as anyone else. (We'll leave religion aside for now.)
The main thing here where we disagree is, I think, the fundamental origin of homosexuality.
What I've learned and what I believe is that it's not a choice.
You never chose to be attracted primarily to men. It's just how you are. I think the same exact thing can be said for a gay man.
Why it happens, I couldn't tell you. Maybe it's genetic (a complex system of recessive genes). Maybe it's some sort of biological switch ("I am attracted to: males/females") that sometimes gets put in the wrong position for effective reproduction.
The point is that I believe gays are born that way. Same as some people are born with brown hair and some people are born to be tall.
Of course, they'll never be in the majority. Homosexual relationships don't lead to reproduction, so the genes that lead to it are less likely to be passed along.
As for having kids... The world is overpopulated. There are plenty of kids to adopt. And having two parents is way better than having none.
Of course, there are also artificial means of reproduction. That's another option. But I don't think it's one that will really be a majority choice.
All of which means that granting gays rights costs us nothing. Doesn't put us backwards. It won't increase the gay population. It's not like saying "oh, it's okay to be gay" will encourage people to choose to be gay... because it isn't a choice in the first place.
What it will do, however, is make those who were born gay feel more accepted. They won't have to struggle so much to hide it (as some, but not all, do). They won't have to pretend that they're not what they are (which can lead to some unhealthy relationships). They can be themselves, and that'll be better not just for them but for those around them.
If we can end the prejudice, anyway. And I'm not talking about you. It's just that, in writing this post, I remembered someone I knew in college. He was gay. And I'm a little proud of myself for the fact that, when I realized it, my reaction was to note the fact and move on. I didn't treat him any differently for it. ... But others did. He was persecuted for who he was. There's no other word for it. I didn't hear too many of the details, and I didn't know it was going on at all until after the fact, but there were other students going after him just because he was gay.
He was good. He didn't let it get to him too much. But it didn't make things easy for him. It didn't let him settle in to college as a home away from home. And it didn't give him the support he needed to not only make that adjustment but to deal with what happened next...
He told his parents. I don't know how they missed it. I realized within seconds of meeting him. But maybe when I saw him, he was flaunting it a little, as a test. Maybe he hid it better with them. Maybe they were in denial. Maybe both. I don't know.
What I do know is that they rejected him for it. They could not accept the idea that their son was gay. And that hurt him more than anything. But I think it hurt worse because of the people in his dorm and his classes who were after him.
I didn't know him for long. We met at an open house for a first-year program I was involved in. Chatted for a few minutes. I helped convince him to join the program. And never saw him again. Never got the chance to know him any better. Because, a few weeks later, he killed himself.
Because the people around him couldn't accept him for who he was. For the way he'd been born.
I think of him, and I tell you...
A society with gay rights, a society where gays are not just tolerated but truly accepted... From where I stand, that would be a big step forwards.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 07:27 pm (UTC)I don't know why you and
What if accepting gay rights brought over an explosive rise of gay people's numbers, and the minority became a majority?
it's because I've seen many people who are against gay rights use it, so I wanted to discuss it.
And, all along this 'essay', I never excluded the possibility that homosexual tendencies have existed, for both humans and animals. I just said that I believe they're not the *prevalent* ones - and I really don't think I'm wrong to say that.
Just so we're clear.
Apart from that, thanks for your reply, Paul.
See ya,
Anna.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 12:29 am (UTC)As for the choice thing... No, you didn't say it, but it seemed an inherent assumption in your argument. If you assume that it's hard-wired rather than a choice, a lot of what you say becomes invalid.
For example... If it's not a choice, then granting gay rights isn't going to increase the number of gay people. It'll just increase the number of people who were already gay who feel comfortable enough to admit it.
I mean... if it was a choice... whyever would you choose that path? People who discriminate against you, potential troubles with your family, reduced rights, no real possibility of children... There are no advantages to the choice that I can see.
In any case, I don't think homosexuality will ever be a majority thing. It would make no sense either way.
Of course, if that did somehow happen... It would help solve our overpopulation problem. ;)
Anyway, sorry if I was too pushy or anything, and thanks for the well-put response. :)
Paul
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 08:38 pm (UTC)somehow i dont think "offend" is the word you wanted. if everything you do is calculated to offend no one, you wouldnt get very far! so i'm guessing that's not what you meant. harm, perhaps? *tries to think what word you meant*
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 10:07 pm (UTC)Funny. The word I want *is* offend, but I also agree with what you're saying!
I think the difference is on the degree of offence. I mean, I guess some people would be 'offended' if they saw two men holding hands, but I mean it as in doing something actively offensive, such as insulting the other person.
I don't know if I'm being clear...
See ya,
Anna.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-15 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 06:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-16 10:21 am (UTC)See ya,
Anna :)