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talkpolitics2012-04-10 07:36 am
sophia-sadek.livejournal.com) wrote in talkpolitics2012-04-10 07:36 am
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Civilization without Civility: Why Fear Homosexuality?
Until quite recently, the word "homophobia" seemed like an oxymoron to me. I had no sense of how deep the fear actually runs. In fact, I considered it to be a self-referential fear such as the fear of being discovered. People who attack homosexuals are themselves latent homosexuals who fear that others will find them out. Although there may be some truth in this interpretation of the term, it misses a whole body of fear that I knew nothing about until recently.
The Icarus phenomenon of Jason Russell's meltdown prompted me to look more deeply into the involvement of Christian bigots in Uganda. The campaign of Invisible Children to pressure the Obama administration into retaining military advisers in that country reminded me of recent news of American fundamentalist ties to attempts to legitimatize de facto violence against homosexuals in that beleaguered land. I was reminded of how homosexuals in Africa fear being subjected to the vicious treatment of "necklacing" with a burning tire.
My quest for information took me to the work of Jeff Sharlet who became famous for his work exposing the fundamentalist mafia in Washington. Sharlet interviewed Ugandan homophobes to determine the depth of their ties to the Washington mob and to get a handle on the nature of their bigotry. What he found in the former case is that the Washington group has very strong ties to Ugandan homophobes. In the latter case, he found an intellectual basis for bigotry in a thin tome entitled The Pink Swastika by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. It is an eye-opening view into the minds of people who fear homosexuality more than homosexuals fear fundamentalism. Until I read the book, I did not think that was possible.
The authors use evidence of sadistic homosexuals at the highest levels of the German national socialist movement to imply that national socialism is a product of homosexuality. They go so far as to imply that the liberal attitude toward homosexuality within the Weimar Republic gave rise to national socialism. They add two and two together to come up with the number three: freedom for homosexuals leads to death camps for Jews.
The most remarkable aspect of their work is that they provide sufficient evidence for a counter argument, but fail to pay any attention to that evidence. They show that the sadists who perpetrated atrocities were merely a fraction of the homosexual population and what these sadists shared with the authors: a contempt for other homosexuals. They also showed that some homosexuals react violently when they are abused, yet they would have their audience abuse homosexuals. Lively and Abrams make Jonah Goldberg appear downright liberal.
Do you fear homosexuals or homosexuality itself? Why or why not?
BTW, Here is a video that ties Jason Russell's organization to the Washington group:
The Icarus phenomenon of Jason Russell's meltdown prompted me to look more deeply into the involvement of Christian bigots in Uganda. The campaign of Invisible Children to pressure the Obama administration into retaining military advisers in that country reminded me of recent news of American fundamentalist ties to attempts to legitimatize de facto violence against homosexuals in that beleaguered land. I was reminded of how homosexuals in Africa fear being subjected to the vicious treatment of "necklacing" with a burning tire.
My quest for information took me to the work of Jeff Sharlet who became famous for his work exposing the fundamentalist mafia in Washington. Sharlet interviewed Ugandan homophobes to determine the depth of their ties to the Washington mob and to get a handle on the nature of their bigotry. What he found in the former case is that the Washington group has very strong ties to Ugandan homophobes. In the latter case, he found an intellectual basis for bigotry in a thin tome entitled The Pink Swastika by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. It is an eye-opening view into the minds of people who fear homosexuality more than homosexuals fear fundamentalism. Until I read the book, I did not think that was possible.
The authors use evidence of sadistic homosexuals at the highest levels of the German national socialist movement to imply that national socialism is a product of homosexuality. They go so far as to imply that the liberal attitude toward homosexuality within the Weimar Republic gave rise to national socialism. They add two and two together to come up with the number three: freedom for homosexuals leads to death camps for Jews.
The most remarkable aspect of their work is that they provide sufficient evidence for a counter argument, but fail to pay any attention to that evidence. They show that the sadists who perpetrated atrocities were merely a fraction of the homosexual population and what these sadists shared with the authors: a contempt for other homosexuals. They also showed that some homosexuals react violently when they are abused, yet they would have their audience abuse homosexuals. Lively and Abrams make Jonah Goldberg appear downright liberal.
Do you fear homosexuals or homosexuality itself? Why or why not?
BTW, Here is a video that ties Jason Russell's organization to the Washington group:
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Harm for morality, family values, health, religion, ets.
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The question is, how is morality harmed? By which rubric do we declare homosexuality any more or less "moral" than heterosexuality, instead of merely a natural minority variation in the population?
family values
Whose family? The majority of families that are made of up of heterosexual partners and their children are not affected in any way by the existance of homosexuality, so I'm not sure how they are being harmed. Homosexuals, on the other hand, are often forbidden from participating in family units in an equal way, so they are being harmed, but that harm is caused by discrimination AGAINST homosexuality, not homosexuality itself.
health
What health? Mental? That's long since been debunked, despite the mental anguish piled on gay teens in many parts of the U.S. by peers who are enabled by the sanctioned silence (and sometimes participation) of the teachers ostensibly there to protect them. The continued refrain of "harm" is the justification for these abuses up to, and including, murder. Or are you talking about infectious diseases? Does the low incidence of these diseases among the lesbian population imply that lesbianism is then, in contrast, "harmless"?
religion
Here's a point I'll agree on, partly. Yes, it's harmful to religion, at least extremist religion. And good riddance. The more people wake up and realize that iron age mythologies have no useful bearing on the conduct of our lives, the better. The growing acceptance of homosexuality didn't cause this, and is in fact partly a result of that, but it's also now an instigator of it, as people see the behavior of those who'd use those mythologies to continue justify atrocities, and rightly shy away from them. As religious extremists continue to move further and further from the mainstream in their attempts to bolster their crumbling castles, the vileness of their offerings becomes more and more apparent to reasonable people. As moderate believers are forced to admit that they were wrong, they might salvage something of their systems from the extremists, though I'm sure those extremists will continue to howl that they remain the only true Scotsmen in the building.
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