njlauren
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quote:
ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
quote:
ORIGINAL: freedomdwarf1
I don't honestly believe that the "roots" of homophobia are in christianity at all.
As you have clearly stated, it existed long before christianity.
When christianity was 'invented', along with many other existing religions and newer ones (Islam etc), they deliberately emphasized, propagated and enshrined the general acceptance of the practice in order to encourage more followers into the fold.
During the following centuries, it was even more galvanized into the roots of the religion to the point where those 'not of the faith' were persecuted and slaughtered just for not following the faith or it's miopic teachings. Islam is still in these dark ages depite what some 'enlightened' clerics are telling us - as evidenced in recent tortuous killings of the gay community within those cultures.
As Kirata said, it is still rigidly enforced in some well-known "Atheist" states like Russia and China.
You can bang your drum all you like and espouse passages from the bible, but in reality the christians (and Islamics and other similar religions) just magnified the original roots which go waay beyond the origins of the religions. Ergo: The religions are not the roots of homophobia; just exascerbated and amplified tangents of the original general doctrine.
ETA: Simple logic should tell you that if homophobia was in evidence before the religion, then the religion cannot be its roots 
I didn't say the roots of it were in Christianity... <snip>
Are you denying you said this - quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
The reality of non Christian homophobia is that its roots are in Christianity. In post #118 which Kirate called bullshit on in post #222????
You are snipping stuff out of context, there is a difference in roots and origination and speaking about the main influences on the other hand. I don't think homophobia originated with Christianity or Judaism, I think that homophobia was something that probably caused people to be uncomfortable before those religions were created.
That said, though, what Judaism and then Christianity did was to take that bias/fear/whatever you want to call it, and ensconced it within the dogma and scripture of their faith, it became a part of their belief, their preaching, whatever, they didn't create it, but they certainly helped spread it and magnify it, and only someone willfully blind would argue elsewhere. Take a look at the breath and scope of Christianity, it dwarfed Judaism, and as an influence it spread from western Europe to Eastern Europe , to Asia Minor and so forth. In western Europe the prevalence of Christianity was such until fairly recent times that the world Atheist, until almost the 20th century, meant someone who didn't believe the traditional christianity of the trinity and such, they couldn't comprehend someone not believing, and Christianity was not only the dominant religious faith, it was also until fairly recent times the cultural norm, too. You can point out that atheists can be homophobes, and of course they can, but if you listen to them talk, you hear the same language that the religious use,and that isn't a coincidence, when they talk about marriage being about creating children, when they call gays degenerates or deviants, it is actually the same language the religions and their leaders and adherents have used for centuries. Christianity didn't create homophobia, any more than Christianity created anti semitism, but they are analogs to each other, in that Christianity taught and re-inforced for centuries both anti semitism and homophobia, to the point that anti gay and anti semitic thought and belief became part of the common background of society;casual anti semitism was not limited to Nazi Germany, and casual homophobia was part of society and it was largely there because of what Christian churches said about gays, preached about them and so forth. Put it this way, before about 30 years ago, there were relatively few Christian churches that taught that being gay was normal, 98% of them preached it was a sin and gays, disordered and worse. The quakers were one of the few, and some congregationalist churches and other relatively small liberal churches, so it isn't like the churches others have cited have been gay positive, most have 'come around' in the last 20-25 years.....so you think that 1980 years or so of preaching gays were evil, sinners, etc, didn't cause massive damage? Think about this one, homophobia is more strongest in the oldest, those who grew up when homophobia was the de facto position of all but a tiny fraction of churches, you think that is coincidence? And that the youngest, those under 30, grew up when churches finally started coming around?
Christianity didn't create homophobia, but it most certainly made it the de facto 'background' belief of western society for all but the relatively last several decades, much the same way that anti semitism wasn't created by Christianity but was made a background belief that really wasn't eradicated in a general way until the horrors of the holocaust made anti semitism very, very unpopular.
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