[quote]pookie wrote:
[…]The fear and hatred on this thread is sickening. And all for something that has no impact on their own lives.
The saddest part is that even if the gays got recognition from all governments as equal under the law, with the same rights and protections as straight couples, they’d still have to deal with the hate of a fairly sizable minority.
Some people just need to hate others I guess, the reason matters little.
And all the Bible thumpers who never got to Jesus’ “judge not” commandment; nor understood his message of acceptance of all - sinners, whores, criminals, lepers - are the most laughable hypocrites of all. I guess reading past Leviticus is too much work… Why bother anyway when you already have all the god-backing you need to justify your hatred, right?[/quote]
I think you are touching upon a number of good points here - and yes, I agree with you that the palpable hatred is saddening. It should also not be unchallenged, and it gives me hope to see that there are posters here who oppose it.
I think there are a number of motivations to homophobic behaviour. One may be indeed based on the semantic sense of fear, but I think this is indeed the minority. That’s, while it’s the appropriate term, it’s not always useful. A classic example would be threads here which go on about how people fantasise about reacting towards being hit on by gay people, and how violently they would react - remember the one about gay people in gym changing rooms some time ago.
But I don’t think that people here are afraid of homosexuals - at least not in the classic sense. There is however an obvious fear of the perceived effects of society becoming more permissive towards homosexuality. Depending on where peoples’ values lie I recognise that this may create a certain unease, as it does indeed challenge long-held convictions which have been ingrained into generations. Whether this is religiously motivated (I think that’s ZEB’s motivation) or from a societal point of view (Thunderbolt’s posts come to mind) - they are the manifestations of a more conservative (in the sense of preserving traditional values) point of view. These posters are certainly not afraid of homosexual people, but they are worried about how our societies will change in the face of new legislation and general change - fair enough. I don’t think they are right, but in principle, I haven’t got a problem with their original motivation.
What I do have a problem with is when scientific knowledge and statistical data is misinterpreted and twisted to justify a specific agenda. That’s not only counterproductive, but imho also immoral. It also weakens the argument, turning debate into polemics. While I understand that not every poster will have sufficient scientific training to understand either the evidence, or formulate a coherent fact-based argument (this is after all not the Scientific American talk board), I don’t understand why then some fall back into repeating either clearly disproven lines of argument, or fabricate and perpetuate conspiracy theories. Thus, following Occam, going for the most likely and most simple explanation would normally suffice - adding a conspiracy is normally always wrong.
In addition to that - yes, there are people who outright hate either homosexual people, or hate people who help drawing the line in the sand. They need to be stopped - although I’d rather have them post on the Internet than joining a mob ambushing homosexual people in a dark alley. Some cannot be reached - but at least for the ones who misinterpret the bible as a basis for their hatred, there is hope - and this hope is called compassion and forgiveness. Having grown up Christian, those were the tenets I was educated to believe in - and this should be the basis for dealing with these posters. While they will hate and abuse (especially when dealing with ‘out’ people like Forlife), our job will be to disprove, uphold the standard of the debate and forgive, for they don’t understand what they are doing.
Makkun
