I'm Sick and Tired of Homophobia

It seems that any time the Huffington Post (HuffPost) publishes any article online that relates, no matter how tangentially, to any gay issue (they do have a page called HuffPost Gay Voices, but sometimes gay-related things get posted elsewhere), for some reason all the homophobes come out of the woodwork, very happy to have a platform to express their anti-gay views.

So we hear (over, and over, and over again) that homosexuality is wrong, it's unnatural, it's perverted, it's against Nature and "God's law." So often religion is invoked. I've become firmly convinced that, as a gay man, religion is my enemy.

It makes me truly sad to have to think that homophobia is so widespread. One of these people touched on something very true when he or she said, "They just want to be accepted." I'd put a spin on that in a way that he or she probably did not intend and say, Yes, we gay people would very much like to be able to feel that we were not disliked (let alone hated), rejected, persecuted, discriminated against.

Let me tell you from personal experience that it is a tough row to hoe in life if you belong to any minority—and I belong to at least two or three.

I spend too much time reading and responding to many of those people. Here is what I wrote in reply to one:

There is an old American Indian proverb that says, "Before you criticize a man, walk a mile in his moccasins." I only wish that you and others like you would have even a fraction of the humanity that is embodied in that saying.

I am getting very, very tired of you homophobes posting your ranting (and very, very tired) old, bigoted ideas any time there is anything posted on HuffPost that has anything to do with anything gay.

And, as to "abominations" named in the Bible, are you aware that Leviticus also says that you should not eat shellfish, you should not wear garments that have two fibers mixed, and that a woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night should be put to death?

Are we maybe just being a tad selective in what we do and don't point to in the Bible? It's not the Bible, it's just your bigotry.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Is Religion Schizophrenic? Part 2.

An interesting PBS TV was called Not in God's Name. It was about precisely an issue that I have blogged about: intolerance and conflict among religions.

The program focused on India. India has seven religions: Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism, Christianity, and Judaism. They all preach tolerance, brotherhood, peace—all the good things that certainly nearly everyone wishes would prevail in the world.

However, there seems to be a gap between these preachings and some of the actions that occur—and that is evidently an interest of Not in God's Name (an organization with a web site) and of mine.

Evidently—and this is a big part of the paradox—and as the program finds, the sacred scriptures of the main religions in India—the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita (Hinduism), the Old Testament, and the words of Jesus in the New Testament--can also be found to speak of conflict and war.

Either we have a paradox or things are changing. India has a 7,000-year-long tradition of multiple religions co-existing and usually tolerating one another pretty well. However, when India was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947, 1 million people migrated—Muslims leaving India for Pakistan and Hindus leaving Pakistan for India. And—sometimes literally along the way—some 2 million people were killed.

India and Pakistan have been hostile to one another and more recently have been developing missiles and atomic weapons (undoubtedly aimed at one another). Indian missiles are given the names of Hindu gods. The Pakistanis call their weapon "The Islamic Bomb." I can't help being reminded of the Old Testament which depicts, of course, its own age, which was a world of neighboring yet warring tribes, each with their own god. The victorious tribe was thought to be the one with the stronger god, so a war between tribes was a war that would determine who had the stronger—or the correct—god.

The program, and the organization that produced it, are as fascinated (or repulsed) as I am by this contradiction or paradox, and mostly spends its hour exploring it. I am not sure any definitive or satisfying answer was found; but some worthwhile ideas were that politics and territorial aggression can overtake the ideas of peace and brotherhood. One example: for years India and Pakistan have been warring continually if not continuously over the disputed border province of Kashmir.

One person who speaks on camera says that tolerance is not enough. More than that is needed. People may feel, "Okay, I will tolerate your ideas but basically you are wrong because my religion is superior, and/or we have the correct path to god." What is needed, the program says, is for people to recognize that every religion is a valid path to the divine and deserves not just a grudging tolerance but respect as equally worthy.

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein

Should the Sins of the Fathers Be Visited on the Children?

News today has it that Bernie Madoff's son committed suicide. That raises the interesting, perennial question, Should the sins of the fathers be visited on the children?

I used to live in a Chicago suburb (after a moment's though I decided against naming it) that was famous (or infamous) for being home to two or three big Mafia figures. One of my neighbors talked about going to the local high school with the daughter of one of these guys. The neighbor said the Mafioso's daughter was pretty much shunned by her classmates. (You can read the latter's own story in her book Mafia Princess. Disclaimer: I haven't read it.) To me it's a very interesting discussion, whether it's fair or not to view such people as tainted by the lives or actions of their parents.

The great Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen wrote a play called Ghosts. This play revolves around a mother and her son—and the "ghost" of the dead husband and father. It turns out (spoiler alert!) that because the father had led a very dissolute and sexually promiscuous life, which his wife very assiduously covered up, the son at the end of the play is starting to show dementia due to the syphilis that he inherited from his father. So that is an instance where in a very literal and physical way, the sins of the father were visited upon the children (but it seems the wife and mother deserves a good deal of blame for completely whitewashing her husband's memory).

I think it's an interesting issue. I think the Old Testament says that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, but that may seem very harsh to us nowadays.

Copyright © 2010 by Richard Stein