Miscegenation used to be just as illegal, shocking and outrageous and in many circles even MORESO!!!

Watch Showboat.

"Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve the seed of our father."

After God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah, and turns Lot's wife into a pillar of salt, Lot and his daughters have drinks and do the work of continuing his lineage.

Genesis also tells us that before the Fall, the Garden of Eden contained all animals, but none ate flesh. Even the tigers, I guess, where vegans.

I bring this up not to mock Christianity (though I'm kind of agnostic, I think there's all kinds of wisdom in many spiritual systems), but to point out that there are dangers in insisting upong a strict literalist interpretation of something written when people still thought the earth was flat.

No discussion of homophobia is complete without a mention of the research of American psychologist Henry E. Adams who found that 80% of homophobic men exhibited signs of homosexual arousal. Applying "penile plethysmography" (the measurement of penile circumference) to subjects watching homosexual acts, Adams found that homophobes exhibited a several-fold larger increase in circumference compared to non-homophobes:

http://www.oogachaga.com/downloads/homophobia_and_homosexual_arousal.pdf

We need to remind the homophobes, very publicly and frequently, that they are probably gay (or bi) until these idiots shut up and let others live their lives the way they choose.

From South Pacific...

"You've got to be taught

To hate and fear,

You've got to be taught

From year to year,

It's got to be drummed

In your dear little ear

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught to be afraid

Of people whose eyes are oddly made,

And people whose skin is a different shade,

You've got to be carefully taught.

You've got to be taught before it's too late,

Before you are six or seven or eight,

To hate all the people your relatives hate,

You've got to be carefully taught!"

Here's the way homophobia is created. First a child is taught in ways too pervasive and difficult to count that being a "fag" is the worst, most slimy, most disgusting thing he could ever be. But as so many children will be naturally affectionate with their own male friends, when puberty arrives and the seven testosterone rushes their bodies provide cause unpredictable and uncontrollable sexual arousal, coupled with a hair trigger on arousal at any time of physical closeness with another, the natural affection so easy and harmless at an earlier time, now inevitably results in an experience where such easy affection with male friends suddenly seems to result in sexual arousal.

This experience, coupled with the previous negative lessons regarding being gay result in a deeply-programmed phobic response to anything having to do with affectionate contact with other men, especially where that contact might be sexual in nature (in any form). This all-too-easily becomes completely generalized to anyone perceived to be less than masculine (including oneself). When the wounds of such an experience are too deep the result is that the possibility of any sexually satisfying experience are locked away, but can be released by chemical abuse. (Hence the joke about the difference between a straight redneck and a gay redneck being a twelve pack).

Since these forces are so pervasive in some areas of America (and other countries) we have the results we have: instead of seeing homosexual orientation as part of the natural variation of the human species (as it is in so many other species), we have myriad people terrified that they might be gay and reacting to the gayness of others in ways predicated on that terror.

The apostle Paul, in several of his letters, admonishes Christians to "kiss their brothers upon the lips." Why isn't good, honest, fraternal boy-kissing considered part of decent Christian behavior in America?

And whatever happened to the obligation of a man to father children by his widowed sister-in-law?

If the devout Christians of this country would truly live according to the dictates of Biblical Scripture ...

... well, it would certainly liven things up, that's for sure.

Kinda interesting that Anita Bryant had a gay son. I guess she added to the homosexual ranks herself.

Seriously if you called it something else, like special brownies (oh wait that's something else)...well any way, seriously it just needs another term besides sodomy or anal sex. Hell even butt sex sounds better.

Hire a branding firm or just make it up. It would be years before the nazi fundies figured out what it was.

"Watching Lawrence and Garner pleasure each other, those two officers must have understood at some level that they, too, could be entered and dominated"

And I think this heteroseuxal mindset has more to do with sexism than anything else. No gay man thinks that the bottom is by definition weak and vulnerable. Some may choose the play the role of submissive in life or during sex, but the simple fact that you like being penetrated doesn't force that role on you. Perhaps if heterosexuals stop thinking of sex as women submitting to male dominance they would be less homophobic and also enjoy sex more.

Yup.

The first time I visited Greece was with a bunch of American high school and college kids, shaped, as I had been, by American attitudes toward physical affection and personal space.

The looks of horror on those kids faces when they first encountered the very physical (non-sexual) closeness of their Greek contemporaries were priceless. One young man in particular just about laid an egg when he observed a group of young Greek men hugging, putting their arms around each other, and being unabashedly affectionate with their friends.

How pathetic we are, and how cursed by those damn pilgrims, religious extremists whose bizarre attitudes toward sexuality haunt us to this day.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Nice letters, otherwise.

But 25% of people in NYC have herpes.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy

ye have heard that it hat been said, An eye for and eye, and a tooth for a tooth; But I say unto you, That resist not evil: but whoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also

...but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you....

...judge not that ye be not judged...

and why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes or thorns, or figs of thistles?