Because the single sole source for the idea that gays do NOT have moral parity with
everybody else has uniformly been the priests.
My knowledge of cultural anthropology is, I freely admit, limited, but I believe that many other cultures -- African, South Pacific, Asian, South American -- with many other religions had similar proscriptions.
Also, we may differ somewhat here about the origins of religious taboos. Personally, I don't accept the concept that religious principles, taboos, and literature were given directly by God in the same form we now have them. Rather, I see religion as an evolving process involving the interaction of man and God. In many cases, I believe that societies reached certain levels of wisdom and enshrined those as religious tenents in order to remove them from daily discourse. I find great wisdom in many religious texts, but not absolute fidelity to the word of God.
If this is accurate, one primary role of priests, or witch doctors, or shamans, or whatever else you call them is to preserve cultural wisdom.
The question you don't address is why these proscriptions started in the first place. Were they based on nothing? It seems unlikely that so many cultures would have come to the same moral position based on nothingness.
I truly believe that a gay man cannot affect or control his sexual
nature. He CAN choose to be celibate, but he can never be reformed into an
honest heterosexual.
Here we will agree to disagree, at least for the time being. I continue to distinguish between characteristics and behaviors.
I truly believe that a gay man cannot affect or control his sexual
nature. He CAN choose to be celibate, but he can never be reformed into an
honest heterosexual. I think that the doctrine that homosexuality is a disorder is a
pseudoscientific way to justify religious precept. And suggesting that homosexuality
is a behavioral disorder - like drug abuse - is imo bigoted.
I wish you would go more into why you reject outright the comparison between homosexual behavior and drug abusing behavior. Why do you automatically assume that the latter is a behavioral disorder? Many cultures have been far more tolerant toward drug abuse than toward homosexuality. What makes something a behavioral disorder as opposed to a deeply ingrained state of being? What are your criteria for making the distinction?
would insist that society grant him moral parity.
I assume, then, that you believe homosexuals should be allowed to marry? |
