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Homosexuality and bullying
riverflow
Veteran
I probably shouldn't even bother, but yes, I just had to say my own piece on this silly Phil Robertson "controversy." (incidentally, back in 1990, I was baptized in the church he attends, White's Ferry Road Church of Christ LOL) Actually, I would say that this ties in with Right Speech. So I posted this on Facebook (foolish me):
When a group of people endorses the demonizing of a group for who they are by appealing to a (presumed) Absolute, an environment of self-loathing is promoted by a society. All the more so when it is broadcast by a public figure. To be clear: I am speaking not merely of the criticism of ideas or beliefs but the demonizing of people for who they are. It is no wonder why LGBT youth suicide rates are so high.
Labeling this as "political correctness," or "people merely having their feelings hurt," claiming that "the Bible says so"or that "God hates the sin but loves the sinner" are all evasions the heart of the matter: the reinforcement of an environment of sexual shame causing deep and often irreparable harm. School bullying plays a huge role in this. After enduring this day after day, who wouldn't feel suicidal and full of self-loathing?
I know this experience all too well myself-- I'm not gay, but I do know what it's like to be an outsider in other respects and the negative effects that can have on a young person. I flunked the eighth grade from missing too much school because I couldn't face the humiliation and physical threats (and, like most bullied children, I was too afraid to tell my own parents of my situation). I was hounded every single day. Even the nerds picked on me.
How much worse it must be for a teen who is gay, trying to make sense of their own sexuality among many other things, where even the adults (usually unintentionally) reinforce a culture of bullying, giving children license to bully? How much more difficult to be a teenager who is lumped in with murderers and "God-haters," defined as a person worthy of eternal punishment by virtue of who you are?
Imagine living like that every day. How would that affect your mindset as a teenager? And how would that carry over into your adult life? There are real life consequences to spreading and sustaining these kinds of deeply harmful memes-- no different than racism, anti-semitism, sexism, or anti-Christian bigotry.
No one should be bullied for who they are. Of course, bullying can never be eliminated entirely. But we adults should not continue reinforce negative stereotypes for our children. Yes, we have freedom of speech (a collective political issue), but that doesn't mean we are not also responsible for our speech (an individual moral issue). We all bear some measure of responsibility for the discourse in which we participate, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. That's why such ideas SHOULD be criticized. I would never want my child to grow up in that kind of world. Why would ANY adult want that for their child? We can do better than that, can't we?
"You must work—we all must work—to make this world worthy of its children." ~ Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows
When a group of people endorses the demonizing of a group for who they are by appealing to a (presumed) Absolute, an environment of self-loathing is promoted by a society. All the more so when it is broadcast by a public figure. To be clear: I am speaking not merely of the criticism of ideas or beliefs but the demonizing of people for who they are. It is no wonder why LGBT youth suicide rates are so high.
Labeling this as "political correctness," or "people merely having their feelings hurt," claiming that "the Bible says so"or that "God hates the sin but loves the sinner" are all evasions the heart of the matter: the reinforcement of an environment of sexual shame causing deep and often irreparable harm. School bullying plays a huge role in this. After enduring this day after day, who wouldn't feel suicidal and full of self-loathing?
I know this experience all too well myself-- I'm not gay, but I do know what it's like to be an outsider in other respects and the negative effects that can have on a young person. I flunked the eighth grade from missing too much school because I couldn't face the humiliation and physical threats (and, like most bullied children, I was too afraid to tell my own parents of my situation). I was hounded every single day. Even the nerds picked on me.
How much worse it must be for a teen who is gay, trying to make sense of their own sexuality among many other things, where even the adults (usually unintentionally) reinforce a culture of bullying, giving children license to bully? How much more difficult to be a teenager who is lumped in with murderers and "God-haters," defined as a person worthy of eternal punishment by virtue of who you are?
Imagine living like that every day. How would that affect your mindset as a teenager? And how would that carry over into your adult life? There are real life consequences to spreading and sustaining these kinds of deeply harmful memes-- no different than racism, anti-semitism, sexism, or anti-Christian bigotry.
No one should be bullied for who they are. Of course, bullying can never be eliminated entirely. But we adults should not continue reinforce negative stereotypes for our children. Yes, we have freedom of speech (a collective political issue), but that doesn't mean we are not also responsible for our speech (an individual moral issue). We all bear some measure of responsibility for the discourse in which we participate, whether we want to acknowledge it or not. That's why such ideas SHOULD be criticized. I would never want my child to grow up in that kind of world. Why would ANY adult want that for their child? We can do better than that, can't we?
"You must work—we all must work—to make this world worthy of its children." ~ Pablo Casals, Joys and Sorrows
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Comments
But there seems to be an opinion growing in the US that free speech means there are no consequences. Yet, those consequences are also free speech.
(as Chris Hitchens used to say before he was taken by the Gay Flying Spaghetti Monster),
Be Kind (otherwise Baby Jesus will cry)
love you neighbour (even if bullying busy bodhis)
go that extra mile (as the New Agers for a rainbowed world tell us)
and stop bullying yourself (as the homophobes gone straight try so desperately to do)
Some people are GAY, some people are [insert other of preferred rejection]
Get over it.
There is no 'they'. We are they.
. . . and now back to the bullying closet . . .
:orange:
Gassho
And everyone here should already know that Russia is openly staging a pogrom of gays and their laws are currently locking people up if you even make a comment about the rights of gay people, because that's "promoting the gay lifestyle". All this was pushed by the Russian Orthodox church. Oh, and there is so much money invested in the Olympics by big business that no nation including our own is even mentioning a boycott. Instead, we've cowardly accepted the assurance that our visiting gay athletes will be exempt as long as they don't make trouble.
And of course we won't even mention the Muslim world where being gay is an automatic death sentence under their religious laws.
Last, don't think the rights of gays here in the USA is guaranteed. Let the Republicans with their Fundamentalist Christian warriors gain control again, and all those marriages and rights will be swiftly eliminated again.
As a high school student, I was shy and a bookworm and hated sports and word went around that I was queer. I wasn't, just extremely shy and didn't know how to fit in or even approach a girl for a date, but when did that ever make a difference? So yes, I received my share of being bullied. Since I already had a horrible home life, that meant at times I was depressed enough to consider killing myself. It never got that far and I eventually escaped from that miserable environment.
What amazes me now is that a large percentage of today's children not only don't care if someone is gay, they openly defend the rights of gay people. Currently an entire Catholic school is protesting the firing of an assistant principal for getting a same sex marriage.
I'm also not shy, and was never bullied for being shy. But shy people do get bullied. In fact, anyone "different" is potentially subject to being bullied. It's an unfortunate human tendency. As an advanced society, we must prevent such barbaric mob action. Not diminish it, prevent it. It's cruel, and has absolutely zero upside.
This is what a lot of people don't understand about vaccinations: Someone can carry a virus and not show symptoms of carrying it, and may remain unaffected by it (Phil Robertson). But it can nevertheless be transmitted to others who will be affected by it. We can plainly see someone has it who shows the symptoms-- and we know to avoid that person (Fred Phelps). The problem is there are people who are opposed to the vaccination and therefore participate in spreading it.
So yes, it's the endorsement and propagation of a meme that is harmful-- and the lack of awareness of the broader consequences of it. One does not have to hate a group of people, one only has to remain oblivious (in bad faith) to the harm one causes in their bigotry.
Fred Phelps is an obvious case-- I live in Arkansas and I know no one here in that supports him. But almost everyone I know at the hospital where I work support Robertson (I can literally count the others on one hand) -- not his right to free speech, but his views. They are good people, and I get along with them all quite well. I would do anything I could to help them (and have). But they really don't understand the meme they are propagating, endorsing, supporting, and reinforcing.
"Inability to think is not stupidity; it can be found in highly intelligent people, and wickedness is hardly its cause, if only because thoughtlessness as well as stupidity are much more frequent phenomena than wickedness. The trouble is precisely that no wicked heart, a relatively rare phenomenon, is necessary to cause great evil." ~ Hannah Arendt, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," from Responsibility and Judgment
Hopefully in 10,.20 yrs it won't even be a discussion
That quote from Hannah Arendt is also beautiful in it's 'truth'. I need to check this lady philosopher out more than I have (MORE reading material???? Already I'll have to put the current list in my will).
I guess impressing upon these kindly but ignorant folks the point in Martin Luther King's quote: will get bogged down in some definition of 'evil' or another. Moral development does not appear to be a goal of modern Christianity. What is 'evil' is listed in the cookbook, and that's that. The person is collapsed into their 'evil' and the Christian's responsibility and concern ends. The 'evil' separates that person from persons worthy of concern and responsibility.
***This is only true in many American Christians, or fundamentalists. Jesus taught the exact opposite of this***
Defending the 'personhood' of homosexuals equals defending the evil, I guess. And what would fellow Christians say? They might say you are NOT a good Christian, or a Christian at all. That is a terrifying place to be, it's a threat to your immortal soul.
If the choice comes down to refusing to propagate a dangerous meme OR having the state of your immortal soul threatened, what choice is there?
My sister's story is a 'happy ending' in this case. She gave birth to five daughters, and has been a Southern Baptist Christian for the last twenty or so years. A year and a half ago, her next youngest announced he was NOT a girl. Six months later, her oldest announced she was a lesbian. My sister cherishes her children more than a Christian assertion about the state of her immortal soul. She left the church and is going to nursing school to become a pediatric nurse practitioner, hoping to specialize in gender and sexuality issues. She didn't share what must have been a long period of spiritual agony with her heathen sister (dangit). I sure do want to worship her sometimes, though
Gassho
But she moved to Dallas and was in the fashion industry, did a lot of traveling and met all kinds of people from different religious, racial and sexual backgrounds. Two of her very best friends was a gay couple. The abstract ideology dissolved in the face of concrete experience.
(But we were also both raised in a left of center Catholic family that rarely attended mass-- I know that was an influence too)
Rural areas tend to be far more homogenous and conformity is expected. It may not be explicitly stated, but oh, it is certainly expected. I have countless stories that all of my family endured when we moved from Baton Rouge to Monroe.
As for myself, even in the Church of Christ I never could accept what Phil Robertson accepts. Again, it was because of experience. I was majoring in music composition at that time of my life and was deeply in love with classical music. I soon discovered that Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Benjamin Britten, Ned Rorem, and many other heroes of mine were gay or bisexual:
Samuel Barber and Leonard Bernstein, "makers of evil"?
At age 20, that was enough to convince me that I could not accept such a belief. I tried to accept it, but couldn't (I felt guilty because of that too, though I certainly told no one about my doubts).
Exposure to concrete experience can be stronger than adherence to an abstract ideology if the conditions are ripe. That's why desegregation was so strongly opposed. Bigotry stands and falls on abstraction-- anything beyond that could send the whole thing crumbling down.
I thought of that MLK quote too @Hamsaka -- Hannah Arendt is a hero of mine. Just this year a film was made by her, but I'd recommend reading Eichmann in Jerusalem first to get a better context for the film. Her book Responsibility and Judgement is a good collection of essays also. There are important lessons to be learned in her writings for sure!
Years ago, my sister sold an old console radio on Craigslist. Two gentlemen arrived from Portland (a two and a half hour drive). Apparently they 'sounded gay' on the phone to my sister, and she was in a complete dither the hour before they arrived. I was living with her at the time, so I got to see homophobia in action -- she was nervous and fearful of having to deal with two guys she was pretty sure were gay, like they were going to knock on the door and attack. I admit I was not feeling the love, and thoroughly enjoyed watching her manner and facial expressions change during the transaction (they were indeed a gay couple). They had her laughing and joking back about a couple of other antique pieces she refused to sell to them. It kind of made me queasy, afterward, as I listened to her explain to ME that they were just regular people after all, but I'm sure listening to her sympathetically built some character I lacked, somewhere.
Gassho
Of course, what isn't humorous is people using a public forum to reinforce the cultural acceptability of prejudice. This type of thing only acts as a propellant for the flames of discrimination and even violent hate crime
No matter how well meaning, please do not speak for all gay people
I doubt anyone here is trying to speak for all gay people.
Might want to turn the burner down a little bit, I think I'm starting to smell just a little bit of smoke.
putting special attention on their color. Isn't that just another type of prejudice? And, isn't that a type of persecution in itself?
It's like saying I'm sorry you are a zebra and you have this terrible handicap but I don't hold it against you because I'm enlightened.
Furthermore because I understand that zebras are deficient I will make special allowance for your zebraness and make sure that there is plenty of paint around so you can hide your stripes if you might kinda like, not want to appear so you know-stripy.
Where is the Buddha in that Mandala. We all have perfect Buddha nature-except the zebras-of course. Buddha Fields to you all.
@Dennis1 I'm sorry, but I really don't have a clue as to your point. I don't want to twist your words, so I'd like you to clarify. Is your point that in a perfect world, differences such as skin color, sexual preference, religious differences, or different cultures should be as relevant to how we treat each other as different color eyes? I certainly can't argue with that. Is it that we should accept people the way they are, including the haters and racists and bigots among us? I would argue against that attitude because it's making a false equivalence.
This is not a perfect world, and nobody can argue against that either. Trying to point out an injustice and provide some relief from the hurt that bigots dish out to minorities means giving special attention to the differences and to the hurtful words and behavior that some people exhibit. The fact that someone has a dark skin or is Muslim or is gay might not mean anything to you, but it certainly means something to the bigots and it definitely means something to the minority being told they're less than "normal" people. As long as there are people and even institutions out there that use skin color or sexual preference to discriminate, then we have a duty to not accept the bigot's speech and behavior as "Oh, he's just being a bigot. Ignore him."
In this context, I think bisexuals are intriguing. They don't seem to have a yuck either way, so I might retract the "we all have a Yuck" because I can't really know. I can only suspect.
Best include a substantial portion of fantasy and delusion to keep it interesting.
Isn't that comment pretty ignorant and hateful in and of itself?
Are you Ignorant of History ?
I believe that one should have autonomy over ones body and sexual preferences. I am heterosexual but this just seems like common sense to me.
Notice how 'quiet' (at least in the loudest media) the REST of the unbigoted Christians and Islam, as a whole, have been, regarding their distinctive sorts of bigotry making the front page. I don't exactly hear the REST of those being over-generalized about taking public exception to the bigoted behavior of the 'some'.
I'll leave off quoting MLK about the tragedy of those who stay silent. Therefore, in that light, I'm going to include all the non-bigots afraid of being called a bad Christian or Muslim (or whatever keeps them silent) and repeat Caz's statement above.
ALL Christians and Muslims who identify themselves as such ought to feel accountable for their brethren, I do believe they are admonished to by their sacred texts. I know Christians are exhorted to correct their wayward brethren in public and in private.
Slapping 'over-generalization' on a statement is a nice try to squish out its energy or distract the debate in a different (your) direction, but with all due respect to you, DaftChris, and you are a lovely person, logically it doesn't work here.
Gassho
It's like saying I'm sorry you are a zebra and you have this terrible handicap but I don't
----------------
hold it against you because I'm enlightened.
Furthermore because I understand that zebras are deficient I will make special allowance for your zebraness and make sure that there is plenty of paint around so you can hide your stripes if you might kinda like, not want to appear so you know-stripy.
I intended to understand the kind of viewpoint I am decrying. Apparently you also decry that view-so quit. People are people and persecution is persecution. We all have Buddha nature. So why are you following around mis-quoting me? Interesting fixation.
distinctly talk about homosexuality and its punishments in detail:[citation needed]
Male homosexuality[edit]
Sodomy (lavat) can in certain circumstances be a crime for which both partners can in theory be punished by death.
Christian fundamentalism as we see today is a very recent phenomena. In fact, less than 200 years old. In the 1800's, there were "great awakingings" which brought on the ideas of the Bible as being infallible and the inerrant literal word of God. Fundamentalism in America, one could argue, has only been around in it's current form since perhaps the early 70's. Early Christianity was more about ones relationship to God and how to apply it in ones life. It was seen as simply another facet in ones life and not everything was taken as literal as many do today. Current situations like Uganda and Russia are more political in nature. With Uganda having fundings and support from many American evangelical groups and the Russian Orthodox Church being used by Putin to gain a political scapegoat (Russia's LGBT population).
With Islam, one could argue that it was the rise of Wahhabism/Salafism which has affected much of Islam at large. Islamic art and literature has its own history of homoeroticism. And homosexuality was generally more tolerated during it's Age of Enlightenment than it is today.
The point is, both are very recent phenomena and the historical religions were not like how both are generally today. To say so is intellectually disingenuous and just shows your axe to grind with the Abrahamic religions.
Clear?
But the fact remains that people of non hetrosexual orientations have been particularly nastily persecuted throughout history both past and present, By Christian and Islamic theologies that deem Homosexuality a nasty perversion and Sin which has been punishable by torture, Mutilation, or even death.
Many hundred of thousands had to live in fear for their lives in times gone past because of these ideologies regarding human sexuality and likewise the same today many hundred of thousands across the globe face persecution primarily because of these two main Religions.
Again as I originally said I feel sad for those who have to live in these societies fearing this sort of persecution.
As, when and if he chooses.