Being gay is a fetish.

[emjay]

I'm not bi or gay, but I don't experience these feelings of revulsion and brain freezing panic that certain people obviously do when visualizing gay sex. I just think of it as what gays do, and what I would probably do if I was gay. I don't understand where all this fear and venom comes from. Obviously religion has to shoulder a lot of the blame, but I don't think it's all because of that. My parents for example aren't at all religious but are just really homophobic, so is one of my brothers. I don't get it.

I wouldn't think badly of someone if they found the idea of gay sex to be uncomfortable to think about, you can't help what mental reactions you have to things. But I don't understand this need to turn that feeling into aggression and fear. A lot of the language we've seen today clearly betrays the fear that the gays are going to "take over" or "infect everyone". Obviously there's a hell of a lot of ignorance going round, probably willful. It has to be in this day and age where information is so easily accessible.

I hope that as religion declines we'll see a similar decline in homophobia. I think in general it's still there, people just keep it hidden more. Whether it has actually gone down over time, I don't know. Probably. Thoughts?

I don't think it has that much to do with religion - religion just exacerbates people's existing prejudices and indeed since religion was written by man it gave voice to those prejudices in the first place. So in my opinion it is man, not religion per se that is responsible for homophobia, but religion just gives it 'justification' in believers eyes.


As to where those prejudices come from I think it comes down to some people (those inclined to bigotry) wanting a simple and predictable life: if the whole world is straight then everyone knows what their roles are and what to expect, but add a gay guy to the mix and somehow it fucks everything up; roles and expectations get skewed. Bigots are often against many minorities not just homosexuals and I think it's the same principle - they just reject anything that messes with their needs for an ordered and predictable world.