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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > The broad topic of religion interests me
The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62767] Fri, 25 June 2010 15:00 Go to next message
timmy

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Not individual religions, not anyone's faith in some deity, but religion itself.

I'd like you to consider, for a moment, whether any organisation except a religion really cares to prescribe what you may and may not do with your genitals.

The god of the Bonobos doesn't care. They can do what they want and with which other Bonobo they want.

Religions, with or without deities, seem to me to seek to control what you do with your life, including your own body. And they seek to control your attitude to so many things sexual.

Ask yourself if we would truly have homophobia without religions.

Ask yourself how many people have been killed because of religions

Ask yourself how many gay kids have been bullied, killed (Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc), or have killed themselves because of religions.

[Updated on: Fri, 25 June 2010 15:01]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62768 is a reply to message #62767] Fri, 25 June 2010 18:25 Go to previous messageGo to next message
saben is currently offline  saben

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The Communist Party of the Soviet Union cared. The Nazi Party in Germany cared.

It's hard to separate the behaviours of states from Victorian influenced Christianity though. Few countries had laws against homosexuality until Britain (and other Western nations) spread such laws throughout their Empire(s).

It's especially hard to talk about historical views of homosexuality, because homosexuality as a single identity is a recent phenomena. Historically different cultures have conceived of sexuality in different ways. Some cultures, like the Greek culture permitted a particular type of same-sex love and sex, but were more prescriptive in gender performance. Other cultures like Thai allowed for a wider range of gender performance and based notions of sexuality on "third gender".

Christianity hasn't always opposed homosexuality, though. Most cultures embraced different forms of non-hetereo, non-masculine performative behaviour. It's hard to try and separate the cultures and the religions involved, though. I'd say culture, society and state all end up as more important than religions, though.

Government likes to control how people have sex. They do that through religion. Religion itself is less interested, unless the people involved in that religion have aspirations to power like they often do in prescriptive theistic religions.



Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62769 is a reply to message #62768] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:00 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

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In what manner are the two political groups you mention not religions?

Each had fanatical adherents with fervour and zeal.

And each inherited its control of genitals from christian and other roots.



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62770 is a reply to message #62767] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:11 Go to previous messageGo to next message
acam is currently offline  acam

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Dear Timmy,
Here are my answers to your questions:
whether any organisation except a religion really cares to prescribe what you may and may not do with your genitals.
House of commons? House of Lords? But only because some members of those houses adhere to a religion.

The god of the Bonobos doesn't care. They can do what they want and with which other Bonobo they want.
I question the premise. The bonobos have no god. I think a god is impossible without words.

Religions, with or without deities, seem to me to seek to control what you do with your life, including your own body. And they seek to control your attitude to so many things sexual.
Yes, I agree completely.

Ask yourself if we would truly have homophobia without religions.
I believe we would not.
But I admit some doubt. We fear what we find unusual and what we aren't used to and that has led to racism. It might lead to homophobia in the absence of religion.

Ask yourself how many people have been killed because of religions
Ask yourself how many gay kids have been bullied, killed (Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc), or have killed themselves because of religions.
Not just gay ones either. The chances are that most of the jews killed in the holocaust were straight and the same goes for those killed in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan and even the Falklands.

In general I think your theory is correct, Tim.
Love,
Anthony
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62771 is a reply to message #62768] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:17 Go to previous messageGo to next message
acam is currently offline  acam

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When you write:
"Government likes to control how people have sex. They do that through religion. Religion itself is less interested, unless the people involved in that religion have aspirations to power like they often do in prescriptive theistic religions."
Saben.
What evidence have you that it is 'governments' rather than 'religions' that like to do the controlling?

I think that in the absence of religion governments would not 'like' to control how people have sex.

I wonder, though.
Love,
Anthony
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62772 is a reply to message #62771] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
saben is currently offline  saben

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As timmy kind of points out, deep ideology ends up becoming religious-like in nature. Governments without a Christian morality to impose would still impose other behavioural norms.

Deep greens have sought to control reproductive behaviour throughout history, advocating sterilisation as a means of population control. Most green advocates are not working within a religious paradigm.

Religions are manipulated to say what those in charge of government want the religions to say, historically. Buddhism has not been opposed to homosexuality except when the governments of Buddhist countries have wanted it to be.



Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62773 is a reply to message #62769] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:54 Go to previous messageGo to next message
saben is currently offline  saben

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If we seek to redefine religion as any set of beliefs that encourages group-think, discourages individual and promotes controlled behaviour then almost by definition "religion" will care about sexuality.

I thought we were using religion in the sense of mythical/ supernatural belief systems, however. By your definition "democracy", "capitalism", "environmentalism" could all be called religions.

These ideologies on the fringes all have fanatical adherents and the ideas are held as articles of faith rather than rational discourse. But I think "religion" begins partially to lose its meaning when applied so broadly.



Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62774 is a reply to message #62767] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
NW is currently offline  NW

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timmy wrote:
(snip)
>
> I'd like you to consider, for a moment, whether any organisation except a religion really cares to prescribe what you may and may not do with your genitals.

Two examples spring to mind:
the eugenics movement including forcible sterilisation of the "unfit" (the last case of which seems to have been well within my lifetime: 1978, in the state of Oregon - the law was finally repealed in 1983)
the "one child" prescription in China, which in the absence of reliable birth control methods in many areas effectively represented a ban on intercourse.

(snip)
> Religions, with or without deities, seem to me to seek to control what you do with your life, including your own body. And they seek to control your attitude to so many things sexual.
Well, it's true that almost all religions expect people to apply the same ethical standards to one's sexual conduct as to the rest of one's life - honesty, transparency, care for the other person, but so does almost any philosophy of life. Some religions - or sects of religions - have particular taboos, of course ... but so do many groups which are emphatically not religious (the attitude to batty-boys on the streets round here is desperately intolerant, though white gay men are seen as acceptable for some reason)
>
> Ask yourself if we would truly have homophobia without religions.
The aggressively secular Communist states of the USSR and China, and their successors, are hardly examples of atheistic tolerance.
>
> Ask yourself how many people have been killed because of religions
Lots. But the second world war was not primarily religious, the appalling massacres under Pol Pot in Cambodia certainly weren't, neither was the "cultural revolution" in China, nor the Stalinist purges in the USSR ... because of the rapid increase in human population in the 20th Century, a strong argument can be made that the total number of humans killed by/for religious causes is outnumbered by those killed for fundamentally non-religious reasons (I consider the jury still out on this one).
>
> Ask yourself how many gay kids have been bullied, killed (Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc), or have killed themselves because of religions.
Far too many, of course. But how many have been helped by people who do hold some kind of religious perspective? I've no idea, but it bears thinking about.



"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62775 is a reply to message #62773] Fri, 25 June 2010 19:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
saben is currently offline  saben

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If we think of "religion" in the broader sense and talk about fundamentalist beliefs held with fanatical devotion then perhaps "religion" is inevitable.

Even amongst atheists I see very few people without faith. There are very few people that are willing to think rationally on EVERY issue. For most of us there are some things we hold as "self-evident truths" with the fervour of a zealot.

There are religions totally uninterested in sex, and ideologies totally uninterested. But in the absence of supernatural religion, there would still be some ideologies obsessed with some kind of sexual purity. At least that's my belief.



Look at this tree. I cannot make it blossom when it suits me nor make it bear fruit before its time [...] No matter what you do, that seed will grow to be a peach tree. You may wish for an apple or an orange, but you will get a peach.
Master Oogway
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62776 is a reply to message #62774] Fri, 25 June 2010 20:26 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

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That brings an interesting and different perspective.



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62777 is a reply to message #62767] Fri, 25 June 2010 20:28 Go to previous messageGo to next message
CallMePaul is currently offline  CallMePaul

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Human communities of the earliest times started out as hunter/gatherers. Later on an agrarian society was adopted as people learned to farm. These periods incorporated most of civilization's history until the fairly recent Industrial Revolution. One thing that seems prevalent among agrarian societies, and we would assume earlier periods as well, is their attitudes towards reproduction. The needs of agricultural/pastoral living require reproduction not only to work the farm but also to provide support for the parent in old age. So it was expected that no matter what one's affectional preferences were that each individual would marry and reproduce. There was a societal need to expand populations in order to increase wealth and provide for defense. Even ancient Greece, with its looser restrictions on same sex behavior, expected its citizens to marry and reproduce.

I don't believe the major religions set the standards for sexual behavior so much as they adopted the social norms of their times and codified them. Would there have been prohibitions against homosexuality even if the Christian or Muslim religions had not come into being? From the above it would seem very likely.



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Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62778 is a reply to message #62773] Fri, 25 June 2010 20:29 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

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I tended towards the non secular, but I was happily unspecific.

A religion is simply a belief system of many, managed by those who manage such things.



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: The broad topic of religion interests me  [message #62779 is a reply to message #62777] Fri, 25 June 2010 20:30 Go to previous message
timmy

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Location: UK, in Devon
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Marry?



Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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