yovargas wrote:And when the Bible being the literal word of god is a core portion of your religious beliefs, as it is for many millions of Christians, then this is essentially telling people that they should be of different religion altogether, as I said earlier. I think saying "Your group of people should make a major, deeply fundamental change on your religious perspective so that my group of people is more socially accepted" is hugely problematic, and honestly fairly self-centered. It's hugely unfair of me to ask "them" to make major considerations of what my sexuality means to me if I am unwilling to make any considerations for what belief in the Bible means to "them".
Where the price of adhering to a specific irrational religious belief is to marginalize a group of people, including people raised within the faith in question who are brought up to believe they are "less than," I have no problem with demanding the major, deeply fundamental change necessary to rectify this discrimination. As a different example, I'd cite the exclusion of women from the priesthood/ministry of various Christian denominations, which is commonly claimed to be Biblically grounded (as the Catholics explained it to me as a kid, the church is modeled on Jesus' selection of disciples, who are deemed to be all male.) This "belief" that women cannot be religious leaders on equal terms with men - and in a position of religious authority over the men in their church - is vastly harmful to women in the churches in question. Even if I could excuse the harm to the adult women on the grounds that they are choosing to remain within a discriminatory environment, it is absolutely inexcusable to expose young children to such gender discrimination, thus causing them to learn exclusion of women is acceptable and religiously-sanctioned. I have absolutely no problem with saying that the irrational exclusion of women from the priesthood/ministry must end. Perhaps more importantly, had other women not demanded such changes of their denominations - had they instead meekly deferred to the sexist setups created by men - no denomination of Christianity (or Judaism) would enjoy a priesthood/ministry/rabbinate with gender equality today. Deference to prejudice - on the grounds that that prejudice has been termed a "religious belief" - only enshrines an unjust status quo.
For me, this same reasoning applies to sexual orientation, but the gender analogy is instructive for another reason. You are establishing a false dichotomy between the gay community and the community of conservative Christians with the your people/my people argument. Indeed, as the story to which you linked showcases, there is overlap between the groups - and where the homophobia of conservative Christians becomes most problematic is vis-a-vis the gay members of their congregations, especially the youth who may not be able to leave easily or freely. For the rest of us, I agree with Frelga that the problem is limited to these groups trying to make recognition of same-sex relationships illegal. But their beliefs are problematic and will be in need of change even once we have legal equality, because there is no way for them to profess those beliefs without doing extreme harm to gay youth who are raised within their congregations.
(NB In saying that these beliefs are problematic and in need of change, I am not violating anyone's First Amendment right to religious freedom, i.e., I am not urging that the government should intervene. I am merely exercising my own First Amendment right to free speech. These congregations have a legal right to speak against homosexuality - but not to do so without facing criticism.)
grammar edit
But part of my point was that some straight women see an advantage to being with a woman because they feel that the gendered expectations of traditional heterosexual relationships disadvantage them as women. The idea is that a F/F relationship has the potential to be more egalitarian without traditional gender role expectations. Because straight men are advantaged by those expectations, there would be no reason for them to see a M/M relationship as an opportunity to escape them.
