Bias statement: This post will largely consist of my own undiluted opinions which are not those of the LGBTQ community, & will quote at least one hate opinion.
There is an opinion current among the fundamentalist Christian community & others (this source is one I chose at random from a Google search):
'Homosexual marriage invites God's judgement. And so they have A.I.D.S. to deal with. And want us to pay for it through Obama's socialist healthcare law. This country needs to return to core Christian values.' Source
There are several issues here, all of which are begging me to get my teeth into, but of course being me I want to come at it from the other side. You see, kids, the people who first & foremost hate homosexuals & homosexuality are homosexuals themselves.
This is first & foremost seen in queer bashing, in whatever form it takes. Research repeatedly shows that men who hate homosexuals have responses that way themselves:
'The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.' Source
This is externalised hate of something you can't cope with in yourself. Also frequently you find gays hate themselves & their own homosexuality. Anyone who reads this blog will know that in my opinion this is found most frequently in aping the heterosexual world. At the moment this is obviously found in the push for gay marriage & equality. Let's make it plain why I think this is internalised self-hatred: I am not straight & see no reason why I should take the heterosexual world as normative. Sometimes gays are pushed into this by an apparent lack of contemporary or historical models for gay life nowadays, but I remain convinced that heterosexual life & society should *not* be the model for gay life.
Another example is the whole top/bottom thing. Radical feminist lesbians of the 1970s got this one sussed by refusing to be pushed into male/female models of sexuality. Gay men of the 21st century are falling for the self-hatred trap of modelling ourselves on heterosexual society. We can take a leaf out of the radical lesbians' book by not being polarised into male/female roles. Are you a top or a bottom? - Neither. This exchange changes the question rather than the answer. Gay sex also need not revolve around anal sex, I personally have always thought straight sex must be boring in the inevitability of its ending. I would also even question the subconscious motivations of those who maintain that penetration is in some way necessary to sex, to which everything else is a mere prelude.
This may seem to have moved far away from the way this post started, talking about G*d's judgement. But there's a marvellous twist in the tail to this story of self-hatred & the judgement of G*d. As we know HIV is passed through bodily fluids and mucuous membranes. And this is the bit where the queers get the last laugh: some of the more kinky sexual activities carry a much lower risk of transmission of HIV than vanilla anal sex, because there is less contact between risky bodily fluids and mucuous membranes. For example watersports & lots of bondage-type things are much lower risk. This is also the reason there are such low rates of HIV among lesbians, because they don't tend to do the sort of things that pass it.
This tickles me, needless to say. I don't often think I have a message of hope for the world, but I might have here. Leave the fundamentalist Christians to their conclusion that HIV is G*d's judgement on homosexuals & have different sorts of sex. Like that you can both love yourself & escape the so-called 'judgement of G*d'.
Can you hear laughter?
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