General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Did you hate, fear or dislike gay people at one time? [View all]Bradical79
(4,490 posts)I was casualy homophobic as a young teen, though pretty ignorant of actual homosexual issues. It came down to an odd combination of thinking homosexual behavior was gross, but being on the fence as to how I should feel about that in regards to rights. Eventually I ended up going to church with a friend and my anti-gay stance became more defined as a weird hybrid of what the Bible and church had taught me, and the empathy I felt after seeing how homosexuals were treated.
Trying to make biblical teachings on sex, Jesus's teaching of the golden rule and judgement, what I'd learned of the constitution, and my own empathy all work together as a cohesive whole with this book I believed was holy leads to some strange conclusions. By the time I was in my early 20's I think I ended up with some kind of tenuous balance:
1. Felt it was an issue for the stares to decide, and supported civil unions myself (marriage was strictly a religious thing in my mind) since our constitution offered freedom of religion.
2. Marriage was only referred to as being between a man and woman as far as I could tell, and sexual activity outside of marriage was still considered a sin. Since homosexuals could not get married I felt it was wrong.
3. I also recognized being homosexual did not seem to be a concious choice, but God was all powerful, so I was one of those people who thought you could "pray the gay away". The idea of it being "gross" gradually went away and was replaced with sympathy. I also stopped feeling comfortable at church with my peers because of the casual ridicule of gay people among other things (like strong support for Bush for example). Leading up to this time awful words like "fag" and using "gay" to describe something bad or stupid were dropped from my everyday vocabulary.
Not entirely sure when I dropped all of that, but at some point in my late 20's after a lot of reading and studying in school (and independantly), I became more liberal before I dropped religion entirely.