It is so weird to me that we now have a discussion over whether homophobia is nature or nurture.

[renie408]

I have been reading and participating in several threads discussing the root cause of the passing of Prop 8. To me it seems obvious that religion is largely the root of the anti-gay marriage movement. To others, they think that homophobia is a natural latent fear in heterosexuals. Personally, I think that is bullshit. Just like I believe that people ARE born homosexual or not, I DON'T believe that people are born homophobic. People are TRAINED to be homophobic and mostly they are trained that way in church.

Here is an article about how gay marriage is pretty much a non-issue in Holland. Why are the Dutch immune from this 'natural homophobia'? Gee, could it be because the Netherlands is one of the LEAST religious countries in Europe?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/04/world/main604084.shtml

Homophobia is a learned behavior. Religion contributes to homophobia, it isn't a 'reflection of social attitudes' as somebody here said. Neither of my kids are homophobic. We are atheists. That is a REALLY small sample, but my personal experience is that if you raise somebody to not focus on sexual preference, race or whatever; they grow up not even thinking about those things when they consider people.

Conversely, if you raise someone to believe that homosexuality is a sin and a perversion of God's will which condemns them to burn in everlasting hell, they tend to grow up homophobic. Go figure.

[begin_within]

1. It's nurture. Next question.

[renie408]

2. Which, you know, seems kind of obvious. But you wouldn't believe

how many people, in their efforts to defend religion, are saying that religion is just reflecting our natural homophobia.

[begin_within]

8. God hates religion - if you ask me - because religion is a poisoning of the mind.

God wants mankind to have "free will," according to some religions (Catholic, at least) and that means to me thinking and believing for yourself and not merely accepting doctrine or dogma from some goddamned religion.

[glowing]

3. Also, there is this big thing with men and masculinity...

Somehow being gay doesn't equate with masculinity. This societal stereotype needs to lesson.. In general, I think there is much more acceptance for lesbians in this country than gay men. And it starts early when a father says to a son, "don't cry, don't be a little girl or a sissy boy". Like crying somehow deminishes a man.

[renie408]

9. But I don't think even some 'manly man' who was raised the way you

are describing would necessarily be anti-gay marriage. He might not want anyone to see HIM as gay, but would not automatically care if somebody else was...without some indoctrination about homosexuality being sinful, wrong, perverse.

My husband told me last night that try as he might, he still gets a little creeped out when he sees a male gay couple being affectionate in public. He recognizes that it is just the way he was raised. He was raised to be tough, be a MAN; just like you are describing and he works against it. BUT...his family isn't religious. He is an atheist. He feels that someone else's sexuality is their business and if ANYBODY wants to get married, he cannot understand how it effects him or why he should care. That is the general attitude of every single non-religious person I know. EVERY ONE. But my religious friends? THAT is a different story.

[glowing]

19. That's how my husband is.

He doesn't care, knows gay people, but because of his upbringing... its just weird to him.. Personally, I'm weirded out about a lot of PDA.. holding hands and peck kissing.. ok.. but making out like you need a room, always disturbs me... I get a bit bashful when in a room with a lot of people and a romantic scene comes about on a movie... I love sex, will talk about it with any of my friends, but I don't like to watch or see other's make out.. It feels like I'm intruding in their private moment.

[Gman]

4. Of course it's learned behavior

just like racism is learned behavior. No one is born racist. No one is born homophobic.

[readmoreoften]

5. Well, people might be sociopaths and just choose to hate gay people because its acceptable.

[Jackpine Radical]

14. Since when do sociopaths concern themselves with acceptability?

And anyway, for the most part they're not haters--they're users.

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Doesn't anybody know about the old Adams study?

Here's the abstract. The whole paper is available online.

http://www.google.com/search?q=homophobia+adams&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?
Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, Jr., and Bethany A. Lohr
University of Georgia
The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who ad-
mitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homo-
phobic 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 homosex-
ual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also com-
pleted 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.

[renie408]

11. I won't show that to my husband. n/t

[begin_within]

15. I believe it.

Heterosexual men who are completely comfortable and secure in their sexuality seem to have little or no homophobia, at least in my experience. Heterosexual men who are homophobic sometimes have some underlying reason for it - maybe a small portion of themselves is gay, for example, they may be 90% straight and 10% gay, or even 95% straight - but that remaining 5% of them is something they've never dealt with or even accepted. They hate that part of themselves and fear it, and that's what fuels their homophobia, in addition to what their church forces them to believe. That's my theory anyway.

[Chovexani]

7. I'm with you except for trying to pin it entirely on religion

Sorry, but atheists don't get a pass on this. Atheists are just as capable of homophobia as any other group in America or anywhere else, and if you think I'm bullshitting you, you've clearly not been around right wing sci-fi fans.

[progdonkey]

16. though, isn't that still indirectly likely the fault of religion?

I think that many if not most of those sci-fi fans would be homophobic because they got teased and called fags by others who likely came from religious households. They're not homophobic because it's a sin, but because seeing gay people reminds them of the taunts that they couldn't get a girl, and they also make homophobic statements to try to identify with the people that called them fags for being geeks.

That is, they may personally not be religious, but because of abuse suffered at the hands of religious people, they have adopted the hatreds of those religious people.

[salvorhardin]

10. Why does it have to be one or the other?

It seems far more plausible to me to imagine the cause of Prop 8's passing was the religious right's exploitation of natural tribalistic tendencies of people to fear others? I doubt there's a natural latent fear of homosexuals by heterosexuals. If that were true we'd have less porn for heterosexual males involving lesbians. But people do naturally fear people different from their selves and the people they grew up around. Religion, and other cultural indoctrination, reinforces any natural fears and the religious right have become experts at manipulating voters based on fear and cultural mores and norms. So I would say neither religion nor an innate latent fear of homosexuals were causes for the passing of Prop 8. However, I think we can safely say that without politically motivated bigots fanning the flames of fear we would be living in a far more tolerant country.

[Recursion]

12. Why can't religion come out of the mindset?

You're assuming the mindset is produced by religion, but religious participation is more or less free in the entire western world now; I think we should at least consider the possibility that the religion is shaped by and reflects the mindset.

[LWolf]

13. Homophobia? nurture.

Human capacity for collecting in gangs and hating those who don't "belong" to the gang?

Nature.

It's a natural outcome of that human dependence on competition to sort out winners and losers.

To ensure survival of the tribe.

What do you think?

[jacksonian]

17. i'm not so sure i agree with the nurture argument entirely

i think we are all born bisexual, and at some point in the onset of puberty a direction is taken biologically. It is not a choice we make, we are compelled along a subconscious path. i am straight, and i know this because the uninvited sexual fantasies i have are nearly 100% about the opposite gender. This is not a strategic decision i made, it just happens. And the gay people i know work the same way within that orientation. History has shown us that, despite many erradication efforts that make prop 8 look positively enlightened, homosexuality has always been with us.

But at some level, we are still bi. And in being the humans that we are with our big brains, we doubt things, including our own biology. Who among us has not felt the need to be sexier, that our sexual quest for satisfaction is not good enough because of our bioogy, if only we were more something we would be something or get something? Doubt is human. Doubt of ourselves is the seed of homophobia.

So in that sense, homophobia is a human thing. You are right, people are not born homophobic, but it is the reality of the self and coming to terms with our changes that make it so. In the Netherlands example you are right the laws are tolerant,and the society at large has accepted that homosexuality exists, and it does prove that homophobia IS NOT destiny. Still, though, the people, when you talk to them, still have the fear of being failure in the club they want to be a part of.

It has always been my theory that people have the relationship between religion and homophobia wrong. Yes the churches validate and amplify the anti-gay message along with many other anti-sexuality messages. And that this is, in itself, a problem. But at its soul, it is the churches desperately cowtailing to our sexual insecurities as a path to remaining relevant to the masses that is the motivating cause, not that the population is some kind of empty vessel that religion fills with hate.

[fed_up_mother]

18. Evolutionary forces would imply that most are born heterosexual

[jacksonian]

20. of course, and most do emerge heterosexual in the process

that is the pattern. But humans are incredibly complex creatures and any attempt to equate human sexuality in all its forms with a purely reproductive agenda has to ignore ALOT. Since the process does indeed reproduce itself it is successful in Darwinian terms, what facets the working complex system has is not a pertinent evolutionary question, like the natural fact of male nipples.