[RC] About Religion and Homosexuality

[Avesland at aol.com]

Eric :
What about the well being of the individual ? An  individual may
survive as a homosexual  -or pederast, or  etc- yet damage his or her
personality, subconsciousness, self image, and  still other things.
Then there is the family. I really fail to see  where homosexuality does
any family the least positive good, and can see  with real clarity that
the usual outcome is  negative.
 
Let me put it this way, another point that has  already been made, but
that got lost in the  shuffle.
 
Some things are "prior" to others, viz, more  foundational in any
considerations of right and wrong , good and  evil, or value vs loss.
 
Take a (hopefully) ridiculous example. Would a  liberation movement
for schizophrenics make the least sense ?  Setting aside the views of
people like Thomas Szasz, whom I do respect but  who I regard as
terribly wrong on this point, people who somehow  think that there
is no such thing as mental illness, consensus in  the psychology
professions, overwhelmingly, is that there are,  indeed, a variety
of psychological disorders. Each ought to be  treated therapeutically
so that these afflictions can be made to go away  and those effected
can live good lives free from disfunctional  personality traits,
phobias, paranoid delusions, and still other bad  things.
 
My view, based on about 5 years of research that  I never wanted
to carry out in the first place, is that there  is no real question that
homosexuality is a mental illness /disorder. It  belongs in the same
category as schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsion  disorder, etc, 
or  a number of psychological  maladies.
 
The American Psychiatric Association does not  think so, of course,
but there is an entire body of critical research  on that organization
which calls into question the motives of its  leadership in removing
homosexuality from its list of  disorders  (in the DSM).
 
That is, there are numerous professionals who  object to the APA
conclusions, there are important organizations  that object, and just
about all of the evidence that I have  examined on the subject tells
me that the preponderance of the weight of that  evidence says that
this is, indeed, a  psychopathology.
 
There seem to be  NO advocates of  "homosexual rights" who have examined
this body of evidence. There are virtually no  political leaders who 
have done ANY serious research on this issue.  The entire case being
made about so-called due "rights" is founded on  abysmal ignorance
and does not pass any valid truth test that I  have ever heard of.
 
The mentally ill have no "right" to their  illness. Society has the
responsibility to help such people to overcome  their illness, just as
society has a moral obligation to  help  all sick people that it 
reasonably can help.
 
Religion ? What we are witnessing, in the  movement to normalize
homosexuality , is nothing less than a secular  version of a religion.
Everything being said is said on grounds of  belief, nothing else. There
is no research anywhere to be seen. There is no  appeal to scientific
evidence  (not to any that matters;  homosexuals have their own
so-called scientists, all    -all-  of whose findings have been refuted,
not by Evangelicals, but by bona fide  scientists). And the whole
shooting match is an example of uninformed  opinion driving the
issue. 
 
About actual religion, while the foundation of  my case is psychological
(largely psychoanalytic), since religious views  of many kinds 
substantially are in agreement, I make the most  of those views .
Others may start with religious views but that  has merits , for it
must mean something that in the 20 books of the  Bible, each time
the subject comes up, homosexual conduct is  unequivocally
condemned. And it must mean something that in  just about all
of the world's "great religions" homosexuality  is regarded as
one of the worst forms of behavior  imaginable.This is true with
respect to Zoroastrianism, Judaism in all  traditional forms, 
then Bahai Faith, Buddhism, most if not all  forms of Hinduism,
and still other faiths.
 
Including Deism. Thomas Jefferson, while he was  gov of Virginia,
wrote that state's anti-sodomy law, a law that  mandated the
death penalty for homosexual  conduct.
 
The entire "homosexual rights" movement is an  enormous mistake.
 
Does this explain things  ?                                                
 
Billy
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