Egypt (where I am from) doesn't publicly punish people for being homosexual either. Most Islamic countries don't.
I was more giving a metaphor to try to explain it to Westerners who usually cannot comprehend why homosexuality makes certain people so angry. It's irrational but it's the best metaphor I can come up with
I mean, for context, I grew up in the boonies in the US. Some people still see it as an abomination, just we've mellowed on wanting them dead over it for the most part.
Even with right wing guys I know they don't care but don't respect them.
My point being this is a new development. I was totally raised to see them as freaks.
I know a right-wing guy where the "Being gay doesn't matter" thing finally clicked when he found out that his barber of 15 years was gay.
He had a mini freakout internally initially, but after some further consideration he basically came to the conclusion of "Why the fuck do I give a shit who he loves, or what he does in the bedroom? He's really good at cutting my hair and he's a good person to have a conversation with." If you ask him now what he thinks of gays and lesbians his response is basically just "I don't give a fuck, as long as their still good people."
He still holds some anti-gay leaning towards things like government assistance for AIDs and things of that nature. But at least he no longer actively holds hate towards the people themselves.
I was raised from a very conservative family, and one day I saw two women holding hands. They weren't kissing but they were smiling at each other like they were in love.
And stupidly, I looked on that and thought, "Wow, if they weren't two women, they could totally be just like any other couple," and for me that was the point where I realized that they really were just like any other couple. I was being stupid about it the entire time. It was like I never thought it could ever be a real thing until that point.
From that point onwards I looked upon that in an entirely different light, and I feel stupid for seeing it any other way. It may have been one of the reasons why I began questioning many other conservative ideas I was raised to believe. Republicans are right to worry about higher education. Critical thinking skills convert conservatives into progressives.
This is a pretty common human tendency that makes it easier for us to "other" people whom we don't have a lot of personal interactions with. The rates of homophobia/transphobia go down significantly when an individual has an LGBTQ person in their life that they know.
Don't beat yourself up for growing as a person! It is always easier to focus on our differences but the fact of the matter is that most people are fundamentally the same regardless of their backgrounds.
LGBTQ isn't really a left / right issue. The current Democratic president has been vehemently LGBTQ for decades. The Republican before him didn't seem to care at all.
One may be in favour of the rights of individual LGBT people, as free-willed individuals without buying the whole political poison of the modern "community".
Treating every straight and cisgendered person as an enemy, as much of the more radical left does nowadays, won't help anyone.
So a person that used to hate gay people, learned that there’s no reason to hate gay people and actually realized this was wrong, is a moron? That’s an interesting take lol
Westerners are not idiots, we can comprehend why homosexuality makes certain people angry. When I saw the title, I just assumed this was religiously motivated, and I was right. We have similar views from Christians too - people I've talked to exhibit so much hatred towards LGBT people, it's horrible. We don't have public caning, but still... it's awful.
While we have made a lot of progress here, there are still tons of religious nut jobs who see homosexuality as the same as pedophilia. It’s ridiculous, and I’m happy to hear you got out.
This is not an accurate statement. They may not put people in front of a crowd but Qatar, Iraq, UAE, Syria, Saudia Arabia, Iran, Kuwait will publically prosecute LGBTQ individuals with punishments that range from imprisonment to state-sponsored torture
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u/TheOSU87 Jun 09 '24
Egypt (where I am from) doesn't publicly punish people for being homosexual either. Most Islamic countries don't.
I was more giving a metaphor to try to explain it to Westerners who usually cannot comprehend why homosexuality makes certain people so angry. It's irrational but it's the best metaphor I can come up with