One of the alleged calamaties of the re election of Turkish President Recip Tayip Erdogan, is held to be the hostile attitude his followers take towards the LGBQT+ community. Which news has made us break a rule. Sexuality. Normally we avoid discussions of this dreary subject, on the grounds that A) it is covered daily to exhaustion in popular newspapers, TV channels and all other media outlets and B) there are, in our opinion, more important and pressing issues. Yet most people, like so many bonobos, are slyly obsessed with the comportment and regulation of the human genital organs, both their own and those of others. So we are forced to ask the question: why the age-old persecution of those whose proclivity is towards same-sex coupling as opposed to intersex?
And we suspect the answer lies in the early agricultural societies in the Neolithic period, and the ancient religions which have grown out of them. Take the widespread and closely related religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as our example. All three base their hostility to homosexual practice on the revered texts of Leviticus (18.22: 20.13). Written, it should be noted, at a time when the overwhelming majority were engaged in the arduous and physically exhausting life of agricultural labourers. Herding, stockbreeding, ploughing and the many other such activities require enormous reserves of strength. And, as men are physically stronger , this quality in them becomes exalted. It must be so; for in such societies the margin of survival is narrow. Any threat to the herds, the lands, or the procreation of more male children to work them, threatens disaster.
In such circumstances, is it so surprising that any sexual practice that deviated from the basic one of man+woman =child was proscribed? And given our natural tendency towards furious, group-enhancing persecutions of all things that differ, that this proscription became in turn exalted? We humans are none of us perfect, however much God tells us to be. These religions are widespread, and we suspect offer much comfort to their followers. And dark things indeed have followed attempts at their removal.
We at LSS deplore the persecutions of all minority persuasions, especially when the persecutors have not properly thought through their actions. It is our lived experience that some of the most avid persecutors conceal that they have more in common with their victims than they would care to admit. And that the practice of heterosexuality is not as quite as virtuous as is sometimes claimed. It fills the world with housing estates, fashion magazines, fast cars and many other excrescences on what would otherwise be a pleasing prospect. To say nothing of the risible personal attractions and entanglements which it engenders among its afficionados. Is it really, really right to look down on those who do not share our particular proclivity?
We have said all we wish to say on matters amorous and copulatory for some time, and hope to return you, patient readers, to adult material in the next blog or blogs.
#christianity #islamm#agriculture #judaism #heterosexual #homosexual #male norm
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