I recently saw a request in an internet queer group asking for resources to 'reconcile' religions views with homosexuality/queer lifestyle.
Here's what I wrote back:
I am not sure if I would be contributing in any useful way to your project but after having read a lot on various religions, I have come to the one inescapable conclusion - no religion is broad minded enough to accept gay rights;
In fact, the only religion, as far as I can tell, that acknowledges that there could be something natural in same sex preference is Jainism.
Cleary Hindu scriptures, the Bible and the Koran are homophobic. Inspite of some ambigious stories, the bulk opinion -atleast in the hindu dharma shastras is against gay sex. From the story in Bhagavatha purana where asuras had homosexual impulse to rape their father God Brahma (which is strangely mirrored in the biblical tale of Noah's son but which also adds racism to it!) to the dharmashastras where sex with a man is considered one of the 'Jati bhramshakara' sins('expulsion from ones caste'), it is futile to search for some support in religion for gay rights.
I became an atheist purely by in depth study of Hindu scriptures and later moved on to read other religious texts including those of jainism and Buddhism in their original Pali/ardhamagadhi.
I would have become an atheist even if I had not been gay - merely by reading the morally repugnant stuff that religious texts are made up of..
Truly, there is no need to 'reconcile' religious views as they are unanimous in being homophobic.
Theravada buddhist Pali canon is the exception but even there, the traditional commentators make it clear that they are against homosexuality.
As I said earlier, in Jainism, the acknowledgement(NOT accceptance) of various sexual preferences rose due to historical reasons within the comunity of monks.
It starts from the divide of Jains into Swetambara(wearing white clothes) and Digambara(Naked monks) sects.
Digambaras refused to accept Swetambaras as full monks and said moksha can be attained only by practicing nudity.
Incidentally , since both digambaras and swetambaras did not allow women(nuns) to be nude, digambaras also held that women could not attain moksha.
This being the state of affairs, the swetambara monks strove to show that women can attain moksha. This they did grudgingly onnly because they could then maintain that they(white clad monks) could also attain moksha.
In the only text accepted by both sects called 'tattvarta sutra' by Umaswati - there is a mention that irrespective of 'linga/gender' one could become a liberated being.
The Digambaras, to hold on to their doctrine, intepreted it to mean only mental gender and not physical gender. I don't want to go into the details of the arguments on both sides but suffice to say that both sects accepted this division of having both a mental and a physical gender.
Thus a dravya purusha(physical man) can be a bhava stri (mental woman) ie experience sexual attraction towards a man.
Similarly there is also drvya stri, dravya napumsaka(transgendered) and bhava purusha, bhava napumsaka(attraction to both sexes).
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft138nb0wk&chunk.id=d0e7289&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e7289&brand=ucpress
Refer link for more details.
--------
I just want to stress that most religious texts, if not all, are bigoted, narrow-minded and written by people who had no clue about scientific method.
It is counter-productive to search for support of gay rights or any sort of individual's right from religious books.
What is needed is an appeal to evidence, common sense and empathy.
The very recognition of something called individual's rights - let alone gay or womens rights - came about only in the Age of Enlightenment (late 17th and 18th century), the first full fledged expression of which was probably the french declaration of rights. (The US declaration of independence which came before had "God" although probably a deistic one, referred to in it).
------
Rgs/
Here's what I wrote back:
I am not sure if I would be contributing in any useful way to your project but after having read a lot on various religions, I have come to the one inescapable conclusion - no religion is broad minded enough to accept gay rights;
In fact, the only religion, as far as I can tell, that acknowledges that there could be something natural in same sex preference is Jainism.
Cleary Hindu scriptures, the Bible and the Koran are homophobic. Inspite of some ambigious stories, the bulk opinion -atleast in the hindu dharma shastras is against gay sex. From the story in Bhagavatha purana where asuras had homosexual impulse to rape their father God Brahma (which is strangely mirrored in the biblical tale of Noah's son but which also adds racism to it!) to the dharmashastras where sex with a man is considered one of the 'Jati bhramshakara' sins('expulsion from ones caste'), it is futile to search for some support in religion for gay rights.
I became an atheist purely by in depth study of Hindu scriptures and later moved on to read other religious texts including those of jainism and Buddhism in their original Pali/ardhamagadhi.
I would have become an atheist even if I had not been gay - merely by reading the morally repugnant stuff that religious texts are made up of..
Truly, there is no need to 'reconcile' religious views as they are unanimous in being homophobic.
Theravada buddhist Pali canon is the exception but even there, the traditional commentators make it clear that they are against homosexuality.
As I said earlier, in Jainism, the acknowledgement(NOT accceptance) of various sexual preferences rose due to historical reasons within the comunity of monks.
It starts from the divide of Jains into Swetambara(wearing white clothes) and Digambara(Naked monks) sects.
Digambaras refused to accept Swetambaras as full monks and said moksha can be attained only by practicing nudity.
Incidentally , since both digambaras and swetambaras did not allow women(nuns) to be nude, digambaras also held that women could not attain moksha.
This being the state of affairs, the swetambara monks strove to show that women can attain moksha. This they did grudgingly onnly because they could then maintain that they(white clad monks) could also attain moksha.
In the only text accepted by both sects called 'tattvarta sutra' by Umaswati - there is a mention that irrespective of 'linga/gender' one could become a liberated being.
The Digambaras, to hold on to their doctrine, intepreted it to mean only mental gender and not physical gender. I don't want to go into the details of the arguments on both sides but suffice to say that both sects accepted this division of having both a mental and a physical gender.
Thus a dravya purusha(physical man) can be a bhava stri (mental woman) ie experience sexual attraction towards a man.
Similarly there is also drvya stri, dravya napumsaka(transgendered) and bhava purusha, bhava napumsaka(attraction to both sexes).
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft138nb0wk&chunk.id=d0e7289&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e7289&brand=ucpress
Refer link for more details.
--------
I just want to stress that most religious texts, if not all, are bigoted, narrow-minded and written by people who had no clue about scientific method.
It is counter-productive to search for support of gay rights or any sort of individual's right from religious books.
What is needed is an appeal to evidence, common sense and empathy.
The very recognition of something called individual's rights - let alone gay or womens rights - came about only in the Age of Enlightenment (late 17th and 18th century), the first full fledged expression of which was probably the french declaration of rights. (The US declaration of independence which came before had "God" although probably a deistic one, referred to in it).
------
Rgs/
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