I think it's more than just the text based argument. (I mean, really - how much of Leviticus has most of the country been perfectly happy to ignore?)
The text based argument is something you can point to and makes something that sounds like a rational argument about (at least if you think such religious texts have any place in a rational argument). But there's also the whole cultural stigma bit, which runs pretty deep, still. (Would you call it oppositional sexuality, in that "gay" is posited as the opposite of "straight", and both weak and flawed and yet inherently threatening?)
Hmm... In some ways I'd compare it to some of the more anti-female traditions in Islam. I mean seriously, if you look at the Quran, women actually are guaranteed more rights than in other Abrahamic faiths. (Right of divorce, right of property, etc. Hell, right of pleasure during sex, for that matter.)
But there is a convergence of some anti-female material in the Quran with a lot of other cultural influences... and out of that you get everything from veiling (which is only prescribed by wild interpretation) to clitoredectomy. (Though I think the whole issue of veiling tends to be horribly glossed as anti-female when in fact it is much more complex.) And then it gets wrapped up in all kind of other cultural issues around modernization and westernization... (Islamic feminist movements, past and current, are really worth looking into.)
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Date: 2008-11-05 08:57 pm (UTC)The text based argument is something you can point to and makes something that sounds like a rational argument about (at least if you think such religious texts have any place in a rational argument). But there's also the whole cultural stigma bit, which runs pretty deep, still. (Would you call it oppositional sexuality, in that "gay" is posited as the opposite of "straight", and both weak and flawed and yet inherently threatening?)
Hmm... In some ways I'd compare it to some of the more anti-female traditions in Islam. I mean seriously, if you look at the Quran, women actually are guaranteed more rights than in other Abrahamic faiths. (Right of divorce, right of property, etc. Hell, right of pleasure during sex, for that matter.)
But there is a convergence of some anti-female material in the Quran with a lot of other cultural influences... and out of that you get everything from veiling (which is only prescribed by wild interpretation) to clitoredectomy. (Though I think the whole issue of veiling tends to be horribly glossed as anti-female when in fact it is much more complex.) And then it gets wrapped up in all kind of other cultural issues around modernization and westernization... (Islamic feminist movements, past and current, are really worth looking into.)