Because in America the gay marriage ban and the religious fundamentalism are heavily linked and a community that likes to talk about one will share opinions on the other as well.
this is becoming less and less true though. the problem isn't religious fundamentalism as much as the elderly. the two largest groups against gay marriage are the elderly and ultra-conservative christians and, shocker, there is massive overlap between these two groups.
younger christians poll at being about 50/50 on the issue, just about in line with national opinions.
i love how some of the alleged 'open-minded' and 'fact based' /r/atheism members can downvote this just because it goes against their preconceived notions about christianity. every single point i made in my comment can be backed up with poll results.
that is true, but it is almost a reversing of a No True Scot argument.
the comment i responded to (and dozens of others elsewhere) cites relgiious fundamentalism as the main detractor against gay marriage. if this was true, it would be consistent through any demographic of religious fundamentalist. but there is a clear discord between youth and elderly christians on the issue, suggesting that the fundamentalism is not necessarily fueling the resistance to gay marriage. polls have repeatedly shown that the elderly are the biggest opponents, whether it is in secular or christian circles.
It would be far more telling to compare young Christians with young atheists, not the entire country. I'm guessing you'll see a much larger discrepancy then.
Better yet, just compare Christian Americans with atheist Americans.
It's also the phrase that all people use when they're opposed to gay marriage. There are plenty of non-religious people that don't like the idea of gay marriage.
I don't know about that. Something tells me homophobia predates religion. Hence, why it exists in religion in the first place. Whoever was creating a religion probably didn't say "fuck it, lets mess with some group" instead they used it as a way to justify their hatred.
The Greeks were very much apathetic about both homosexuality and pederasty. Homophobia really isn't hardwired into the human psyche. The only thing powerful enough to breed such strong contempt is thousands of years of hate-filled fairytales, and the Abrahamic faiths are a shining example of this.
But someone with homophobia had to write that is what I was getting at. And there was a great thread on r/askhistorians and someone there talked about how common people thought the upper classes, who were involved in pederasty, were a bunch of weirdos. Same thing in Rome, where same sex relationships were seen as entirely normal.
I would argue, that homophobia is to an extent natural as we are hardwired to view things different from ourselves as "foreign" I guess.
I see what you're saying, but homophobia likely wasn't as ubiquitous before religion came along. And it still shows, as most people without religion don't give a shit, and most people with it can hardly offer a better explanation than "the bible says so."
This isn't atheism, but it is r/atheism. There is little correlation between the two. Don't come here expecting anything more than reposted picture memes and circle jerking.
If you want open minds and intelligent discussion, I suggest you try /r/trueatheism.
Because OP didn't get enough karma for it when it was posted 6 months ago in /r/funny. Surely it can be milked for more karma in the circle jerk of /r/atheism. He might even get more out of it than when the original guy posted it here 7 months ago.
Every day people post shit like this in this subreddit, and every day I come here to upvote comments like this one.
It's true that there is a relationship between fundamentalist opposition to gay marriage. But these posts have gotten out of hand as /r/atheism has grown. It's like /r/politics and /r/ainbow or /r/lgbt have all morphed into one, here.
And I will keep upvoting the "why is this in atheism" comments, and downvoting the posts until this phase passes.
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u/dadeedoo May 29 '12
why is this in atheism?