The Battle between Monotheism and Homosexuality, Islam and Human Rights, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Human Rights

The Battle between Monotheism and Homosexuality

1. Traditional Patriarchal Norms

Religions have tended to represent patriarchal norms, enforcing a straight heterosexuality at the expense of any other sexual expressions. This primal instinct, arising from both sexuality and power relations, becomes institutionalized into the religions produced by primitive societies (and minds). Most traditional religions have happened to ritualize and dogmatize practices that tend to place heterosexual males in charge of women, families, religious communities, societies and governments. Although the direct influence of religion in secular society has receded from the government level, residues of its effects remain entrenched in some areas of law.

This form of dominance ends up stigmatizing those who do fit into the scheme, notably, strong females and non-heterosexuals such as homosexuals. Modern religions have broken this mould. Wicca is an example of a religion which has redeemed the idea of powerful females, but unfortunately, it codified in its rituals and theory many elements that consider a male-female combination to be balanced and correct. It started out that Gerald Gardner, one of the founders of Wicca, and one of the first Wiccan periodicals, The Wiccan, both expressed anti-homosexual tendencies. I tell this story in a fuller form in "The Peacock vs. the Ostrich - Religious Behaviour and Sexuality" (2008). Thankfully this barrier was never strong, and, there is today no anti-homosexual movement in Wicca; its practitioners are wholly embracing of consensual sexuality in general. Another religion that has reached this pinnacle is Satanism. What they have in common is a modernity and non-monotheism, something which the rest of the opinions on this page lack.

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