All you need is love.

~ John Lennon

You mean apart from the flood, and plagues and generally killing his children?

something something Leviticus or whatever

As someone who escaped, “God is love” as well as knowing gay people always was something a bit hard to reconcile, but not as much as you think. See, if you take all the sins in the Bible, or even just the ones in 1 Cor 6:9-11, then almost everyone in the world is a sinner. It works better on a sect that is small and consider most mainstream religions wrong, along with enough isolationism.

I neve4 had a blinding hatred for gay people, and had friends etc. To past me, a gay person was just as sinful as anyone who had sex outside of marriage. The passage above lists fornication, adultery, drunkards, revelers and such with what some translate as homosexuality(iirc there’s some who believe it meant pederasty instead.) A reviler isn’t really that bad in the grand scheme of things, and almost everyone I knew outside the religion had sex before marrriage.

Combined with little articles explaining homosexual feelings weren’t sinful, but acting on them were(same article pointing out straight people had to avoid sin in similar ways) I was fooled into thinking a weird “Well, I don’t agree with it, but it’s God’s rule and it’s his house…”

I think part of it also was that I definitely did not consider myself “better”, as I hated myself for “breaking God’s law” by masturbating to porn. I didn’t even do it that much, but if I got tempted enough I would hate myself for months on end, considering 6 months not doing so to be not quite adequate, and considering myself not worthy of romantic relationships due to my “problem.”

In a religion where everyone falls short of God’s glory, I didn’t really rank the sins, and tended to push to the back of my mind the things that didn’t feel right.

Religion strongly discourages thinking for yourself, even if you think something is OK. It tells you that you’re not good enough to make those decisions yourself, because see what happened when Adam and Eve did that? Cognitive Disonance is a feature.

It’s almost like they don’t give a shit unless their media actively makes them the boogeyman.

If progressives weren’t behind Trans, the Right would go back to demonizing LGB. Wherever that line of culture war is, they will whip their base into a frenzy over it. Of they win the fight against Trans, suddenly the vast majority of Republicans would hate gays again in time for elections.

I think the cons take issue with trans women because they project their own behaviors onto others. They think a man can just throw on a wig and a dress and do all kinds of things they’d like to do? Honestly, I’m cis male and I have zero interest in walking into a woman’s bathroom for my jollies. I’d rather not be in any public bathroom except to relieve myself and GTFO ASAP, and the idea of wanting to hang around the opposite sex restrooms to witness them relieving themselves? No thanks. But I honestly think some of these outspoken cons are honestly jealous of what they think trans women might be “getting away with” in that regard - again, maybe from personal kinks.

I think they also take issue with being “tricked” into being attracted to someone that was born male. For those that are probably closet cases, it seems to consume most of their day, to be honest. When I realize someone is trans that I thought was a female, I don’t take it as a personal insult, but there is a certain type of man that definitely does.

I think even most cons finally realized that not every gay person is after them, trying to “recruit” them, etc…but they have moved onto breaking out in beads of sweat over what trans women might be up to…

They don’t seem to spend too much of their time on trans men, though. A real puzzler. Not.

Wow. Approval of interracial marriage only reached majority in 1995?

Alt text: People often say that same-sex marriage now is like interracial marriage in the 60s. But in terms of public opinion, same-sex marriage now is like interracial marriage in the 90s, when it had already been legal nationwide for 30 years.

This is a case where it seems the elite consensus drove a change in culture whereas the gay marriage thing seems to have only happened once it became a norm across society.