2. THE SUGGESTION OF IMMORALITY

The sad base of most of the discrimination against anyone who has a same-sex preference in relations is actually in the allocation and the acceptance of the etiquette "Gay" or "Lesbian."

"Gay" is just a name ... "Lesbian" is just a name... Would it not be foolish to call those who prefer butter to margarine a "Butterhead" and separate them as a social group. It would be folly and even worse folly if some form of foolish pride led individuals to call themselves "Butterheads."

What then is an immoral act.

Personally I prefer the definition of Xun Zi, who was a famous Chinese philosopher 310 -237. He declared:

A person is born with desires of the eyes and ears, and a liking for beautiful sights and sounds. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to immorality and lack of restriction, and any ritual principles and propriety will be abandoned.

In other words, the only immorality is that of Identity desire, craving and clinging. This makes immorality a common product of both heterosexual and homosexual relations. Do you see that possession is the root of the problem?

Let's examine the religious texts and see what the base of this modern idea of morality really is.

The Bible does deal with restrictions on sexual acts which are broader, called sexual immorality (Greek "porneia").

There are three restrictions, apart from the restriction of sex during women's menstruation, which is a rational restriction due to the conditions at the time when nomadic life with a lack of clean water could easily lead to infections, thus it was considered as a ritual impurity.

The first is adultery. But let us make that meaning clear. It was understood by the Hebrews to mean wrong for a married women to have sex with another man. Note that it was wrong only for the woman and not the man. Why?

It was because it violated her husband's property rights.

There is nothing to even suggest that any mutual agreement between two people to join in any sexual union is immoral.

The other restriction was the use of temple prostitutes for pagan fertility goddess worship. The immorality here was not specifically against prostitution, but against pagan sexual goddess worship.

The third moral restriction is Pederasty -said to be the worst of all sexual sins that took various forms. The practice of pederasty falls into three distinct styles.

First, it was the practice using slave prostitutes or when a heterosexual male degraded another heterosexual male by anal intercourse after capturing them in battle. In both these cases the immorality rested upon the violation of personal rights.

Second was that of the effeminate "call boy" or male prostitute .

The third was the use of a young boy for intercourse by an older man. In both of these cases there is the concept present of an abuse of innocence as the morality factor.

Beyond these there is no biblical basis for any other definition of porneia, or sexual immorality.

So where does then the immorality idea arise?

It arises from the general masculine distaste of male femininity which is carried over to the female lesbian population, where the intolerance is directed at the dominant partner of the pair.

Now this may give us a clue to the problem of introducing Avaivartika in a homosexual community. Dominance which is even more prevalent in the Gay community than in heterosexual groups is opposed to benevolent affect in terms of Buddha Dharma.

Now there is no suggestion that dominance is alien to benevolence in a social sense, for many of aversive temperament are socially generous as a part of the dominant trait; the problem is the affect which in Dharma is to complement the benevolence. it is the deeper experience, you see, that is important.

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