Prejudice

[derannimer]

Joywitch wrote: 

> And I don't care what it says in your particular holy book -- my principles dictate           
> that prejudice against someone because of 
> their sexual orientation, race or religion is equally wrong.

To which Terry responded:

> JMO here...I don't think that "prejudice against" someone necessarily 
> equates to believing that some of their actions are morally wrong 
> according to your own beliefs. 
 
> I think I can believe that someone is behaving wrongly, without being 
> prejudiced towards them.

<jumps in with Terry>

Absolutely. 

There are really two questions here. 

The first is belief as regards homosexuality and the second is belief as regards 
homosexual *individuals.* Prejudice, homophobia, comes into the latter question. 
Prejudice is a belief, or series of beliefs, about individuals; ie., the stereotype of the 
"queen," or of the "butch" woman. The belief that, say, all gay men wear a lot of 
purple is a prejudice; but the belief that homosexuality *in the abstract* is itself 
wrong need not be. And *yes,* there is a distinction. It's like the difference between 
believing, say, foul things about Joe Lieberman -- or the Pope  -- and believing that 
Judaism -- or Catholicism -- is factually incorrect on certain points. You can believe 
the latter and not be anti-Semitic or anti-Catholic. Disagreement is not a guarantor of 
prejudice.

Of course, the two often go together, *in one direction*; I doubt you could very easily 
find a person who was homophobic -- that is, prejudiced against individuals -- and 
who *didn't* believe that homosexuality in the abstract was wrong, or at least in some 
other way undesirable. But they don't always go together in the other direction -- you 
could, I think, quite easily find people who thought that homosexuality was wrong but 
who did *not* have any homophobic assumptions, or prejudices, about actual gay 
*people.*

Andrew Sullivan once wrote (paraphrase) that he had a lot of liberal friends who were 
too embarrassed to go into a gay bar with him, and a lot of friends who thought 
homosexuality was a sin but never once let it affect their treatment of him as a 
person. Things are just a lot more complicated than "decent people" and 
"homophobes."




Derannimer