Where does the hatred for gay people come from?

Every once in a while I like to ask people this question. To me it is a significant mystery. Rationally it would seem that heterosexual males should encourage as many males as possible to be gay. It can only help your odds with the ladies. And yet we live in a world where gay people are loathed (almost as much as atheists).

Invariably the first answer I get is that because the Bible condemns them. Now let's make a *huge* leap here and suppose just for sake of argument that, well, the Bible is completely fiction and the edicts of God are just normal people *pretending* that there is a God and that he said these things. (I know, a huge leap). So why was this such an important thing to codify?

The best I can come up with is that many/most non-gays have a bit of an ick response to gay activities. I do and I've heard the same from many people who intellectually support gay rights etc. I really liked 6 Feet Under, but it was hard to watch sometimes because of this.

As with many things in the Bible people just made God command something that they wanted to be forced on others. Stop being icky.

Of course even if this is correct there is still the question of why we have an ick response. (Well if you are heterosexual. Presumably gays don't have this. Or that would just be weird and sad).

So here's my crazy idea. If all dudes were gay all then the human race would disappear pretty fast. So there would be some evolutionary advantage to avoiding same sex interactions. Therefore the ick factor helps raise the threshold against the likelihood of someone not getting their genes into the next generation.

So ironically the edicts in the Bible against man on man action were put there by evolution. Hows that for a giant irony sandwich. :)

What's the deal with Christians and gays?

I was listening to this segment (1h:31m) today on Prime Time America (Moody Broadcasting) about a new book "Ex-Gays?". The authors report on the current research in converting gays into ex-gays using a religious approach. (Is there any other approach?)

In any case this reminded me of a question I've thought about for a long time but have never heard any where near a decent answer to: why do Christians (and Jews and Muslims) hate homosexuality so much? The answer is not "because it's in the bible". Because then we have to ask, *why* is it in the bible? And you can't just say it's cultural, because there had be a something that got anti-homosexual sentiments started in the first place. And besides there is plenty in the bible that is ignored. But for some reason people are especially eager to denounce homosexuality. So it seems like there is something pretty deep in human nature that makes it easy some how to be against homo-sexuality.

Objectively it seems like straight men should prefer that their competitors not compete for the limited pool of females.

So any way if any one knows the answer to this or has a plausible hypothesis, I'd love to hear it.

And by the way I am super not gay. I'm probably one of the least gay dudes you'll ever come across. I've never even seen another man naked. Ever. (Hmm... that sounds like I'm over compensating and trying to hide some secret feelings, better delete that last bit before hitting publ-