Our Culture Today

Ashton Lockwood
Professor Aro
English 101
20 April 2013 Our culture today Personal Beliefs, Attitudes, Values, Basic Assumptions, these values are universal to every human being living today, in the past and in our future. These values shaping our behavior relate to cultural context. Today our Societal attitudes toward homosexuality widely range in different cultures, historical periods, and locations, as do attitudes toward sexual desire, activity and relationships in general. In general many cultures have their own values regarding appropriate and unsuitable sexuality; some sanction same-sex love and sexuality, while others may condemn of such activities in part. Our culture today has changed a lot especially how we view the human body. In my first paragraph I will discuss personal beliefs and how it a tremdous effect on homosexuality community, including social attitudes in general. The issue on Gay sex in religion will have a variety of different views, but you will see the more firm believers that homo's is a bad thing will be among the older generations, and they will be the ones that also have a harder time accepting it into their lives. Religions such as Judaism, Islam, and various regions of Christianity, are old school and forbid any type of sexual interactions between people of the same sex and preach highly that such an act is to be deemed sinful and that you will burn in hell. The reasoning behind this is very simple like stated above, those religions follow the bible very closely and if you search for it you will find this in the Old testament and
New testament, which talks about their beliefs on that topic. Unlike our western religions
Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, homosexuality is barely discussed although it may not be brought up as often these religions frown on this type of intercourse between two people to be considered a sin as well. Further In addition to the religions of East Asia, along with
Chinese religion that passionate homosexual love is most often discouraged because it is believed to not lead to human satisfaction, and that human satisfaction can only come from opposite sex's In early religions it's been said that since early middle age times, people who had sex with the same type of sex were blamed for bringing a deadly plague upon the land, and that their pleasures with each other were blamed for the frequent epidemics of disease which dramatically decreased the population. Crops were dying people didn’t have food, and people were falling over dead for no reason at all. The only thing they thought that was causing this was the "Homo's." People were frightened and they thought the only way in order to rid their lands of this disease would be by being cleansed by fire, as a result homosexuals paid a drastic price from the people of the towns in which numerous individuals were tied down and burned at the stake or if they got somewhat lucky just had to have white-hot iron rods ran through them because they thought that this would cleanse the souls and stop the disease. Although the staking and hot ironing ended in the late 1980s similar thoughts have been made, inspired by the AIDS epidemic.
In the years since, the epidemic has spread and now has many more heterosexual victims than homosexual. In the next paragraph I will further discuss the Values and basic assumption of play another key role into how our culture views the human body. Off the top of your head when you hear the word gay males, what's the first thing your brain processes? Most often gay males are viewed as being effeminate. Or maybe you the first thing that comes to mind is that gay males are viewed as showing an interest in women’s fashion such as fashion design or hairdressing, which a lot are. Or perhaps when you think of a gay male it would be a guy would having a huge group of friends consisting females, Sadly we categorize "homo's" like this in our culture today
What would comes to mind when the word lesbians is thrown out there? Our culture society usually views them as having more of the manly features or what we call "Tomboy/ Dyke."
When then word Tomboy is thrown out there are society already has them categorized. The typical thought of a tomboy is one having a preference for short haircuts, tattoos and male clothing. Then of course we have both bisexual men and women. What pops in mind when you think of a Bi person? Some people might be seeing them as being sexually immoral, controlling, insincere or undecided. Male bisexuals and female bisexuals are usually on the down low about the choice they have made. Although the cause for most Bi's is that because our culture is so rough and doesn’t welcome the gay community very well they have a hard time accepting it themselves an call themselves as Bi's for the fear of how much we demand perfection. Another basic assumption about homosexuals is association with pedophilia. This is the major thing that always pops up and which as a result, some people fear exposing their children to homosexuals in unsupervised settings. This fear assuming that about all "Gay's" had led them into making and assumption that their children might be molested, or converted to be gay themselves which in our culture that would just ruin families. Today in our society that is true many Homo's that finally come out and tell their families just only ends up destroying them. As a result many homosexuals have committed suicide for the fear of judge-ment. What has left a bitter taste in the mouth about
"gay" community and made an impact on how their viewed is that everyone is familiar with the publicity about the Catholic sex abuse cases, which in result has heightened these concerns for many parents. A group of establishments focus on these dawning concerns, drawing linking relations between homosexuality and pedophilia. Recently a number of small scale studies where done and shown that they have not found evidence that homosexuals are more likely to molest children than heterosexuals. Tests done showing that male homosexuals with a preference for adults; are no more attracted to adolescent or younger boys than male heterosexuals with a preference for adults are to adolescent or younger girls. Other research also suggest men who molest boys prefer adult women rather than men as sexual partners. In conclusion does our culture Demand perfection? This is a very good question and I believe that my paper I express a way of how our culture demands perfection because our culture and many others see homosexuality as a negative way. On record, a lot of us expect perfection although it may not really be expected in the result.

Ramon Johnson, Why The Pope Hates Gays
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