Premarital sex and sexual freedom were condemned because the children they led to had no way of being protected. Masturbation, homosexuality, and sodomy (as in anal sex, oral sex, or sex with animals) were also condemned because none of them even led to children.
•Scholars who contend the daughters were hopeless sinners do so on the argument that the daughters could have found ocher men with whom to continue the family line. Even these scholars seem willing to ignore the "immorality" if the immortality of the family line is guaranteed See The Pentateuch andHaftorahs. Second Edition (London. Soncino Press. 1979). edited by Dr J H Hertz, С И. Late Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, p. 69. note 31
In contrast, affairs, polygyny, sex with maidservants, and even incest could be sanctioned — if they led to protected offspring; if they did not, they were also condemned. Principles of immortality were clothed in the garb of immorality. This might be called the immortality rule.
Giving permission to homosexuality in Stage I involved the same problem as giving permission to masturbation: it was permission for sexual pleasure without a price. Think about it. A homosexual experience might mean two hours of sexual pleasure. The consequences? — two hours of sexual pleasure. A heterosexual experience might also mean two hours of sexual pleasure. But the consequences? — eighteen years of responsibility. In brief, teferosexualitv was a bad deal!
Homophobia was a Stage 1 society’s way of not allowing men to even think about having sex with anyone other than a woman. Homophobia reflected an unconscious societal fear that homosexuality was a better deal than heterosexuality for the individual. Homophobia was like OPEC calling nations wimps if they bought oil from a more reasonably priced source. It was the society’s way of giving men no option but to pay full price for sex.
Homosexual relationships promised more than sex for free; they promised relationships for free, companionship for free, love for free. All free of the cost of feeding offspring. Since homosexuality was the greatest temptation to avoid reproduction and, therefore, threaten survival, it was the primary candidate for the death penalty. (When death wasn’t exacted literally, it was often exacted via ostracism.) So the Old Testament demanded the death penalty’ for male homosexuals. As did many Roman emperors, Spanish inquisitors, English monarchs, and some American colonists. Thus, homophobia.
The fear that homosexuality would tempt people away from heterosexuality seems to have left us with a more intense fear of homosexuality today than of other forms of sex without offspring. For example, if we discover someone has masturbated, we don’t say, as soon as their back is turned, “He’s a masturbator ” But when a man has sex with another man, we say, “He’s a homosexual.” The taboo against homosexuality tends to make the person secondary’ to his or her sexual expression, just as racism makes the person secondary to his or her race.
All of these fears might have been functional for survival in Stage I, but they are dysfunctional for love in Stage II. And homophobia is also dysfunctional for Stage II survival — it teaches the objectification of a human, a prerequisite for killing humans, which, with nuclear technology, threatens survival. One trademark of a Stage II society’, then, is the degree to which it frees itself from the Stage 1 fear of homosexuality, from the discrimination against homosexuals that is its consequence, and from the fear of loving our neighbor as ourself.