From the post of the same name on Womanist Musings, July 13th 2008, before it compleyely disappears from the Internet:
Abagond: ..Homosexuality is a sin. St Paul says so in the book of Romans. With all due respect, I think he knows about this better than either of us. Going by whatever American society says is right is a terrible moral guide. I have not taken any survey, but I think most black people know that.”
Right, because the bible is the most neutral source to turn to. Can you point to a book with more acts of violence, and misogyny, I doubt it? It interests me how you can point to the bible as the source of your hatred and yet conveniently ignore things like judge not lest ye be judged, and do unto others as you would have done unto you, or how about let he who is without sin cast the first stone?
I don’t believe that I need to provide more than his own words to prove his homophobia. The point I think that it is important to fixate on, is how isms interlock in his mind. This is not a phenomena that is unique to him. Someone like him is only capable of seeing oppression in the way that it effects him, and this is only possible because despite his position as a marginalized body he exists with forms of privilege in this world. By not being able to stand up for another group that is equally marginalized, what he is in fact doing is reaffirming the same power that constructs him as less than, the very same dynamics are at play. Oppression, is oppression, is oppression, you are either for it, or against it. There is no such thing as a good or acceptable form of oppression, and to perpetuate it through thought, deed, or action while decrying it when it happens to you, is to use the master tools, as Audre Lorde would say.
All of the “isms” are interconnected and in fact they form the cycles of power in our society thus creating the demarcation of difference. It does not weaken your position to admit that others share a similar plight with injustice. Seeing the pain that is inflicted in marginalization should give rise to allies,and new partnerships, not to further ‘othering’. If he could understand that homophobia is just as much a civil rights issue as racism, sexism, abelism, or classism, etc what he could potentially do is increase the number of people with which he had access to, to build a foundation for a cohesive attack on privilege. When you say I don’t like those “type of people”, or that “those people” are less than, not only do you limit them but you limit yourself. I know that even if Abagond should decide to read this post, it will probably fall on deaf ears, but for those of you reading who are active in the struggle for justice, remember that if you cannot empathize with others, you should not expect the same courtesy in return.
See also:
- responses:
- Am I homophobic? – written by me 6 days later
- Am I still homophobic? – written by me 10 years later
- Am I homophobic, part III – yet to be written
- Do Brown lives matter? – wherein I use an argument similar to Womanist Musings
- Audre Lorde
- Womanist Musings also quoted in:
- some blogs of old
- link rot
Abagond 
Wow. That’s… interesting.
Oh well. We all have our blind spots. But this one is a little outdated at this point. It’s time to evolve.
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Abagond,
Are you doing that thing you sometimes do, where you copy, paste, and post a viewpoint to which you are opposed in the hopes that readers will draw the same conclusion?
Or is this fifteen-year-older version of you accepting the critique and presenting it as truth?
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Return,
I think it’s the latter. He’s responding to our previous comments in his way, showing the critique he received on the other side. Apparently, he doesn’t care much what people on the right/traditionalist side say, but he can’t bear to be seen as a bad progressive and “homophobic”, even though he knows it’s not primarily fear/phobia involved.
What has shamelessly supporting the LGBTQ agenda, at the expense of traditional marriage, done for our society? It has promoted and caused more of the same filth (and I’m not just talking about increased disease spread from Grindr facilitated orgies). The radically increased rates of transgenderism with life altering hormones and surgery vs the temporary tomboyism of the past, for instance, shows it’s not mostly about being “born this way”. It has led to less traditional marriage and fewer kids in the depraved Western world and the abuse of many thousands, if not millions, of kids. Yes, the stats show gays (particularly gay men) are much more likely to abuse kids–there’s a recent story of a gay couple who abused both their adopted sons going around on Gab now, but it’s not an isolated incident at all.
abagond now believes “Womanist Musings” knows more than God and the Bible, who must be bad (supposedly) because “homophobia” is equated to sexism and racism, meaning one must suspend all critical thought and immediately bow down to the god of Equalism to repent. Meanwhile, the openly god hating That (I’m told it’s OK to shorten long clunky names) is telling abagond to “evolve” because he’s “outdated” (the 2000+ year old Bible passages became outdated in the last decade apparently, while Western society evolved to the utopia it is now.. Lolz!).
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biff,
That would make sense, given the general trajectory of this blog and the nature of its commentariat.
Thatdeborahgirl’s comment is a perfect demonstration of progressive presentism. Note that she does not argue that Abagond’s 2008 position was objectively untrue or morally wrong — merely that it was “outdated.” Rather than advancing arguments in favor of her own position, she merely declares that it is time for Abagond to “evolve.” This is a succinct expression of the Whig theory of history, by which the course of human events is an arc bending ever-leftward. Hence the common shorthand designating Left positions as “forward-thinking” and Right ones as “backward-thinking.” To not be on the Left is almost a crime against nature.
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Furthermore, this mindset absolves the Left of having to actually defend its positions on the merits.
Rather than going into the substance of why, for instance, the Church might be wrong about the dual and inseparable unitive and procreative nature of sexual relations, and the importance of Christian marriage as the framework within which those relations take place, they tar their ideological opponents with the label of “backward” and call it a day. No arguments needed, just teleological incantations.
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Return,
Yes, there is no stopping for the “progressive”. They just move further and further away from God and civilization. Take a well-meaning progressive from 50 years ago and they would be horrified by the current castration and sexual mutilation of young kids in the name of “trans rights”. The same folks who support that today (including abagond) don’t realize that, absent some major shock to the system, we continue along that trajectory, and in another couple decades most pedophilia may be completely normalized (abagond and the other blog regulars would be scandalized and furious if I accused them of supporting pedophilia of course).
While we are discussing “homophobia”, another interesting claim I read on Gab recently was that, far from being “born that way”, most homosexual behavior was actually the result of childhood abuse, and thus abusing minors was a way for homosexuals to “reproduce”. I read that and thought wow that’s a wild claim. Never read about that in school. Sure enough, studies (from back when they were permissible) show massive rates of childhood sexual abuse in gays, e.g., as follows: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11501300/
“In research with 942 nonclinical adult participants, gay men and lesbian women reported a significantly higher rate of childhood molestation than did heterosexual men and women. Forty-six percent of the homosexual men in contrast to 7% of the heterosexual men reported homosexual molestation. Twenty-two percent of lesbian women in contrast to 1% of heterosexual women reported homosexual molestation.”
First that’s a huge rate of homosexual molestation in females. Since heterosexual molestation of females is much more common, if the trauma from that had the effect of turning some women off to heterosexual sex (and evidence shows that it does), gay women who were subject to any kind of childhood sexual abuse could easily be 75%+. Also, the studies I saw (and I didn’t spend much time looking admittedly), didn’t cover all kinds of abuse. If the trend of abuse causing aberrant behavior (in this case homosexual orientation) is valid (as evidenced by the numbers above) and we added in physical and verbal abuse (and even other sexual type abuse that didn’t rise to the level of molestation–e.g., exposing a kid to gay porn) it could certainly explain the vast majority of cases. Of course, you couldn’t do that kind of research today or accurately report results, because it goes so strongly against the Narrative. From my personal experience, the only person I knew well as a child who came out as trans later had a verbally abusive, domineering mom who divorce raped dad. If this kid had been in an intact family with a strong father and supportive mom, I just don’t see him making that “transition”, as there was nothing seemingly feminine about his interests as a child.
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I was going for brevity but it seems even the simplest statements can be misconstrued by those determined to misunderstand, so please, allow me to retort:
I’m Black. I grew up in Black church. I was actively encouraged, if not trained, to look down on and shun gay people. And I was embarrassingly older than I should have been before I reevaluated those teachings.
We once lived in a day and age where these things were spoken about in whispers, if at all. Now that we live in the information age, I find it patently ridiculous to hold onto useless prejudices in the world in which we currently live, and fairly pathetic to use any deity as an excuse to do so.
I do not hate God. I do however despise the harm human beings will justify committing on behalf of their chosen invisible sky being.
I simply find such commitment to seeing some humans as outliers rather than part of society as a whole rather tedious.
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let the public self-psychoanalysis begin!
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