Society's Identity

Naturally, when I think about living a homosexual or bisexual lifestyle, I don't have any desire to do so. But, as much as a person says he does not have any desire to interact homosexually, he does not know how much society's influence plays in his lack of desire, even if it is subconsciously. It is hard to truly discover yourself unless you put yourself in an open-minded state of vulnerability and then assess your feelings while standing outside of the box of what is socially and culturally acceptable. The reason to make one's self vulnerable to a taboo idea such as homosexuality is to truly escape the grasp of society. However, the social costs seem to outweigh my and probably most person's desire to experiment with such a thing. In this paper, I will explore why and how it is hard for a person to understand his true sexuality because of society's influence on his sense of identity.

To show that society has a direct influence on sexual preference; a good starting point would be to look back at our known history. A look in the past will show how there exists a correlation between societal views and sexual preference of the members. One of the earliest large empires, the Romans raped their slaves as a form of dominance (Crompton 80). At the same time, Greek society could "...conceive of love between an older and younger male as a protective and affectionate mentorship... There was no taboo of silence such as developed under Christianity" (79). When Christianity arrived, Greek and Roman culture were still thriving (Crompton 111). Since Christianity preaches against homosexuality, intolerance became very popular with the spread of Christianity (117; Carroll 147). Leviticus 18:22 in the King James Version states: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination."

The Christian Bible clearly condemns sexual activity between the same gender. 30% of the world scorns homosexual behavior based on their Christian religion ("Christianity"). In countries that contain a majority of Christians, like in the US, homosexuality is denounced as morally atrocious by the majority of the country.

If we grew up and lived in a sexually relaxed society where bisexuality wasn't a negative issue, then we would probably be bisexual and think of American culture as close-minded. Our society looks down upon homosexuality because of religion and also because it is unnatural. By nature, only opposite sex couple should exist. The best argument against this thought, is that humans are natural, but humans have the capability of thinking unnaturally. Our brains are capable of rationalizing homosexual interaction, unlike animals. We can express love that transcends gender and show unbiased love for a person's