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Essay on Homosexuality and Religion
Homosexuality is the sexual orientation toward people of the similar sex. Similar to religion, sexual orientation marks both individual uniqueness and communal divisions. In this century, in fact, sexual orientation has gradually been replacing religion as the identity characteristic that is both physically invisible and ethically polarizing. In 1900, one's society, social class, sex, and religion mostly defined one’s group individuality. Homosexuality contrasts with heterosexuality, sexual orientation toward people of the contradictory sex. People with a sexual orientation toward members of both sexes are called bisexuals.
Female homosexuals are frequently called lesbians. In recent years, the term gay has been applied to both homosexual men and women. Homosexuality appears in virtually all-social contexts—within different community settings, socioeconomic levels, and ethnic and religious groups. The number of homosexuals in the population is difficult to determine, and reliable data do not exist. However, current estimates suggest that the term homosexual may apply to 2 to 4 percent of men. Estimates for lesbians are lower. Not all people who engage in homosexual activity necessarily identify themselves as homosexual.
Attitudes toward homosexual conduct have speckled with time and place. In prehistoric Greece, homosexual relations were tolerable and, in some cases, probable activity in certain segments of society. Later on mostly prevailing Judeo-Christian moral codes, which treat homosexuality as immoral or sinful, dogged attitudes toward homosexuality in the Western world. But like many other sins, homosexual relations were seen as expressions of the weakness inherent in all human beings, and not as a mental disorder or as the behavior of a specific type of person.
This latter view, which regarded homosexuality as a pathology, developed in the late 19th century. By the beginning of the 20th century, psychoanalysts viewed homosexuals as the victims of faulty development. Austrian physician Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, considered homosexuality a deviant condition......
