Being a "Nice Guy" Actually Does Work...

[Outcast9428]

And how am I supposed to believe that Christianity's rules against promiscuity have not shaped your negative opinion of Christianity at all when you are a very ardent supporter of sexual liberalism, and you even say one of the reasons why you hate Christianity is that it "mires people in irrational guilt." What irrational guilt might you be talking about?

Sorry to be blunt, but I don't really care whether you believe me or not. I simply wanted to set the record straight about why Pixel--Dude and I oppose Christianity vs. your accusations. I already know that you'll just believe whatever you want about us. You always do.

Christianity does indeed mire people in irrational guilt and terrorize the mind with fear. It is utterly insidious. Christian fundamentalists (i.e., real Christians) teach that everyone is fallen due to Original Sin and that the "world" (i.e., everything outside the church) is inherently Satanic and in direct opposition to god. As a Christian, you are made to feel fearful of everything and believe that the "devil" is everywhere. All ideas of a non-Christian or worldly origin are regarded with hostility. Any form of doubt or perceived inconformity is met with guilt tripping ("You are in rebellion against god" or "That's just the devil working in you"). At the same time, you are told that all of your secular family members, friends and acquaintances as well as all of the "fake Christians" who belong to "heretical" sects are going to hell since they aren't saved (Christianity teaches that everybody is born a sinner) and that you must relentlessly preach the gospel to them for their salvation. If you don't do enough for the salvation of others, you are made to feel like a bad person. You don't have Christ's love for others. All of this obviously causes a lot of mental instability in normal people. It also promotes collective hysteria and makes one's personality increasingly neurotic. Christian "faith" is absolutely poison for the soul. It's no surprise that it's pure Jewish filth.

Fundamentalism is the true face of Christianity, by the way. Fundies who attempt to follow the religion to the foot of the letter are the real Christians. Liberal Christians who pick and choose what they want to believe and leave out anything that they find too iffy or inconvenient aren't real Christians (they're just LARPers). Not that I have a dog in the fight since I'm not a Christian; I'm simply calling a spade and spade. Christian fundies aren't simply imperfect human beings; they're completely and utterly insane! Moreover, their ideology and collective behavior are abusive as hell. Pixel--Dude and I are thankful to have escaped that abuse and madness. We prefer to avoid Christian fundamentalists like the plague because we find them spiritually perverse and insufferable.

I have no intention of going deeper into Nietzsche here. You are obviously unable to understand because your mind and sense of right and wrong have been so fundamentally warped by Christian morality. That's why you find the concept of the Will to Power "Satanic" even though it's a natural and fundamental drive which exists in everybody including yourself and Nietzsche himself wrote about its more mature and constructive manifestations as I explained in my previous post. I won't waste any more time with this point. However, I'd like to address the following:

People in the Renaissance era were completely, 100% Christian...

Absolutely not! Lol!

You either don't really understand the Renaissance (despite claiming to be a history buff) or you simply wish to project your own "Christian" version of history onto the period in accordance with your own ideological biases.

Renaissance thought involved a marked departure from the medieval Christian worldview that preceded it. While the medieval Christian worldview subscribed to the notion of Original Sin and saw the world as "a valley of tears", the Renaissance worldview was characterized by a newfound sense of secularism, individualism, skepticism, classicism and, of course, Renaissance humanism - the idea that man is perfectible through higher learning or the study of the "humanities". This is all unequivocally a far cry from the medieval Christian worldview or the biblical doctrine of Original Sin. I'd even go as far as to say that it's markedly "Pagan".

Moreover, the Renaissance saw a significant revival of neo-Platonism and other non-Christian esoteric traditions such as Hermeticism as well as a far-reaching restoration of all forms of pre-Christian classical learning and philosophy. It was essentially conceived as a rebirth of the Greco-Roman intellectual tradition, hence its name Renaissance.

The Catholic church still had power (albeit not as much as it did in the Middle Ages) and the populace was largely nominally "Christian" but the core values of the Renaissance were undeniably of a non-Christian origin. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the Renaissance was essentially Pagan with a thin Christian veneer. Lol!

Are you really naïve enough to believe that the brilliant artists and sculptors of the Renaissance worked on churches out of a selfless devotion to the Christian god? Lol! Of course they were seeking their own glorification to a degree through the display of their superior talents. The Renaissance ideal was the higher kind of perfected man, after all. Besides, they were getting paid a fortune for their work. They were doing it for the money! Also, you can find Pagan motifs everywhere in Renaissance art. Underneath the thin Christian veneer of the time many people had Pagan values and sympathies.

Also faggotry (what Bible-believing Christians consider "degeneracy") was rife throughout the Italian city states of the Renaissance. Fiorenza in particular was famous for it. There were indeed Catholic laws against faggotry and it was officially punishable by death but at the same time it was so common that such laws were rarely enforced. I suppose that there is simply something in the soul of many men, especially Italian men, that discovers sublime beauty in the body and soul of a cute neotenous feminized faggot, or what today we refer to as "ladyboys". Lol!

Well, the Renaissance definitely wasn't "completely 100% Christian" at all. Neither were its people. The Renaissance undeniably featured a strong Pagan and classical component and included the notion of a higher and perfected model of man with greater aspirations which differed from the miserable and pessimistic lapsarian worldview of the age that preceded it. This is why Nietzsche was able to observe in the Renaissance the Will to Power manifested in its purest and most mature form and even saw the period as an almost complete "revaluation of values". You just can't understand this because you have a distorted and incomplete understanding of Nietzsche.

Christians always like to liberally attribute the great achievements of history to their own religion. But that's simply because they are liars and thieves, just like their father the devil.

I have never known a Christian to say that my family members are heretics or anything like that. You may have encountered a particularly bizarre cult because my entire family is Christian conservatives and I also met a small group of Christian conservatives back in college, my ex girlfriend was Christian conservative, her parents were hardcore traditionalists on the level of MrMan. I dated two girls, one in high school the other in college (although she didn’t attend my college) who were very religious. My girlfriend now and her parents are also Christian conservatives. I have a lot more experience in this “world” so to speak then you do and I’ve never encountered anyone acting like that. Like I said, not all Christians are the same but behavior like that, even among very religious people, is a minority.

The Renaissance still took religion seriously enough that people paid indulgences to the church. If anything some people in this era were too extreme, this was also the era of the Inquisition, and the French Wars of Religion. Whatever you think was the ideology of these painters and architects, none of them voiced it in public. To do so would’ve been social suicide… Like telling people you are a neo Nazi in the modern era.

Humanism was the big ideology of the era but it took on a much more religious significance. It was primarily considered an evolution by Christian priests themselves. The idea basically being that you shouldn’t focus exclusively on the afterlife but rather that life on Earth mattered too. This was essentially saying that Christians had a duty to improve life on Earth and that it wasn’t just about whether each soul reached heaven.

Basically a non-humanist priest wouldn’t have considered it important whether your life was miserable on Earth. Everything was just about reaching heaven. A humanist priest on the other hand would have tried to find a way for you to live both a moral and happy life.

It was seen as an advancement in Christian thinking. It was not seen as a secular phenomenon until the 1700s.

Renaissance Europe was not an individualistic society by any means. To make such a claim is blatantly absurd. Watch William Shakespeare plays. The characters behave in a very collectivist and communal manner. Before Shakespeare nearly all plays were “morality plays” that had some kind of lesson for the audience. Shakespeare’s plays were pretty much the same way with there always being a moral lesson in the play. The only difference being that it was more subtle as not as overt and hitting you over the head with the morality lesson.

Yeah I’m gonna need a little more evidence then your word for there being “a lot of faggotry” in the cities.

[Outcast9428]

@Outcast9428

I thought this is interesting

One thing I will point out: IQ isn’t strictly a “race” thing. A huge part of why Europeans are they way they are is because Middle Ages Europe’s method of law enforcement killed about 1% of their population ever year. Over the course of a few centuries they literally killed off much of the portion of the population with lowlife instincts. And they did this in a Climate with harsh winters while dealing with near constant Turkish/Muslim incursions and invasions.

Africa by contrast has had no such event in their history yet. If anything the endless resources funneled their way have an extremely dysgenic effect.

I guarantee that if you had a situation in Africa where they have several centuries of anyone who exhibits Sociopathic underclass behavior being brutally executed that the attributes of the population would be very different on the other side of that time period.

I’ve read something similar to that, that being said I doubt it could’ve been 1% of the population every year. That is an enormous execution rate that would’ve statistically resulted in half the population dying at the gallows if true. So I strongly question the specific number they gave. But the essence of it is true. Japan actually did the same thing during after the Sengoku era ended and the shogun was trying to pacify Japan. Large numbers of criminals in both post-Sengoku Japan and in Medieval Europe were executed. Women who slept with men like that were cast out of society as whores.

They used executions because they didn’t have prisons like we do to hold people indefinitely, but mass incarceration basically accomplishes the same outcome of taking criminals out of the gene pool.

[Outcast9428]

Your ideology is basically 1950s Christianity which is exactly what led to current degeneracy. You have to go back before the Second Great Awakening to find a mainstream Christian understanding that actually makes sense.

I think the 1950s was good enough for the most part. It’s not like my own personal utopian society which would be much more specific and extensive. My own utopian society would be a theocratic society… But that sort of thing isn’t realistic for the United States. It would never happen so I’m not really going to try and push for that.

Reviving the 1950s culture on the other hand is actually pretty realistic. And the 1950s was a really nice time to be alive. Over 90% of the population got married, monogamy was the expectation, we didn’t have all those creepy fetishes around, and people married young too… The youngest ages of marriage in our nation’s entire history. Girls married at 20 years old and men at 23. People got engaged to marry at 19 and 22 respectively. Most women in the 50s were stay at home moms and love was the most important thing to them.

And for me, that sounds plenty good enough. I don’t think going back to 1800s America would really be better anyway. They had terrible working hours, the average age of marriage was higher, and there was a higher prevalence of the more sketchy ideas like slavery for example, lynching people, and hitting your kids or your wife.

The 1950s were only superficially good. It was doomed as I described in Who to blame for modern culture. There I mentioned banning prostitution and women's suffrage. Either of these is enough to destroy civilization. I also discussed the 1950s in In Defense of Feminism. Women's dress was only reasonably modest before 1920. But in addition to all these things, Christianity had become superficial by the 1950s. As I described in The Rise and Fall of Christian Culture, the loss of doubt in Christianity led to Christians not reading the Bible. Outside of Anabaptism, Christians had lost all meaningful understanding of their religion by 1950. The result was that they were shallow people. The cultural revolution of the 1960s was basically a (well justified) revolution against the shallowness of the 1950s. The movie "Harold and Maude" does a good job of showing this.

I feel like you haven’t really done a good job of proving why the 1950s was supposedly too shallow to be considered good enough. What they are showing in the movies can easily be changed by not having immoral people in charge of the film industry. If women in the 50s were mostly attracted to bad boys then why did almost everyone marry despite the 1950s having the lowest levels of violent crime in our nation’s history?

If you go back to the 1700s for example, the murder rate in the colonies was about 20-25 per 100,000. Even in King John’s era during the 1200s the murder rate in England was only 10 per 100,000 so the colonies in America 5 centuries later were twice as dangerous. So how could the murder rate be so high if society was effectively shunning thugs and bad boys and kicking them out of the gene pool?

The violent crime rate in the 1900s and 1910s was also higher then the murder rate in the 50s was. So if the 50s had a higher marriage rate, people got married at younger ages, and the crime rate was at its lowest too. Then isn’t the most logical conclusion that the 1950s was actually more effectively traditional then the eras that came before it? Yes the pillars of subversion were there but all you need to do is take those pillars out and you wouldn’t get what happened in the 60s and 70s.

I don’t see how a permanent 1950s society is one to fear at all.

[Lucas88]

I have never known a Christian to say that my family members are heretics or anything like that. You may have encountered a particularly bizarre cult because my entire family is Christian conservatives and I also met a small group of Christian conservatives back in college, my ex girlfriend was Christian conservative, her parents were hardcore traditionalists on the level of MrMan. I dated two girls, one in high school the other in college (although she didn’t attend my college) who were very religious. My girlfriend now and her parents are also Christian conservatives. I have a lot more experience in this “world” so to speak then you do and I’ve never encountered anyone acting like that. Like I said, not all Christians are the same but behavior like that, even among very religious people, is a minority.

No, you haven't understood what I wrote. Fundamentalist Christians - and let's be clear that such fundies are the only authentic Christians since they at least try to base their beliefs on the Bible to the foot of the letter - teach that every man is born a sinner (viz. Original Sin) and that anybody who is not saved (i.e., not a Christian) is going to hell. That can include "fake Christians" who claim to be Christians but don't really follow the doctrines of the Bible. This is what the Bible teaches. And that's why fundamentalist churches encourage their flock to go out and evangelize. Liberal Christians who don't believe in the exclusivity of the gospel and that all non-Christians are going to hell, on the other hand, are not teaching biblical Christianity. In other words, they're not real Bible-believing Christians.

Don't arrogantly kid yourself that you've had more experience in that "world" than I have, kiddo. I was part of a fairly typical Evangelical church back in the day and actually studied the Bible and Christian theology for a few years. That was before I came to realize that it was all BS and left. You on the other hand even admit that you haven't read most of the Bible, let alone studied it. You don't even understand your own religion. You're clueless about what it really teaches. Yet you start attending church with your Christian girlfriend and now you think you understand Christianity and even start preaching to people on the forum that they need "Jesus" to find happiness. You don't know what crazy world actual biblical Christianity really is. It's not the lovey-dovey path of light that you think it is.

Yes, not all Christians behave the same way. But that's because many Christians don't actually practice their religion as laid out in the New Testament. They're not true Bible-believing Christians. They're more like unwitting LARPers who believe in a watered-down pop Christianity. That's especially the case in countries like the US where Christianity is mainstream. I'm not passing judgment here, by the way. I couldn't care less. I'm not a Christian. Real Christian doctrine is found in the New Testament and the core elements have been elucidated quite clearly. The core message is that all people are born sinners, acceptance of Jesus' blood sacrifice for the atonement of Original Sin (together with complete submission to Jesus and his teachings) is the only path to salvation, and that all people who don't follow Jesus' sole path to salvation are unsaved and will therefore be condemned to perdition. In accordance with the Bible's standard, anybody who doesn't believe this and act accordingly isn't a real Christian.

When Christianity is practiced in its authentic and biblical form (or at least in a form that comes close to that standard), it does indeed become really bizarre, cruel and psychologically abusive. That's why you can find thousands of testimonies of ex-Christians who talk in depth about how that religion messed their minds up and ruined their lives, often for decades. The real teachings of Christianity are generally bad and often downright perverse. But what do you expect from a derivative of Judaism? Everything that comes from the Jews is bound to be perverse and evil.

@Pixel--Dude, @Tsar and I are strong and perspicacious souls. We were able to see through all of the indoctrination and cruelty and break free. Christians will say that we are "evil" and "Satanic", but that's because they're indoctrinated by their little fruitcake Jew cult. Darkness masquerades as light.

Yeah I’m gonna need a little more evidence then your word for there being “a lot of faggotry” in the cities.

If you're really interested in "faggotry during the Italian Renaissance", then here is an article about faggotry and its relationship to Neo-Platonic thought:

https://retrospectjournal.com/2019/11/1 ... adolescent.

In the context of Florentine male homosexual culture, the Neoplatonic concept of love provided a route to explain and justify sodomy. Male homosexuality in Florence was widespread, and relatively accepted as long as it followed existing relations of power, despite Church doctrine denouncing the practice. This meant the most common form of male homosexual relations was pederasty, an “active” older male and a “passive” adolescent. Inverting this situation was viewed as a threat to the existing social system, hence Salvi Panuzzi, a prolific sodomite, was only sentenced to death once he had admitted to being sodomised. The Neoplatonist concept of love provided a route to understanding pederasty by arguing “heavenly love” was “more properly directed…towards men.” As the male intellect was deemed superior to the female, it was deemed close male bonds provided a better route to unity with God through love.

I've read similar things in other sources too, by the way.

Why wouldn't there have been a lot of faggotry in the Italian city states? Are you really naïve enough to believe that everybody were pious Bible-believing Christians who didn't practice "degeneracy" due to their unfaltering Christian faith? Lol!

The Catholic church was officially opposed to homosexuality throughout the Renaissance but I guess that the Cathos in the Vatican didn't really mind since the Catholic church has always been full of faggots anyway!

The Renaissance certainly wasn't "completely 100% Christian" like you asserted. Lol! It definitely had strong Pagan and classical elements intermixed with a preexisting yet changing Catholic culture.

[Cornfed]

No, you haven't understood what I wrote. Fundamentalist Christians - and let's be clear that such fundies are the only authentic Christians since they at least try to base their beliefs on the Bible to the foot of the letter - teach that every man is born a sinner (viz. Original Sin) and that anybody who is not saved (i.e., not a Christian) is going to hell.

That is an Augustinian belief he came up with to refute the Pelagian Heresy. It is not Biblical.

[Lucas88]

No, you haven't understood what I wrote. Fundamentalist Christians - and let's be clear that such fundies are the only authentic Christians since they at least try to base their beliefs on the Bible to the foot of the letter - teach that every man is born a sinner (viz. Original Sin) and that anybody who is not saved (i.e., not a Christian) is going to hell.

That is an Augustinian belief he came up with to refute the Pelagian Heresy. It is not Biblical.

I understand that you have your own idiosyncratic version of Christianity (I've actually checked out your blog!), but the New Testament is quite clear about fundamental Christian doctrines and salvation. Those Christians who actually attempt to follow the teachings of the Bible are the truest ones.

Unless, of course, you are suggesting that Christians should just throw the New Testament out and start making up doctrines that they want to believe?

[Cornfed]

I understand that you have your own idiosyncratic version of Christianity (I've actually checked out your blog!), but the New Testament is quite clear about fundamental Christian doctrines and salvation.

Eh, the NT isn't always clear. Whereabouts does it give that version of the original sin?

[Outcast9428]

I feel like you haven’t really done a good job of proving why the 1950s was supposedly too shallow to be considered good enough. What they are showing in the movies can easily be changed by not having immoral people in charge of the film industry. If women in the 50s were mostly attracted to bad boys then why did almost everyone marry despite the 1950s having the lowest levels of violent crime in our nation’s history?

If you go back to the 1700s for example, the murder rate in the colonies was about 20-25 per 100,000. Even in King John’s era during the 1200s the murder rate in England was only 10 per 100,000 so the colonies in America 5 centuries later were twice as dangerous. So how could the murder rate be so high if society was effectively shunning thugs and bad boys and kicking them out of the gene pool?

The violent crime rate in the 1900s and 1910s was also higher then the murder rate in the 50s was. So if the 50s had a higher marriage rate, people got married at younger ages, and the crime rate was at its lowest too. Then isn’t the most logical conclusion that the 1950s was actually more effectively traditional then the eras that came before it? Yes the pillars of subversion were there but all you need to do is take those pillars out and you wouldn’t get what happened in the 60s and 70s.

I don’t see how a permanent 1950s society is one to fear at all.

The only reason the 1950s seemed better on paper is because when some girl got pregnant, she stayed pregnant. Anti-conception wasn't a thing as it is now, and abortion wasn't legal, although it did happen. A lot of marriages were shotgun marriages, hence the age at first marriage being a lot younger than it is today, but this wasn't talked about publicly a lot.

If you went back to all the values and belief systems of the 1950s today, but anti-conception was still around, you still wouldn't solve any of societies major problems, as people wouldn't get accidentally pregnant often enough. Birth rate would remain low as a result and the age at first marriage wouldn't rise an awful lot without all the shotgun marriages.

I honestly think some sort of Taliban-esque effort to forcibly prevent girls and women from receiving any form of schooling is, at this point, the only way to set things straight and build a society akin to the one you wish to see. Half-measures won't work. Not unless literally an entire generation "wakes up" as one and starts living life the way you advocate them to. Truth is, even among young conservatives of today, you're a little fringe. I reckon the same can be said of your friends. And none of you will ever install some sort of dictatorship to enforce your morality upon society. So... what changes, really?

You're radical, my friend. But you're nowhere near radical enough. And I think there is something inherently weak about modern Christianity that causes it too fail. It seems that only Islamic societies and certain African countries really keep women in check and curtail their rights to such a degree that birth rates remain high and the female population largely uneducated. For your ideal society to work and "nice guys" to thrive in America, you'd need a complete overhaul of American society far more radical than anything anyone in the world has done, ever.

Yeah, I know I’m a little fringe. And I do think the idea of me and my friends getting into power and forcing things to be the way we want them to, like truly achieve our ideal, is a pipe dream. But one can still reverse things to the point where they’re just good enough. Right now, society is intolerably decadent.

If I really could do anything I would be more radical but I can’t. There is no foundation for Taliban style reforms to American society at all. The constitution itself would make that impossible. Furthermore, I don’t think it’s really the right thing to do for America. A 1950s type culture is about as far as you can go before you start infringing on the very idea of what America is. The foundation of this country is built on enlightenment principles and virtually everybody here supports that. America’s commitment to that idea is so strong that America will go down in flames before this country would ever accept something like that. So it’s up to this country to figure out if the whole experiment works. If it does go down in flames… That will be sad for me personally. It is my country after-all. It doesn’t need to be perfect for me to feel attachment to it. But I would like to see somebody show everybody else “the way” so to speak.

I do think it’s possible for the Asian countries to do something like that though and possibly set an example for the rest of history.

[Outcast9428]

@Lucas88

I am reading the Bible but I’m starting from the beginning and haven’t made a whole lot of progress on it because it is very long and takes a lot of analyzing each page to understand. Plus I’m reading other books at the same time. It will definitely take me awhile but I intend to read the entire Bible from front to back.

I’ll address other points later on but I’m a bit busy at the moment.

[Outcast9428]

I do think it’s possible for the Asian countries to do something like that though and possibly set an example for the rest of history.

So you are more or less saying that you're accepting the fact that the changes it would take for the American people to be saved are so alien to them, that you're kind of okay with your people and culture slowly withering away and dying out? Because if those Asian countries you so admire were to turn the tide by being as radical as they need to be... and America fails to do the same because Americans are too stubborn and will resist the change...

Give me liberty or give me death, and I suppose eventually, death it will be. Perhaps for the Americans to survive, the American culture itself has to die. Because it could very well be that that culture itself is what causes the degeneracy in the first place, and spreads it around the globe.

It’s more like I’m accepting it as inevitable, at least, if your theory is right. Let’s use an example, taking away women’s right to vote… Doing that would be insanely hard. Womens suffrage is now written into our constitution. In order to repeal a constitutional amendment you need two thirds of both the house and the senate to agree to it. After that, you need three quarters of the states to agree to it. Meaning If 13 states say no, it will fail.

Almost nobody believes women’s right to vote should be taken away. Not even in the most conservative states in America would something like that even get 5% of Americans support. Keep in mind that even all the way back in 1918, they already had such an overwhelming level of support for letting women vote that they got two thirds of an all male congress and three quarters of the states to agree on letting women vote. And women weren’t even allowed at the time to vote for their own suffrage.

How do you reverse that? You literally are gonna have to get a large chunk of women to support getting rid of their own right to vote. Not to mention you’d have to get all the racial minorities in America to put aside their differences and come together for the sake of destroying women’s suffrage.

And even if you managed to do it sneakily, if you don’t have the support of the majority of men, you’re screwed because they would just demand the issue be put back up on the ballot to be voted on again and whichever political party was responsible for pushing through the new amendment would have its reputation destroyed forever.

It’s not possible. It would take a literal civil war to make that happen. Our constitution was carefully designed to make it extremely hard to change.

[Outcast9428]

@Lucas88

Reading that article, the statistics they are citing are simply too extreme to be accurate. It’s possible that large numbers of people were accused of sodomy but 2 thirds of the men engaging in it? No way. Even modern day Tel Aviv doesn’t have anywhere near that much faggotry. Something like 33% of men in Tel Aviv have done gay things and that’s in a city where there is a kind of pressure to be gay. Why would twice as many men be gay in a society that strongly discourages it and gives people no reason to be gay?

I suspect a lot of men got falsely accused. If that many people were getting accused of sodomy then clearly the society wasn’t as accepting as the article is making it out to be. They may have believed that sodomy was an increasing issue in the city and thus launched a kind of witch hunt. Perhaps it was increasing in prevalence… Hard to say. But to act like most of the guys were faggots doesn’t line up with the biological reality that most men are completely heterosexual and would find acts like that to be disgusting.

[Tsar]

@Lucas88

Reading that article, the statistics they are citing are simply too extreme to be accurate. It’s possible that large numbers of people were accused of sodomy but 2 thirds of the men engaging in it? No way. Even modern day Tel Aviv doesn’t have anywhere near that much faggotry. Something like 33% of men in Tel Aviv have done gay things and that’s in a city where there is a kind of pressure to be gay. Why would twice as many men be gay in a society that strongly discourages it and gives people no reason to be gay?

I suspect a lot of men got falsely accused. If that many people were getting accused of sodomy then clearly the society wasn’t as accepting as the article is making it out to be. They may have believed that sodomy was an increasing issue in the city and thus launched a kind of witch hunt. Perhaps it was increasing in prevalence… Hard to say. But to act like most of the guys were faggots doesn’t line up with the biological reality that most men are completely heterosexual and would find acts like that to be disgusting.

I agree with @Outcast9428. There is absolutely no way two-thirds of men anywhere would engage in homosexuality, especially not in the Renaissance. Homosexuality whether it's genuine homosexuality or bisexuality would not add up to that much. I think only a combined total of 2%-3% would be the most likely range.

Most of modern homosexuality and bisexuality is purely because of propaganda, media promotion, and normalization. It's also celebrated. Beyond a certain percentage, homosexuality and bisexuality are just the result of propaganda and indoctrination.

There was no homosexual propaganda back during the Renaissance. People were expected to marry as virgins.

[fschmidt]

It seems that only Islamic societies and certain African countries really keep women in check and curtail their rights to such a degree that birth rates remain high and the female population largely uneducated.

Both traditional Anabaptism and Orthodox Judaism also work for keeping women decent. It isn't clear exactly what rules are needed for this, but it is quite clear that modern culture is a lost cause and should be exterminated.

[Outcast9428]

@Lucas88

Reading that article, the statistics they are citing are simply too extreme to be accurate. It’s possible that large numbers of people were accused of sodomy but 2 thirds of the men engaging in it? No way. Even modern day Tel Aviv doesn’t have anywhere near that much faggotry. Something like 33% of men in Tel Aviv have done gay things and that’s in a city where there is a kind of pressure to be gay. Why would twice as many men be gay in a society that strongly discourages it and gives people no reason to be gay?

I suspect a lot of men got falsely accused. If that many people were getting accused of sodomy then clearly the society wasn’t as accepting as the article is making it out to be. They may have believed that sodomy was an increasing issue in the city and thus launched a kind of witch hunt. Perhaps it was increasing in prevalence… Hard to say. But to act like most of the guys were faggots doesn’t line up with the biological reality that most men are completely heterosexual and would find acts like that to be disgusting.

I agree with @Outcast9428. There is absolutely no way two-thirds of men anywhere would engage in homosexuality, especially not in the Renaissance. Homosexuality whether it's genuine homosexuality or bisexuality would not add up to that much. I think only a combined total of 2%-3% would be the most likely range.

Most of modern homosexuality and bisexuality is purely because of propaganda, media promotion, and normalization. It's also celebrated. Beyond a certain percentage, homosexuality and bisexuality are just the result of propaganda and indoctrination.

There was no homosexual propaganda back during the Renaissance. People were expected to marry as virgins.

It is true that in Renaissance Europe, people were expected to marry as virgins... Or at the very least, marry the first person they had sex with (outside of prostitution that is). Watching the Romeo and Juliet play, you think about how the events of the entire play occur over the course of a few days. Romeo met Juliet, they fell in love, got married like two or three days later. And when Romeo believed Juliet to be dead, he was so distraught that he lost the will to live and killed himself. This idea is unfathomable to people today. Even for the time period it may have been a bit exaggerated, but it still goes to show some basic assumptions that people at the time period made that nobody really makes today.

This is because, as you've mentioned, people did in-fact believe in the idea of a spiritual marriage between you and the first person you had sex with. The way they saw it, you didn't get a second chance. If you've had sex, that's the person you're supposed to spend the rest of your life with and trying to do it with anyone else was bound to result in failure. So Romeo killed himself because he literally did not believe he would get another chance at love.

I think the reason why people don't really believe that anymore is because of doubt. There are people who get married, who had sex with previous partners, who still have good marriages. The odds are probably reduced a little for each person one has sex with, but not as dramatically as people once thought. Even if that is the case. That doesn't mean the idea of marrying as virgins has no merit. Making it a normalized cultural practice still has merit, regardless of whether the difference between people marrying as virgins as opposed to marrying someone who's had a few ex-boyfriends is a large difference or a small one.

[Lucas88]

Reading that article, the statistics they are citing are simply too extreme to be accurate. It’s possible that large numbers of people were accused of sodomy but 2 thirds of the men engaging in it? No way. Even modern day Tel Aviv doesn’t have anywhere near that much faggotry. Something like 33% of men in Tel Aviv have done gay things and that’s in a city where there is a kind of pressure to be gay. Why would twice as many men be gay in a society that strongly discourages it and gives people no reason to be gay?

I suspect a lot of men got falsely accused. If that many people were getting accused of sodomy then clearly the society wasn’t as accepting as the article is making it out to be. They may have believed that sodomy was an increasing issue in the city and thus launched a kind of witch hunt. Perhaps it was increasing in prevalence… Hard to say. But to act like most of the guys were faggots doesn’t line up with the biological reality that most men are completely heterosexual and would find acts like that to be disgusting.

The percentage is certainly trumped up by false accusations but that doesn't necessarily mean that faggotry wasn't rife since Fiorenza (and it's Fiorenza, by the way, not that butchered Anglo "Florence" pronunciation) did have a reputation for it. The fact that faggotry was being investigated so much by the church authorities may suggest that it was somewhat prevalent at that time.

About 7% of men are either gay or bisexual to some degree in modern Western culture. But the rate of bisexuality is known to vary by culture and epoch. It may have been higher in Renaissance Italy, especially in the wealthy and prosperous cosmopolitan cities such as Fiorenza. The Mediterranean soul is less moralistic than the Anglo or Germanic soul, even with Catholicism. It is also more rebellious and less concerned with rules. This is why I think that bisexuality could indeed have been more prevalent than usual in Renaissance Fiorenza.

Moreover, homosexual acts were more or less tolerated as long as they followed a culturally acceptable pattern with the social superior assuming the active role and the social inferior the passive role. This was common in Latin cultures. As per the article, it was usually only when this culturally accepted pattern was violated that punitive action was taken, as was the case of the "prolific sodomite" Salvi Panuzzi. This semi-acceptable status of certain homosexual acts might have served to take away much of the stigma, especially among those who weren't devout Catholics.

Finally, as the article explains, the faggotry in Fiorenza was being encouraged and justified to some degree in Neo-Platonist circles with the belief that "heavenly love was more properly directed towards men". Maybe that kind of thought accounted for an increase in prevalence.