What people fail to understand is that we are born with certain basic emotions and moral senses. "Gay is bad" isn't a construction of man or religion. It exists in your brain when we are born. We evolved as a species. Homosexuality, whether you have an opinion on the right or wrong or are indifferent, still poses an evolutionary problem and there is zero evolutionary benefit to either the individual or group.
Monotheistic religions are nothing more than sets moral laws which are precisely what allowed people to live in larger and larger groups. The rules combined with the sense of "being watched all the time" coupled with "you'll go to hell if you fuck up" turn out to be insanely powerful motivators for positive behavior in groups. In fact, any cult that is based on religious beliefs of one sort or another has an infinitely greater survival rate than those whose beliefs do not incorporate religion. Religions encourage positive behavior, charity, benevolence, binds people together and so on to a much greater degree than anything else, or a lack of religion. Pointing to a few radical Muslims who live in caves and are understandably unhappy and violent, does not demonstrate that throughout history, religion has played a central role in allowing people to live in larger communities more successfully. It has been a key player in developing cooperative behaviors that have never been rivaled by any species in the history of the world. Apes still don't even cooperate. Two chimps will not pick up a log and move it together, for the benefit of each or others.
Most of those senses of right, wrong, fair, unfair, profane and so on are what we are born with. They are not learned. A 6 month old infant has a sense of right and wrong, feels empathy and compassion, understands fair and unfair and possesses a basic moral foundation and forms basic moral judgments. [
A good book on that subject] It's not learned. The only thing that is learned is how we fully develop those pre-existing frameworks.. but we never spontaneously decide that putting poop in food is a good idea or that incest or bestiality is fine based on reason. We use reason to expand our ideas of why those things are wrong.
What interests me about these conversations is watching how perplexed people are, attempting to apply reason to overcome what are innate human traits. No amount of reason will convince you poop is good to eat, touch and play with. No amount of reason will convince you incest is perfectly ok (another innate moral judgement). No amount of reason will convince you that playing with a dead body is fine to do. That eating rotten food is fine. Emotions like disgust are innate and serve a purpose (whether you agree with that purpose or not). Just as no amount of reason is going to convince ALL people that being gay is ok. The reaction is not rational. It's an intuitive moral judgement which happens before conscious awareness. Everything we express unconsciously such as intuitive judgement's are instantaneous, what follows afterwards once consciousness comes into play is just a clumsy post hoc rationalization to rationalize that emotion. It will rarely make any logical sense. This is how we all go about our day. Reason and rational judgement, has very little to do with anything.
Here is a truly disturbing thing for those who profess to have no problem with gays or blacks that your unconscious brain and intuitive emotional reactions reveal about your "better than thou" character when tested. You're lying. This has been tested to death. Those who claim to have no bias, have at best, only a slightly smaller negative emotional reaction in testing to those who admit bias or are proud of their bias. The primary difference is simply how one denies/hides it and others admit it.
I am not defending monotheistic religion... just pointing out their purpose and motive.