Freedomain Radio

But that seems more like repeating violent behavior.  Not love towards other men.

Also, what about the women?

John Ess:

But that seems more like repeating violent behavior.  Not love towards other men.

Also, what about the women?

Yes, I think that was the point I was trying to make.  That homosexuality in Afghanistan is not like in the West.  In the West homosexuality is seen mostly as the physical aspect of two men/two women in love that most would say is the domain of a heterosexual relationship.  In Afghanistan, the homosexuality practiced there seems more like a response to the unavailability of women.  Women who have pre-marital relations in Afghanistan and most Islamic countries do so at the risk of death while men with other men are tolerated or even accepted, as a sort of outlet for pent up sexual desire that can not be fulfilled until marriage.  Also women do not accompany men in traveling to look for work or campaigning during warfare.  Women, for lack of a better term are seen as breeders and their lives are confined to doing just that and being domesticates.  Men (even married ones and especially unmarried ones due to segregation of the sexes until marriage) spend most of their lives in the company of other men.  Given this at some point opportunistic homosexuality will occur, like in US prison, but it has permeated all of Afghan culture and indeed the culture of most Islamic countries due to their very strict segregation of the sexes.

The victim becomes victimizer makes me think that pederasty over there is simply a victim lashing out now at new victims rather than stopping the cycle of abuse.  I can imagine that someone repeatedly raped as a child with nothing done to stop it becomes numb to the horror at some point or simply resigned to it.  That same person when grown and put in the role of victimizer by his peers and culture will more than likely repeat the violence than not participate or even seek to stop it.

So, I hope that no one thought I was in anyway denegrating loving homosexual relationships or conflating homosexual rape with them either.  Rape is rape no matter the gender(s) involved.  I was simply trying to make the point that homosexuality is seen in the West as more of a lifestyle label that is determined by certain physical/sexual acts whereas in Afghanistan the physical acts hold no greater inference as to a particular pattern of behavior or lifestyle of those involved.  Indeed, the physical acts seem to be more prevalent and accepted in Afghanistan while the lifestyle (being exclusively homosexual) would be decried.  In the West the lifestyle seems to be more accepted but tends to try and gloss over or deny the underlying sexual aspect of the label; that is Americans tend to be very comfortable with the horrible caricatures or stereotypes of gay people and all things "gay" but do not think too much on what exactly it is that gay men and gay women do with each other.  

Homosexuality does seem to get a lot of negative attention, mostly because it's anomalous and strange to the vast majortity of people.  So people associate it with crime, although straight men commit just as many (or more) of the domestic abuses. 

For this reason it bothers me that people assume there's a correlation between abuse and homosexuality.  I don't think that's ever been shown.  Sure, there are cultural instances where men have sex with boys, but these are probably just as common as straight men travelling overseas to have sex with little girls in Thailand.

I wouldn't call the rape of other men homosexuality necessarily, either.  More like just plain old sadism.

I suspect that many of them probably are homosexuals.  Or at least have mother issues which make them afraid of women, but I would not say it is their motivation for that sexual act.  People have said the same of rape:  is it really attraction or unmitigated urge?  It might be in some sense, but on a different level than sexuality or the expression thereof.