How to Make Sapients Non-Homophobic from the Start?

Question

For my World, Damarian (Link to its introduction here), I want to ensure that all of the species (except possibly the Aeritheans) are accepting of the entire queer community, through the influencing of a God named Era. These alien sapients are not homophobic, and remain that way with no chance of their societies changing to be homophobic.

The goal is to create pressures that allow for the maintenance of totally accepting societies, through the influencing of the God Era that will remain that way. This society would allow everyone to love everyone else, allow everyone to be whatever gender they want, and mean no one has to come out as LGBT. This should occur at an early stage (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age) and easily continue throughout societal development.

How will Era, with only mild influencing, make all of the Damarian societies LGBT-accepting, if not LGBT welcoming, and ensure that society won't develop to be reverse this?

Little facts that can help you:

• Era is the goddess of love (Based off of the Greek god Eros, the Greek version of Cupid), who, like her equivalent, shoots people with arrows to make them fall in love. This means LGBT love too, but Era should only have a minor part of making Damarians LGBT-welcoming (Like slight influencing) not smiting homophobes and manifesting and telling them to accept or be smote.

• Mild influencing includes: Using her clerics as messengers to proclaim a LGBT-accepting messages, giving homophobes horrifying visions to steer them away from homophobia, helping create protests and, as a last resort, make riots and rebellions.

• Mild influencing does not include: Smiting, gaining direct command of the government, and mass mind control.

Answer 1

I reject your sexuality and substitute in my own

Remember how Era controls who falls in love with who? This means people are not actually in control of their sexuality. People claim to be straight, bi, or homosexual, but Era is the one actually doing the matchmaking archery. So everyone's sexuality is just an opinion until the arrows start flying.

Why are you gay?

When someone asks "Why are you gay?" the response is "I don't know, ask Era." If you hate someone for being gay you are basically questioning Era's decision making process. You can blame Era, but you can't blame the person. You might even get people who say, "Why did Era make me straight? I had a bestie that I was ready to move in with but because we share genital type I don't feel attraction to them. Era made me sexually aroused by some total stranger and sexually disgusted by my best friend." Technically speaking there will always be homophobes and straightphobes since not everyone will like the choices Era has made for them.

Gay the pray away camp

Because of this there is no reason to have cleric turn people away from homophobia. Simply get Era to change people's sexuality whenever you need to. If you are Homophobic, you become homo. If you are Biphobic, you become Bi. If you are transphobic you become trans. Becoming gay or trans isn't a curse, so it isn't like you are inconveniencing bigots. Even then by being what they hate these people will eventually come to the conclusion that maybe people like them aren't too bad. Even if you do continue being a bigot no one will take you seriously. Nobody can successfully protest the degeneracy taking place in their own bedroom.

Extra:

Because Era controls who people fall in love with you can get any amount of people to be gay or bi or whatever you want. Just say Era has the same shipping standards as you and you will have done all the world building you need. Someone claims a matriarchy may lead some males to be straight? That society gets an Era arrow. Gay people don't show up in these proportions in real life? Give it an Era arrow. You don't know how to enforce mass polygamy? You guessed it, use the Era arrows.

Answer 2

Culture is made

Humans aren't born against LGBT. Just like people aren't born to hate certain music, or to hate certain ways of thinking. Even better. There are many different ways even for straight people to make love that are unthinkable to others. It gives us that many of these preferences are learnt behaviour. Sure biology has influence over it, but it doesn't mean its set in stone. There are plenty of creatures in nature showing such behaviour. I even once read that ducks can get into a weird group mentality where they engage in a sort of group rape and in the end necrophilia, regardless of gender on both the victim and offenders side. Bonobo monkeys use sex as a great stress relief and often help each other. Cows and birds. The list is long.

That means that if you have an accepting society it is hard to change. Depending on the wellbeing of the society people can be more deviant from the norm. If the society is well off and large populations thrn people can afford to think differently, as well as find likeminded people. Less well off and smaller societies are more difficult to stray from the norm, as people generally don't want to be outcasts and live less long if they are.

It also helps if authority figures are ok with LGBT, or practicing it.

Interestingly your god is based on Greek mythology. If a society was ok with lesbians and gays it's them. Their myths and legends are full of it, with a notable example of Narcissus, who fell in love with himself after rejecting Echo. Echo died in a cabe from grief and Afrodite was furious, avenging her daughter(?) making Narcissus fall in love with the person he saw when looking into the reflection of water.

So in the end it's just a matter of culture, which is learned. It isn't necessarily normal behaviour, but it isn't abnormal. That means it can be accepted just as easily. We've accepted real abnormal behaviour in some cultures, like human sacrifice or vegans. A naturally occuring thing is then much easier to get accepted in broad terms.

Answer 3

Non-LGBT Phobia Already IS the Default for Human Cultures

In addition to the Polynesian and Native American cultures that were not exposed to homophobia until more recent history, nearly every ancient civilization was pretty accepting of it. The Romans, Greeks, Celts, Egyptians, Canaanites, Persians, Babylonians, and Chinese all allowed for open homosexuality with very little if any public shame around the idea.

In fact, in some cases, homosexuals could have more rights than straights. In ancient Rome, a lesbian could earn the title "virago" which roughly translates to "having the virtue of a man", allowing her to earn the full rights of a male citizen which a straight women could never have.

The rise of homophobia in the world pretty much owes its entirety to a specific interpretation of Leviticus 18:22. The passage "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." lead to the prevailing belief among Abrahamic Religions that homosexuality is a sin. However, this passage may just be one of history's biggest misunderstandings. Based on context, it seems that the original scripture was meant to say that the 11 previous commands about women you should not sleep with also applies to male equivalent relationships. IE: if you should not sleep with your mother, you also should not sleep with your father. This is to say that even the civilization that originated homophobia may have itself been tolerant of homosexuality until language drift and strict tabooism manifested it.

Since the fear of homosexualty in the world stems pretty much entirely from a fear of damnation. Any world where people do not fear that homosexuality would offend their god(s) will generally be tolerant of it.

The Accepted Answer comes with Huge Unintended Consequences

The accepted answer "make it genetic" is inherently flawed because genetics define how you learn, not what you learn. There is no gene for Homophobia specifically because this is an ad-hoc learned disposition where people trying to enforce the rules of their society by rejecting homosexual behavior for the sole reason that it has been labeled an undesirable behavior.

To prevent this from happening at the genetic level, you need to make a person mentally incapable of forming opinions about other people's ethics, but this would result in a civilization incapable of forming laws of any sort. No consideration of other people's ethics means that murder, theft, rape, harassment, child abandonment, incest, pedophilia, etc. would not trigger any condemning behaviors from ones society. As such, society itself would be unable to form in any meaningful way.

While you can technically make people more gay genetically, thus reducing homophobia, this does not prevent learned behaviors from causing some cultures to become homophobic. For example, people are genetically omnivores, most people will eat meat not matter what, but there are still a bunch of vegetarians out there who are quite intolerant of others who eat meat.

Scripture does not drift if the god(s) are active in your society

So if you want a functional society without homophobia, your god(s) need to keep the capacity for homophobia there, but be active enough in the interpretation of scripture to make sure that no sect splinters off into some radical group that believes the gods are against it. This way if some papal figure comes along and says "the Gods say homosexuality is an abomination!" the gods could just step and and be like "Hey! we did not say that." So, there could be no accidental religious taboos to take root in your society. As such any pocket of learned homophobia would fail to spread.

Answer 4

I think that you are thinking about it in a very roundabout way. It seems that your underlying assumption is that homophobia and all other phobias associated with gender and reproduction are the norms. Therefore, you need to find a way to fight those phobias to make society more accepting and tolerant toward LGBTQ+. However, if your society is tolerant from the beginning those phobias will not exist at all. And your goddess and her priests will have no need to spread the messages of love and tolerance.

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I would suggest building your society on these principles:

1. sex is disassociated from reproduction;
2. affections and sexual attraction have a value of their own that is higher than the value of reproduction;
3. gender is seen as fluid;
4. LGBTQ+ behaviour is more common or more visible compared to our society.

You will most likely end up with promiscuous behaviour as a norm unless your species are true monogamous species.

(1) Sex: primarily pleasure and social bonding, reproduction is secondary

Your species should engage in sex as an activity that is not necessarily related to reproduction. This is not a farfetched idea, various monkey species do it. If reproduction is secondary, mating with a 'properly' sexed partner is much less important.

If reproduction is secondary and sex is primarily used for social bonding and pleasure, the appearance of religions similar to Abrahamic religions becomes unlikely. Abrahamic religions equate sex with reproduction in their orthodox forms. Thus, they create rules that are meant to increase reproductive success (for both males and females).

Era will need to pay attention to any early signs of religions that focus on reproduction and attempt to control sexual behaviours. Kill all prophets if necessary.

(2) Affection and sexual attraction are needed for reproduction, but reproduction is not the ultimate goal when it comes to relationships between mating partners

The first part is necessary to make sexual relationships consensual and prevent rape. The second part aims to place feelings above reproduction and give freedom in choosing one's partner. If this policy is implemented to the fullest extent you should expect promiscuity. You can try to counter it with social monogamy, but you need to remember that social monogamy has a goal of increasing reproductive success and links sex with reproduction which is counter to (1).

Era can promote the value and beauty of love and affection. She should also promote the idea that sex and gender are irrelevant. Love is strange and can create all kinds of relationships (or pairings if you need couples). You can try to introduce the notion of romantic love early, however, it is a big can of worms that I would suggest studying before opening. Western notion of romantic love is not as pure and innocent as it looks. It surely does not take into account that affections change and that sexual attraction and romantic feelings do not always have the same object.

(3) Gender fluidity

The notion of gender fluidity is necessary for the acceptance of people who do not identify with predominant sex and gender roles. This can be achieved in many ways. For example, at the early stages, the idea of souls can be very productive. If souls are independent of the bodies it is easy to explain and accept that sometimes souls end up in bodies that do not match their gender. Blame it on a drunken minor god who was in charge of distributing souls. Once your society learns about genetics and studies the brain sufficiently well, they will naturally find other explanations for gender fluidity (just like we are finding them now).

(4) Make LGBTQ+ behaviour more common

There is no real need to make everyone homosexual/pansexual/etc. Just increasing the number of LGBTQ+ individuals in such a way that every community has at least 1-2 of them should be enough to make the majority of people somewhat familiar with them. If your species are similar to humans, familiarity would decrease the potential for fear and hostility. Humans fear the unknown the most. And humans are very hostile toward things they fear.

I would expect that just implementation of (1), (2), (3) would lead to a significant increase in visibility of LGBTQ+ because no one will need to stay in a closet. So, you might not need to tweak any numbers.

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I want to mention one more thing. Matriarchy will not play a significant role when it comes to sex and gender. Women enforce social norms and rules no less than men do, even if these are patriarchal norms and rules that impose restrictions on women.

Answer 5

If you want to get different culture you would need to change the biological pressures that formed the culture on Earth.

In general, in pre-modern societies the one that had better reproduction rate took over the land and rule. It obviously took time, but in general is inevitable. That's why, for example, early, neolithic farmers took the land from hunter-gather groups even though the latter were healthier, stronger, more intelligent and possibly generally led better lives.

As result, the cultures often required people to procreate and make children. For example while various sexual relations were accepted in ancient Greece and Rome, people were still expected to marry heterosexual partner and raise children, no matter what orientation they were.

So, the less certain culture is pressed by others (like a powerful kingdom or alone in it's lands) or the more healthcare it has (reducing the need for babies to keep population growing), the bigger chance they will be more accepting for behaviors that reduce reproduction rate.

In specific case of Christianity, lack of acceptance of LGBT is historically connected with general lack of acceptance for pleasure in early Christianity. Any kind of pleasure, especially sexual. This was due to the idea that pleasure pulls people away from thinking about God and afterlife. As result even sexual relations in marriage were considered sinful unless resulting in a baby. LGBT people always do this for pleasure, so the logical conclusion happened.

BDW, the notion that female are weaker comes directly from the fact that in pre-modern societies females spend about 1/4-1/5 of their lives on average being pregnant and often died due to pregnancy. This left a little time for other activities in the age when the people are most physically active. Also without proper (modern) healthcare women were in fact weak and needing protection 3-4 months every pregnancy (both pre and post birth). Plus (again without modern healthcare) multiple pregnancies can deform body pelvic bone resulting in restricted mobility.

Answer 6

It may not be possible

As others have mentioned, homophobia isn't necessarily the default for human beings, and human cultures have varied massively in terms of LGBT acceptance throughout history. I don't want to point that out again, but I do want to highlight another broader point in the logic of the question being asked. The issue you have is that the societies in your story are meant to be universally homophilic, with no chance for anyone to ever develop bigoted beliefs or for those to be widespread.

Simply put, this is an almost impossible goal. The reason for this is that cultural norms evolve and change over time, and even when someone tries to put down a single cultural norm that is meant to be universally enforced for all time, there are schisms, cults, and sects of various beliefs that result in massively different standards. As an example, just look at the various Abrahamic faiths...

• Judaism and Islam consider eating pork to be a massive taboo, whereas Christians are fine with it
• Literalist interpretations of Leviticus frown on such things as eating shellfish or women wearing pants
• Mormonism and Islam were at times okay with polygyny, whereas most Christian sects tended to be rigidly monogamous
• Mormonism considers caffeine to be a taboo substance, whereas other denominations consume it with glee
• Mormonism believes that post-mortem conversions to Mormonism are okay, whereas most other sects regard it with horror
• Homophobia has varied wildly within Abrahamic sects, ranging from tolerance to outright persecution and killings
• Europe has had a 400 year slapfight over whether the Roman Church accurately speaks for God
• The various Anabaptist groups (Amish, Mennonites, and Hutterites) all reject modern technology and consider using it a grave sin, advocating "simple life". These sects also vary massively within their groups, with the Hutterites basically being communists.
• The Shakers were an extreme anti-natalist Christian sect who believed that bringing children into the world was a sin. Rather predictably, they are now extinct.
• There were so many different interpretations of the Bible that early Christians literally had a massive conference at Nicaea to determine which interpretations were and weren't okay, with the main conflict being over whether Jesus was God incarnated in human form or merely blessed by God, and ended up with a weird case of mutually exclusive doublethink in the form of trinitarianism. Notably there were a large number of Christian interpretations (most notably Nestorianism and Arianism) that were declared heresy because of this (both sects believed that Jesus was not a divine being), and were persecuted into near-oblivion.

Cultural attitudes vary massively as to what behaviors a group considers "right" or "wrong", even before getting into differences between individuals, even within a set of closely linked cultural groups.

To get back to your LGBT example, just to show how massively these beliefs can vary within one culture, the Sacred Band of Thebes was an army of 150 gay couples, which was controversial enough in the ancient world that Philip II of Macedonia referenced the controversy when he said the men in the Sacred Band fought bravely and with honor after their defeat, specifically drawing attention to the fact that some people disliked the Sacred Band for their homosexuality.

Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything unseemly.

Keep in mind this was in ancient Greece, where heterophobia was more a thing than homophobia ever was (e.g., Spartan women having to dress up like guys to entice their husbands to have sex with them). And of course the Greeks tended to frown on female homosexuality even as they elevated male sexuality as part of the general ancient Greek belief that regarded females as semi-sapient animals barely worth recording the lives of (yeah, the Greeks were messed up). The point is that even within Greece there was a massive spectrum of attitudes to LGBT acceptance.

This isn't even notable for Greece. Attitudes towards LGBT groups haven't even been consistent across history. Romans considered men giving penetration to be the height of manliness, but men receiving it to be shameful and homosexual, despite the massive double standard there. There's been a strange trend through history in that there is a massive double-standard in that gay men have often been treated much worse than women, for example the Nazis systematically killed gay men but gave most lesbians a pass because they were regarded as "asocial" or "asexual". Nazi Germany never had a law against lesbianism, and when lesbians were persecuted it was more because they refused to "embrace their role as breeding stock to perpetuate and expand the Aryan race" as the Nazis would have put it. Notably, lesbians never had to wear a pink triangle in concentration camps the way gay men did, and when they were sent there it was for some other charge.

The broader issue you have here is you could definitely make it such that acceptance of homosexuality is the dominant cultural view, you could even make it that homosexual relationships are commonly practiced by the majority of society (e.g., as in ancient Greece), you could make homophobia an extreme minority opinion only openly expressed in some underground cults, but it would be impossible to make everyone everywhere non-homophobic. As I've heard other people say "it's not possible to prevent someone from coming up with an idea". And if history is any indication, it's possible for anyone to use any difference between themselves and another person to justify bigotry and hatred. Even in a perfectly accepting society, it would be very easy for someone to adopt homophobic beliefs if they had the right life experiences that they saw as justifying their hatred (citation: look at the vast majority of racists and anti-semites out there and where these people claim their hatred stems from).

It wouldn't be possible to get rid of this without getting rid of people's capacity for individual thought, unless you had a real god systematically smiting anyone who dared to deviate from their outlined belief system. To put it another way, some cultures have tried manually exterminating LGBT people for centuries and failed miserably at it (and those are immutable traits, nothing as fluid as belief systems). If these cultures couldn't succeed at their persecution, what makes you think the opposite is just as attainable? When has anyone ever succeeded at stamping out hatred for any group, rather than reducing it to a marginalized opinion? You can't stop people from being stupid.

Answer 7

Make some (or all) of your deities openly homosexual, bisexual and transsexual.

If there are still other (strictly heterosexual) deities, make those straight deities never question other deities sexual orientation.

Answer 8

You can enforce it biologically. Make same sex intercourse mandatory for reproduction.

No single male has enough sperm to impregnate a female. In order for a successful impregnation, a male has to collect sperm from other males. The way he gets it is through a direct transference from their urethras to his prostate. He accumulates seed from, say, half a dozen or more companions and then he's ready to copulate with a female. In this manner, being homophobic will mean being a member of the VHEMT.

This means that a male can never be sure he is the biological father of offspring. Males could form allied groups closely bound by family ties in order to ensure their genes are more likely to pass on.

This would have a similar effect to what happens with chimps - females have sex with multiple males, so males are never sure about who's the father of offspring. This prevents infanticide like that which happens among gorillas and lions.

Answer 9

When food that I love is served and others don't like it, I always think "Yes, more for me!". This same logic actually also makes a lot of sense for straight, heterosexual men dealing with homosexual men. More men that are only sexually interested in each other means that there are more women left for the other men.

So in my opinion the only thing you will to change in your culture is to make the heterosexual men slightly more intelligent and think things through a little bit more.

Answer 10

Humans are naturally accepting, it’s just society that makes homophobia a thing. Have a society that treats the LGBTQ+ as equal to cishets, and discourages heteronormative ideologies.

Answer 11

God hates a bigot

Nothing rids a world of bigots faster than a divine smiting. If your world has gods then the easiest solution is god smites them when they appear.

Answer 12

Two Ideas

I have two possible ideas for this. The first is simply a gene. The gene could prevent the species from being violent towards their own species. It could alternativly make it so that all of them are genetically attracted to multiple genders or something, so that they are all born that way, making them accept it.

Idea Two: It is not genetic, but social. Many of the acceptence or not accetence of LGBTQIA+ is social, and rooted in religion. It most likely started with one or two people who are predjudiced and it spread from there. Since in your world dieties exist, that could mean that a vast majority of the population follows the religion set in place by those dieties. If they accept LGBTQIA+ people, then the followers most likely will.