'Religion' and 'Homosexuality'

Why do so many religious traditions have such a bad reputation when it comes to the issue of 'homosexuality'? I shall offer a rather reductionist reply to this question. The reason for this is that one central purpose of religious belief/practice is to establish that having babies is a 'good' thing. Therefore, most religious believers live within a conceptual universe that is characterised by the following series of consequences, 'love' leads to 'marriage' leads to 'babies'. In other words, it is only that 'love' that is sanctified in marriage and fructified through babies that is accepted/acceptable within a religious world-view. Which is why I refer to 'organised religions' as 'Machines for blessing the Baby'. In other words, the reason why homosexuality is condemned by (all?) religions is for the simple reason that such sexuality does not lead to the production of babies.

I am of not course suggesting that there is a logically inevitable connection between being 'religious' and being 'homophobic', for the one does not necessarily lead to the other. For example, one could still be religious and accept a form of love that does not seek babies as its culmination, and such a person may be able to accept (or at least 'tolerate') homosexuality.

So far, then, so good (or should I say so bad?). But why then are some people who claim to be non/anti-religious homophobic too? Once again, a reductionist reply : this is because such people are still holding on to some relic from a broken-down religious world-view that they otherwise claim to have discarded, and thereby continue to believe (a) that it is a good thing to have a baby, and (b) that the purpose of sexuality is to produce babies.

Here, then, are two basic questions : what makes us so sure that having a baby is a good thing? and, how can we justify this valuational claim? I personally view the claim that having babies is a good thing as a (carefully disguised) religious claim; and it is precisely for this reason that I refuse to regard atheists who have babies as 'true atheists'. I define a 'true atheist' as a person who believes that absolutely everything in this world is futile and meaningless; what, then, could be 'the point' of having a baby? By saying this I do not imply that atheists, whether they are 'true' or 'false', should stop having babies; only that they should acknowledge that the claim that bringing new life into this world is a good thing is a claim that cannot be justified according the canons of 'scientific rationality' which dictate that 'there are only 'facts', and all 'values' are figments of the human imagination'.