Yeah, and most world religions also used to treat women like property and condone racism and slavery, and some still do at least the first of those. Doesn’t make it good or right or just or fair or decent.
The basic idea is to maximize the personal rights and freedoms of all. Murder, theft, coercion and lying infringe upon other people’s right to live, to have, to choose and to know. But homosexuality and the other things I listed as social choices are no skin off anybody else’s nose. And no, Christian fundamentalists and the otherwise devout and pious have no more right to not be offended by other peoples’ non-freedom-infringing words or behavior than jihadis do. And the former generally recognize this, which is why they have been far better fits in free societies than the latter have. It’s that non-coercion principle. You don’t like it, don’t do it, but don’t try forcing anybody else not to do it too. Try talking them out of it if you wish, but don’t work to pass oppressive, puritanical laws or resort to terrorism and murder.
The basic maxim followed to decide which behaviors fall on the permitted-yet-not-mandatory list and which fall on the forbidden list is this: All people should have all rights and freedoms that do not infringe upon the rights and freedoms of others, and where conflicts between competing rights and freedoms inevitably occur, they should be resolved by equal, reciprocal, and proportional compromise.
