As a Christian adult, with a priest for a stepfather and a Vicar and Canon for a mother, who has attended a variety of churches regularly for the entirety of my life, have actually met more explicitly atheist homophobics than I have Christian ones.
Not saying that there aren't homophopic Christians out there, but it's actually rather offensive to assume that a lack of explicitly homosexual, bisexual, or alternate-sexuality characters suggests that the author is a Christian.
PS: Yes, two men who are best friends are allowed to kiss without it being sexual, especially during Elizabethan and Jacobian England where the concept of romantic friendship was not considered as odd as it often is now. Curiously enough, statistically, the more accepting society is of same-sex romantic-sexual relationships, the less accepting it tends to be of same-sex romantic friendships, which are a different matter. This seems to be because people start to automatically assume that all passionate displays of affection must indicate a sexual undercurrent at least. Interestingly enough, it has actually been suggested that either Shakespeare himself was bisexual, or that he was merely in a romantic friendship that later scholars simply assumed was sexual because it is no longer considered "normal" for men to have such strong bonds.
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As a Christian adult, with a priest for a stepfather and a Vicar and Canon for a mother, who has attended a variety of churches regularly for the entirety of my life, have actually met more explicitly atheist homophobics than I have Christian ones.
Not saying that there aren't homophopic Christians out there, but it's actually rather offensive to assume that a lack of explicitly homosexual, bisexual, or alternate-sexuality characters suggests that the author is a Christian.
PS: Yes, two men who are best friends are allowed to kiss without it being sexual, especially during Elizabethan and Jacobian England where the concept of romantic friendship was not considered as odd as it often is now. Curiously enough, statistically, the more accepting society is of same-sex romantic-sexual relationships, the less accepting it tends to be of same-sex romantic friendships, which are a different matter. This seems to be because people start to automatically assume that all passionate displays of affection must indicate a sexual undercurrent at least. Interestingly enough, it has actually been suggested that either Shakespeare himself was bisexual, or that he was merely in a romantic friendship that later scholars simply assumed was sexual because it is no longer considered "normal" for men to have such strong bonds.