Srila Prabhupada on Human Sexuality (JW Essay) 04 08 25

JW: Rainbow Without Shelter: Sexuality, Dharma, and Civilizational Collapse

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This post is part of the “Vedabased & Bhaktivedanta Red-Pilled” series—a project dedicated to unapologetically defending Śrīla Prabhupāda’s most controversial and culturally challenging teachings. We reject cultural relativism as a way to interpret his words, and instead follow his own method: clear reasoning, śāstric backing, and fearless commitment to truth—even when it clashes with modern sensibilities.

Note: This is a comprehensive post written for people with philosophical stamina. I will be deleting comments that say things like "too many words" or "oh, why are you talking about other people's sex lives". Only comments that engage with the actual substance of the article - the arguments presented in it - will be kept.

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== Preface: Reading with Two Eyes Open ==

This chapter is not an attack. It is not a call for persecution, hatred, or exclusion. It is a call for clarity.

We live in a time when to question the dominant sexual ideology is to risk being labeled hateful. But dharma cannot be dictated by hashtags, and truth is not measured by consensus.

In what follows, we do something unusual: we examine the modern sexual revolution through the lens of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s words—not through the lens of modern psychology, activist rhetoric, or cultural trends. We take his statements seriously, on their own terms, and ask: what happens when we treat them as true?

This does not mean we abandon compassion. It means we reconnect compassion to dharma—to the deeper structure of reality and the responsibilities that come with being human.

Some parts of this chapter are based directly on Śrīla Prabhupāda’s teachings. Others are extensions of those teachings, drawing on logic (anumāna) and observable social trends. Where we apply principles to contemporary contexts, we say so. Where we cite śāstra or the Ācārya, we cite clearly.

If you’re willing to read with two eyes open—one eye on eternal principles, one eye on present realities—then come with us. The path is steep. But it leads to higher ground.

Let’s begin.

== Introduction ==

This chapter is a direct engagement with one of the most controversial teachings of Śrīla Prabhupāda: his uncompromising critique of the normalisation of homosex—not merely as a private sexual behavior, but as a symptom of civilizational decline. As with other chapters in this book, we are not approaching the topic through the lens of modern cultural consensus. We are choosing to adopt Prabhupāda’s epistemological stance and moral vision, and from there, see what is revealed.

Let us be clear from the outset: Śrīla Prabhupāda personally treated individuals with homosexual pasts or tendencies with dignity and compassion. He extended the mercy of the holy name and bhakti-yoga to all, regardless of prior conditioning. But he also made no concessions to the ideology that would normalize or celebrate homosexual acts as equal to dharmic behavior.

This distinction—between compassion for individuals and uncompromising fidelity to dharma—is one of the casualties of our age.

== Framing the Conversation: Two Visions of Sex and Civilization ==

To understand Śrīla Prabhupāda’s teachings on sexuality we must begin at the foundation: What is sex, and what is civilization for?

The Daivic Frame: Sex as the Engine of Material Bondage

In the Vedic, daivic vision of reality, sex desire is not a personal quirk or private preference—it is the most powerful material force binding the soul to repeated birth and death. It is the biological expression of the soul’s entanglement with the body, manifesting most strongly as the impulse to reproduce.

This is not just metaphysical poetry. It is observable biology. Evolutionary psychologists and geneticists confirm that the reproductive imperative is the central engine of biological life. From the peacock’s feathers to human courtship rituals, from the drive for status to the fear of rejection—sex and reproduction are the scaffolding of human psychology.

But Vedic wisdom takes this further. It reveals that this reproductive urge is not merely a function of survival—it is the outward symptom of a deeper ignorance: the soul's misidentification with the body.

“This most attractive feature in this material world is sex. That is the foundation of material life.”

—Śrīla Prabhupāda, Bhagavad-gītā Lecture, London, August 16, 1973

“Sex life is compared to the rubbing of two hands to relieve an itch... The fools... are not satisfied by repeated enjoyment... but the sober, who can tolerate it, escape the suffering.”

—Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 7.9.45

Therefore, sex is not a trivial or private affair—it has civilizational implications.

A dharmic society does not exist simply to facilitate desire or maximize pleasure. It exists to restrain, regulate, and refine desire, so that human life can be directed toward its actual goal: liberation from the material condition.

“The human civilization means to create the population dhīra—not to be disturbed by sex impulse. This is human civilization.”

—Śrīla Prabhupāda, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam Lecture, Vrindavan, August 29, 1975

In this daivic frame, sex is sacred only when contained—within marriage, for procreation, and ultimately, for the elevation of consciousness. Civilizational order depends on this containment. When the generative power of sex is divorced from responsibility, family, and transcendence, society enters a spiral of degradation.

The Āsuric Frame: Desire as Destiny

In sharp contrast, the āsuric frame sees the world not as a place of purification, but as a playground. It denies both transcendence and telos. It treats sexual desire as the defining feature of identity, the wellspring of meaning, and the highest good.

“They say this world is unreal, with no foundation, no God in control. They say it is produced of sex desire and has no cause other than lust.”

—Bhagavad-gītā 16.8

“They believe that to gratify the senses is the prime necessity of human civilization.”

—Bhagavad-gītā 16.11

This worldview does not aim to create a society of dhīra (sober persons who restrain the senses), but one of adhīra—those who are encouraged to identify with and indulge every impulse as a sacred right. Here, restraint is rebranded as repression, and indulgence is called freedom.

In the āsuric frame, there is no higher purpose to sexuality. The biological imperative is not to be transcended, but fulfilled—and then, eventually, discarded. Lust is unpegged even from its biological basis, detached from reproduction, and elevated into an identity in itself. There is no God, no karma, no higher order—only appetite, affirmation, and the deification of desire.

== Homosex and Homosexuality ==

It’s worth noting that Śrīla Prabhupāda never uses the word homosexuality—a modern term that treats sexual desire as an identity. He uses the word homosex, which refers to behavior.

This is not accidental. It reflects the Vedic epistemology: sexuality is not who you are; it’s what you do, and more importantly, how you regulate that doing. Modern sexual politics treats desire as destiny. Vedic dharma treats desire as conditioning to be purified. This simple lexical difference—homosex vs homosexuality—reveals a profound metaphysical disagreement. And it’s why we insist on using Prabhupāda’s own terms.

== From Act to Identity: The Metaphysical Shift Behind the Backlash ==

One reason this topic provokes such visceral reactions is not simply because of the content, but because it challenges a fundamental metaphysical reordering that underlies the modern sexual revolution.

In Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vocabulary, the term is homosex—a behavior. He critiques it as an act rooted in degraded appetite and disconnected from the dharmic purpose of sexuality. He never uses the modern term homosexuality, which carries with it a radically different ontological premise: that sexual preference is not merely an act or inclination, but an essential identity.

This shift—from behavior to being—is the key.

Once a behavior is redefined as an identity, then any moral critique of that behavior is no longer a statement about ethics. It becomes an attack on a person’s core self. This is how the category of “homophobia” emerges: not as a rational response to hatred, but as a protective shield around a metaphysical claim—that sexual desire is sacred, inviolable, and definitive of who we are.

This redefinition creates a new protected class, and a new moral order:

* Critiquing homosex becomes attacking homosexuals.

* Critiquing sexual behavior becomes violence against identity.

* Upholding dharma becomes bigotry.

And this is why Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements strike a nerve. Not because they are hateful—but because they expose the myth.

They refuse the metaphysical sleight of hand that turns appetite into identity and lust into a sacrament.

They remind us: we are not the urges of the body or mind. We are spirit souls. And any ideology that tells us otherwise—no matter how compassionate it sounds—is not liberation. It is bondage.

To question this myth is to risk heresy in the religion of modernity. But that is the calling of those who serve dharma.

And that is why this chapter had to be written.

== Sexuality as Dharma, Not Identity ==

Modern Western society treats sexuality as identity. Śrīla Prabhupāda treats it as an appetite — something to be regulated by dharma, not indulged as a marker of selfhood.

This is a radical reframing.

From the Vedic perspective, the purpose of sex is not self-expression. It is the generation of progeny within marriage, offered to Kṛṣṇa as part of one’s spiritual duty. The idea that sexual preference — especially non-procreative sex — is central to one's ontological self is a materialistic delusion. It binds the jīva to saṁsāra.

Thus, the dharmic question is never, “What is your sexual identity?” but rather, “How are you regulating your sexual desire in accordance with dharma?”

Śrīla Prabhupāda acknowledged that same-sex attraction can be a conditioning — like anger, greed, or any other lower impulse — and that those who struggle with it should be treated compassionately and encouraged to take shelter of Kṛṣṇa. But indulging it, celebrating it, or demanding society normalize it is to oppose dharma and deepen one's illusion.

== The Morphing Myth of Modernity ==

Over just a few decades, the mythos surrounding homosex has radically transformed — not by scientific discovery, but by ideological re-narration.

At first, homosex was framed as deviance. Then it was declared a sickness. Consider this exchange between Śrīla Prabhupāda and the Director of Research for the Department of Social Welfare in Melbourne, Australia, on May 21, 1975:

Director: But homosexual is a sickness.

Devotee: He said it's an illness.

Director: It's an illness. It's just like a person can't see, you would punish him for not seeing. You can't punish a person for being homosexual. That our society says.

Prabhupāda: Well, anyway, the priestly class, sanctioning homosex.

Director: Pardon?

Prabhupāda: Sanctioning. They are allowing homosex. And there was report that man and man was married by the priest... They are passing resolution, homosex is passed, “All right.”... So where is the ideal character? If you want something tangible business, train some people to become ideal character. That is this Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement.

After being classified as an illness, the narrative shifted again: now homosexuality was claimed to be genetic — one was simply “born that way,” although no definitive genetic basis has ever been found. Finally, in the postmodern stage, the concept has become so ideologically sacralized that its metaphysical basis is irrelevant — it is now a protected identity class in the secular religion of the West.

== The Criminalization of Dharma ==

This myth has been codified into law. In New South Wales, Australia, the government recently passed legislation that effectively criminalizes attempts to help someone regulate their sexual impulses — even if they ask for it.

The government has clarified that while prayer itself is not inherently illegal, “praying with or over a person with the intent to change or suppress their sexuality or gender identity” is unlawful.

The law applies even if an individual voluntarily requests such prayer.

The scope extends further: telling someone in a same-sex relationship to become celibate or cease sexual activity may also be considered unlawful, depending on the context.

This is not tolerance — this is ideological enforcement. It represents a complete inversion of dharma: where regulated sex life is the foundation of civilized society in the Vedic view, unregulated desire is now enshrined as sacred in the Western one.

== The Demonic Appetite ==

Śrīla Prabhupāda consistently describes homosexual acts as adharmic and demoniac. He roots this understanding in śāstra. In a purport to Śrīmad Bhāgavatam 3.20.26, he writes:

“It appears here that the homosexual appetite of males for each other is created in this episode of the creation of the demons by Brahmā. In other words, the homosexual appetite of a man for another man is demoniac and is not for any sane male in the ordinary course of life.”

This isn’t “homophobia.” It is metaphysics. Prabhupāda is identifying an orientation toward sex not as identity, but as appetite—driven not by spiritual aspiration but by a degraded attraction to the flesh. He is not moralizing in the Western, punitive sense. He is making an ontological claim about the condition of consciousness.

Again and again, he returns to this point: that the normalization of homosex is a symptom of civilizational degradation, not progress.

“This homosex propaganda is another side of impotency. So that is natural. If you enjoy too much, then you become impotent.”

(Morning Walk, September 6, 1975, Vrindavana)

“The whole world is on the verge of ruination. Kali-yuga.”

(ibid.)

He specifically pointed to the capitulation of religious institutions:

“Now they are marrying man to man and accepting homosex, so what is the value now of this priestly class?”

(Morning Walk, May 13, 1975, Perth)

In the Vedic worldview, “demoniac” (āsuric) doesn’t mean “evil” in a cartoonish or merely criminal sense. It refers to a consciousness that opposes the natural order (dharma) and rejects the authority of God (īśvara). As described in Bhagavad-gītā 16.7:

pravṛttiṁ ca nivṛttiṁ ca janā na vidur āsurāḥ

na śaucaṁ nāpi cācāro na satyaṁ teṣu vidyate

“Those who are demoniac do not know what is to be done and what is not to be done. Neither cleanliness nor proper behavior nor truth is found in them.”

From this standpoint, a sexual appetite that ignores the sacred purpose of sex—procreation within dharmic marriage—is adharmic by definition, and when normalized or celebrated, becomes āsuric: a revolt against divine order.

== Beyond the Bedroom: Homosex and Civilizational Dharma ==

Śrīla Prabhupāda repeatedly connected the rise of homosex with the degradation of Western culture. The issue was not personal identity, but civilizational trajectory. He viewed it as a symptom of godlessness, a marker of confusion about the purpose of life:

“The world is degrading to the lowest status, even less than animal. The animal also do not support homosex. They have never sex life between male to male. They are less than animal. People are becoming less than animal. This is all due to godlessness.”

—Conversation with the GBC, May 25, 1972, Los Angeles

He again pointed out the failure of religious institutions in upholding dharma:

“Now the priestly order supporting homosex. I was surprised. They are going to pass resolution for getting married between man to man. The human society has come down to such a degraded position. It is astonishing.”

—ibid.

In other words, when those who are charged with protecting dharma begin to endorse adharma, society is on the verge of collapse.

We are living through the consequences of that collapse.

== A Culture of Impotence ==

In 1975 in Chicago, Śrīla Prabhupāda made a powerful observation:

“If you indulge in more than necessary, then you will be impotent. This homosex is also another sign of impotency. They do not feel sex impulse to woman. They feel sex impulse in man. That means he is impotent.”

—Morning Walk, July 3, 1975, Chicago

The language may be jarring to modern readers, but the logic is sound: when the natural reproductive polarity between man and woman is disturbed, redirected, or suppressed, the consequence is not sexual liberation, but dysfunction. In Śrīla Prabhupāda’s analysis, the rise of homosex in society is not a celebration of diversity but a symptom of civilizational decline—a sign that the life force has become diverted from its dharmic purpose.

He stated this repeatedly and without ambiguity:

“This homosex propaganda is another side of impotency. So that is natural. If you enjoy too much, then you become impotent.”

—Morning Walk, Vrindavana, September 6, 1975

And again:

“This is not enjoyment. If you indulge in more than necessary, then you will be impotent... This homosex is also another sign of impotency.”

—Arrival Lecture, Chicago, July 3, 1975

It is not simply the behavior that is condemned, but the trajectory—the movement away from a society where sexual energy is contained, disciplined, and directed toward divine service and progeny, toward a society of unbounded indulgence, sterile sexuality, and ultimately, social collapse.

== Sex Divorced from Procreation Is Impotency ==

One of the most profound—and perhaps most explosive—implications of Śrīla Prabhupāda’s teaching is this: homosexual acts are not categorically different from heterosex acts devoid of dharma. All are forms of sexual indulgence divorced from reproductive purpose. All are, in effect, “impotent”—because they reject the function of sexuality as a sacred union for the creation of life.

Sex with contraception, for example, is a form of intentional impotence. The act is performed not for its dharmic outcome, but for pleasure alone. Śrīla Prabhupāda strongly condemned this kind of indulgence:

“This homosex propaganda is another side of impotency.”

—Morning Walk, Vrindavana, September 6, 1975

By this standard, much of what passes for “heterosexuality” today is functionally impotent—ejaculation without consequence, without continuity, without sacred context. This includes:

Men ejaculating…

* Into the sterile wombs of a parade of Tinder partners

* Into a rubber sheath

* Into the silicone mold of a sex doll

* Into the womb of a wife chemically sterilized for convenience

* Or into his hand in front of a computer screen

All of this is impotence—not in the clinical sense, but in the metaphysical sense. It is disconnection from the generative purpose of sex. It is nature without fruit. And it follows the same trajectory as homosex: away from nature, away from dharma, into sterility, perversion, and civilizational degradation.

Srila Prabhupada explicitly made this point:

“The whole world is now full of demons only. They are after money and women, that's all. Woman does not mean this form of woman. A man also can become women. If the two parties, one party is trying to enjoy the other party, that is man and women. It does not mean the form of women and man. Just like nowadays, in your country, the homosex is also introduced. So people are becoming so much degraded-simply after money and women. Money and women.”

- Room Conversation, Honolulu, May 12, 1972

And:

“Now this progeny is bother. It is sense enjoyment, homosex. Progeny, they don't want. They're not interested. Only sense gratification. This is another sign of impotency. When, after enjoying so many women they become impotent, then they artificially create another sex impulse in homosex. This is psychology.“

- Arrival Address, Chicago, July 3 1975

Even if one objects on empirical grounds—pointing out examples of homosexual behavior in animals to counter Prabhupāda’s claim that it is “less than animal”—the point remains: no animal civilization scales up chemical contraception and sterilized sexuality as a way of life. Only modern humans, in the name of freedom, sterilize themselves and call it liberation.

Underlying sexual desire is the biological and metaphysical imperative to reproduce. In both nature and dharmic society, reproduction imposes structure—social and neurological—on that desire. It creates obligations, restrains chaos, generates responsibility, and gives meaning to the sexual act.

But remove that function—strip sexuality of its natural and spiritual telos—and what remains is not liberation, but the devolution of desire into appetite. Unregulated, unbounded, and unsatisfiable.

This is not just theory. It is already visible in culture.

This descent into impotent hedonism is no longer hypothetical. It is embodied in the avatars of modern manhood.

One of the most viral figures of recent years is Andrew Tate—a former kickboxer, multimillionaire, and internet provocateur hailed by many as a voice of traditional masculinity. But his own words betray the hollowness of this facade.

“I’d rather sleep with Megan Fox with a penis than Hulk Hogan with a vagina,” he once said.

What does this reveal? That modern manhood, even when it claims to oppose liberal softness, has reduced itself to a fetish for surface aesthetics. It is no longer rooted in nature, responsibility, or procreation. It is a masculinity divorced from telos. From fatherhood. From containment. From reality.

What is this, if not the mirror image of queer ideology? Both reduce sexuality to pleasure unmoored from consequence—one clothed in rainbow rhetoric, the other in alpha male slogans.

This is not polarity. It is parody.

And it is the logical consequence of a civilization that severs desire from dharma.

And from this root comes another transformation: identity is no longer shaped by biology, responsibility, or social role. It is shaped by unregulated desire itself.

A father used to be a man whose sexual energy resulted in children, and whose identity was forged in responsibility. Now, one’s sexual identity is severed from outcome. It becomes a subculture. A feeling. A preference. A brand.

Desire has replaced dharma. And when desire defines the self, there is no limit to what we will become in its name.

This is happening not just individually. It is happening at civilizational scale.

== From Privacy to Parades: The Creep of Cultural Capture ==

In Śrīla Prabhupāda’s time, homosex was beginning to be decriminalized and “tolerated” in Western societies. But what was once a call for legal tolerance has since metastasized into cultural celebration—and now, in many spheres, ideological enforcement.

Every major Western city now hosts annual “Pride” parades, events that began as political protests but have evolved into public celebrations of sexual identity. What was once a demand for private freedom has become an insistence on public affirmation—often with increasingly graphic displays of sexualized behavior in the open view of families and children.

This shift is not limited to isolated events. It is institutional. Corporations change their logos to rainbow flags every June. Governments fund pride events and adopt policies that mandate ideological compliance under the guise of “inclusivity.” Schools introduce sexual orientation and gender identity curricula at younger and younger ages encouraging children to become “LGBTQ allies”, often bypassing parental consent. Employees are required to undergo training sessions that treat dissent from these views as bigotry. And those who question this ideological consensus face social ostracism, professional consequences, or legal action.

This is no longer a matter of private freedom. It is a system of compelled affirmation, in which even silence can be treated as a form of violence, and refusal to participate is labeled hate. What began as “live and let live” has become “celebrate—or be punished.”

This shift is not neutral.

When sexual behavior—particularly one defined by its departure from the procreative telos of sex—is raised to the level of identity and then made sacred, we are witnessing the construction of a rival dharma. It is not content to exist. It must be affirmed. And dissent must be punished.

The sexual revolution, which began with promises of liberation, has metastasized into a cultural regime with its own dogmas, rituals, and inquisitions. The so-called “Rainbow Community” is not a monolith, but the banner has become a “United Front” under which the most radical and dangerous elements are sheltered. To criticize one part is now rhetorically framed as an attack on all—especially the most vulnerable—thus making honest discourse nearly impossible.

== The Weaponization of Empathy: How Empathy Detached from Discernment Undermines Dharma ==

The modern normalization of LGBT ideology is not merely a plea for tolerance—it functions as a transformative force within culture. What began as an appeal to compassion has expanded into a profound shift in societal norms, morality, and identity. The Vedic understanding describes demoniac consciousness (āsuric) as an unconscious drive that turns vice into virtue, sin into rights, and confusion into identity. In the case of LGBT normalization, the mechanism at work is not simply coercion, but empathy disconnected from discernment.

Compassion is a feminine principle, a sacred instinct to care for the vulnerable. But when it becomes separated from clear moral guidance, compassion can transform into sentimentality—an emotion easily harnessed by ideological currents. Societies naturally respond to appeals grounded in human rights, identity affirmation, or the relief of emotional suffering. These empathetic instincts are not inherently problematic, but when they override dharmic discernment, they become vehicles for unintended societal shifts.

When empathy alone dictates moral standards, desire itself becomes sanctified as identity. Sexual impulse is recast as sacred, beyond question or restraint. Consequently, anyone who challenges the public expression of such impulses is easily dismissed as hateful, bigoted, or oppressive. This reaction is not the result of an explicit conspiracy, but rather the inevitable outcome of a worldview in which personal desire is placed above collective responsibility and spiritual purpose.

As these cultural shifts deepen, boundaries traditionally protecting institutions such as family, marriage, education, and religion begin to dissolve. This erosion is driven by widespread acceptance of an ideology that sees liberation in the breakdown of traditional norms and categories. What is celebrated as freedom becomes, in practice, the loss of the very structures that sustain dharma and spiritual growth.

Thus, LGBT ideology and dharma naturally collide—not because individuals experiencing same-sex attraction are personally malevolent, but because the worldview which enshrines sexuality as an absolute identity is fundamentally at odds with the metaphysics of dharma, which seeks to regulate desire in pursuit of transcendence.

Śrīla Prabhupāda understood this clearly. He uncompromisingly highlighted how ideological normalization of sexuality as identity undermines the foundation of varṇāśrama-dharma—the Vedic framework designed to guide human life toward spiritual realization.

This critique is not hatred. It is clarity. It seeks to preserve not just societal harmony, but the very purpose of civilization itself: spiritual elevation.

== The Slippery Slope: Pedophilia and the War on Innocence ==

There is a common argument in conservative circles that normalizing homosex inevitably leads to normalizing pedophilia. Historically, this claim was dismissed as reactionary fear-mongering. Today, however, we see a troubling shift that warrants careful consideration—not because gay individuals are inherently harmful or predatory, but because of the philosophical precedent that has now been established.

Śrīla Prabhupāda outlined a clear trajectory: sexuality moves from being a sacred act contained within dharma and oriented toward procreation, toward sex purely for sense gratification. Eventually, even the pretext of procreation is discarded, and sexuality is treated as an open-ended domain of desire, exploration, and self-definition.

What we see now at a civilizational scale mirrors the well-documented pattern observed at an individual scale—for example, the escalating extremity of pornography necessary to stimulate the addicted mind. Over time, cultural taboos weaken and boundaries dissolve, opening the door to ever-more-extreme forms of sexual self-definition and expression.

The recent emergence of terms like "Minor Attracted Person" (MAP) in academic and activist discourse is a disturbing example of precisely this pattern. This new language serves as a rhetorical softening—a philosophical wedge that introduces pedophilia as another "sexual minority." The danger here is not that all, or even most, advocates of LGBTQ rights desire this outcome—they emphatically do not—but rather that the underlying philosophical justification ("sexual attraction as identity") is now culturally available for exploitation by those who do.

This mirrors the shift from homosex (act) to homosexuality (identity). Once sexual behavior is recast as an essential identity, protected and immune from criticism, it becomes philosophically consistent to extend that same logic to even more harmful behaviors. The act becomes inseparable from the individual, and any critique is framed as an attack on their very humanity.

This is not about accusing gay people of being groomers. Such a simplistic accusation misses the point entirely. Rather, the philosophical framework now firmly established—identity rooted in desire—sets a dangerous precedent. It can and will be exploited by genuinely predatory individuals seeking social legitimacy and protection under the guise of compassion and inclusivity.

The progression from tolerance, to celebration, to enforced affirmation of increasingly harmful desires is the logical endpoint of sexual liberation divorced from dharma. Without dharma, without boundaries, everything becomes negotiable—including the protection of children.

Śrīla Prabhupāda foresaw this trajectory clearly. His warnings were not rooted in prejudice, but in deep philosophical insight into the consequences of severing sex from its sacred, protective purpose.

This is not compassion. It is a philosophical war on innocence—and precisely why dharma must be defended.

== Compassion Without Compromise ==

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s stance can be summarized as follows:

Bhakti is for all, including those struggling with same-sex attraction.

* Sexual indulgence is to be regulated, not celebrated.

* Homosex is not identity, but a conditioned appetite.

* Public normalization and celebration of it signals societal degradation.

We must be compassionate. But our compassion must be tethered to dharma. When we separate compassion from truth, we cease to be protectors. We become enablers. Our silence becomes complicity.

== The Spectrum of Dharma and the Descent into Disorder ==

In the Vedic view, not all sexual activity is equal. Dharma offers a graded hierarchy—not a binary of "good" or "evil," but a spectrum of alignment or deviation from the sacred purpose of sex. That purpose is not merely pleasure, nor even bonding, but procreation within a spiritual framework. Sex is not condemned, but it is not neutral. It must be regulated, contained, and directed toward its higher telos: the creation of life, responsibility, and ultimately, elevation.

We can visualize this hierarchy in four broad tiers:

1. Sex Within Marriage for Procreation (Top of the Spectrum)

This is the dharmic ideal. Sexual union here is sacred, selfless, and generative—physically and spiritually. It is aligned with responsibility, social structure, and the cycle of life. It binds husband and wife in mutual obligation, generates children raised with stability, and directs lust toward transcendence.

2. Sex Within Marriage But Divorced from Procreation

Still within a dharmic container, but compromised. The structure of marriage offers protection to society, but the indulgence of sex for pleasure alone corrodes individual character over time. Lust, once unanchored from creation, begins to demand more. This can lead to subtle dissatisfaction, infidelity, or emotional alienation—even in “faithful” marriages.

3. Illicit Sex Outside Marriage

This is explicitly condemned in śāstra. Such sex disrupts the very social fabric. It creates children without protection, women without support, and men without responsibility. It leads to fatherlessness, broken homes, exploitation, abortion, and spiritual degradation. Even if consensual, it weakens the collective moral order. The container is absent, and so is the trajectory toward responsibility.

4. Homosex

Śrīla Prabhupāda places homosex in a distinct category—not simply because it is outside marriage, but because it is ontologically incapable of fulfilling the telos of sex. It has no potential for procreation, and thus, no direct path toward dharmic containment. Even if monogamous, even if stable, it remains inherently sterile. It can only ever be an indulgence—a mutual affirmation of appetite without function.

From this perspective, homosex is not equal to heterosexual sin—it is lower, because it lacks even the possibility of dharmic alignment. It may still be karmically less destructive than promiscuity, but its normalization is uniquely corrosive to moral understanding, because it removes telos entirely from the sexual act. It inverts the order of value, demanding that society affirm sterility as love, indulgence as identity, and rebellion as inclusion.

This is not hatred. It is hierarchy. And without hierarchy, dharma collapses.

== A Concession: Better Contained Than Uncontained ==

If one must fall, better to fall within some boundary than none. A homosexually inclined person in a long-term, faithful relationship may be living with more self-control than a libertine heterosexual. In that narrow sense, containment is always better than chaos.

Śrīla Prabhupāda himself acknowledged the reality of homosex—but not its normalization. He said clearly:

"Homosex is there, but nobody will support publicly, it is so abominable."

- Conversation with the GBC, Los Angeles, May 25, 1972

In other words, the traditional approach is akin to "don’t ask, don’t tell": homosex may exist quietly, tolerated as a private weakness, but it is never openly endorsed or celebrated. The point is not repression, but the preservation of societal dharma and the refusal to elevate a personal failing to the level of public virtue or identity.

But acknowledging containment does not justify moral equivalence. Compassion is not affirmation, and hierarchy is not hatred. Just because one sin is less damaging than another doesn’t make it a sacrament. To put homosex on the same moral level as dharmic, procreative union is not tolerance—it is civilizational suicide.

Dharma is subtle, graduated, and realistic. It warns clearly:

When desire replaces purpose, and hierarchy is flattened in the name of inclusion, society will fracture.

== An Apparent Contradiction: Illicit Heterosex vs. Homosex ==

One of the criticisms sometimes leveled at Śrīla Prabhupāda is that his treatment of homosexual behavior appears more severe than his treatment of illicit heterosexual behavior. After all, he tolerated regulated prostitution and even acknowledged marriage for karmīs as a concession to their sexual needs. Yet when it comes to homosex, his words are unequivocally strong—“demoniac,” “less than animal,” “unnatural.”

Is this a contradiction?

Only if we assume a flat moral universe. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s worldview is not egalitarian—it is hierarchical. He does not evaluate behaviors merely by social stigma or personal taste but by their alignment with dharma, their potential for containment, and their trajectory toward—or away from—spiritual upliftment.

Illicit heterosexuality, even when degraded, retains a potential link to dharma. The act, misused though it may be, is still grounded in a biological and metaphysical order: the union of male and female, with the latent possibility of progeny. That potential allows for containment. Through marriage, fidelity, and procreation, it can be redirected, structured, and sanctified. Even prostitution, though fallen, can be regulated to prevent broader social collapse. The vice is tolerated—not glorified—because it can be concentrated and restrained. In this way, society is protected, and individuals can still gradually be elevated.

Homosexual acts, on the other hand, have no such dharmic containment. They are categorically disconnected from procreation, from varṇāśrama roles, and from the telos of sexuality as a generative, responsibility-forging act. There is no pathway within Vedic dharma where homosexual activity can be normalized or sanctified. As such, it is not merely a misuse of sex—it is a rejection of its very purpose.

Furthermore, while illicit heterosex may degrade individuals, the normalization of homosex tends to deconstruct the categories of male and female, of marriage and family, of identity rooted in duty rather than desire. It is not just a behavioral transgression, but a civilizational one. This is why Prabhupāda’s strongest condemnations are reserved for ideologies that seek to redefine nature, not merely those who fall short of it.

In this light, his apparent “toleration” of certain forms of heterosexual misconduct and his categorical rejection of homosex are not contradictions. They are expressions of a clear moral hierarchy—one based not on personal bias, but on spiritual trajectory, social consequence, and the preservation of dharma in a fallen world.

He did not excuse heterosex divorced from dharma—but he sought to contain it. He did not endorse homosex—but sought to prevent its normalization, because normalization would mean the rejection of nature, the erasure of dharma, and the loss of any standard by which behavior could be elevated at all.

In short, Śrīla Prabhupāda’s vision is not hypocritical. It is consistent, hierarchical, and rooted in the principle that dharma must be preserved even when society falls short of it.

== Conclusion: Rainbow Without Shelter ==

The rainbow is a symbol of God's promise. Traditionally, it is a sign of shelter—of divine protection following the storm.

In the modern West, it has become the symbol of unrestrained desire, pride, and rebellion against the natural order.

Śrīla Prabhupāda offered a different path—not of repression, but of regulation; not of judgment, but of purification. He called us not to redefine ourselves by our lusts, but to transcend them.

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements on homosex are often dismissed through the lens of modernity—as relics of a bygone era, the outdated views of a man shaped by his time and culture.

But as we have shown in this article, his words are not cultural artefacts—they are consistent, coherent expressions of the dharmic worldview rooted in śāstra. Their sharp conflict with modern values is not the result of prejudice, but the inevitable clash between two opposing paradigms: the daivic and the āsuric.

Seen through this lens, Prabhupāda’s analysis is not only philosophically grounded—it is prophetic. The civilizational arc he described is not speculation. It is unfolding before our eyes.

== Objections and Responses ==

Objection 1: “This is hate speech disguised as religion.”

Response:

Critique is not hatred. Śrīla Prabhupāda never promoted hatred toward anyone. His teachings advocate compassion for every living being as a spirit soul. However, compassion is not synonymous with endorsement. To lovingly encourage someone to rise above material conditioning is not hate—it is mercy. If we have lost the ability to distinguish between disagreement and hate, the fault lies with our public discourse, not with dharma.

Objection 2: “But I know gay couples who are kind, spiritual people—how can you say their love is demoniac?”

Response:

I do too, and I treat them with dignity and respect as Prabhupada did. The personal qualities of individuals are not the issue. Vedic dharma concerns itself with the principles that govern social and spiritual harmony—not with ad hominem character judgments. One can be sweet, sincere, and intelligent—and still be participating in activities that are adharmic in nature. This is true for all of us in various ways. The aim is not condemnation, but clarity about what aligns with the spiritual purpose of sex and family life.

Objection 3: “Prabhupāda’s views reflect the cultural norms of his time in India. We shouldn’t treat them as universal.”

Response:

This objection assumes Śrīla Prabhupāda’s statements are culturally relative preferences. But Prabhupāda’s analysis is not merely cultural—it is grounded explicitly in śāstra, particularly the 16th chapter of Bhagavad-gītā, which delineates clearly between the daivic (divine) and asuric (demoniac) frames. Modern notions of sexuality as identity divorced from procreation and dharma—though presented today as progressive—are culturally conditioned expressions of the asuric worldview described directly in Bhagavad-gītā. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s critique is not a personal opinion or a product of his cultural moment; it is a coherent application of timeless principles derived from śāstra.

Objection 4: “Isn’t this just cherry-picking the worst of the LGBTQ+ community to make a broad argument?”

Response:

Not at all. We’re responding to the ideological front, not to individuals. The issue is not whether some people live quietly and modestly. The issue is that the most extreme elements of the rainbow coalition now drive the cultural narrative—and dissent is labeled hate. We must analyze the direction in which the ideology is going: the normalization of public sexual display, the targeting of children with sexual content, and the slow introduction of terms like “Minor Attracted Person.” This trajectory—not individual cases—is what demands our attention.

Objection 5: “But what about straight people who engage in all kinds of immoral sex? Isn’t this unfairly singling out gay people?”

Response: Yes, heterosexual misconduct is also adharmic and destructive. This chapter does not deny that—Śrīla Prabhupāda was equally critical of recreational sex, contraception, adultery, and pornography, regardless of orientation. All sex divorced from dharma is condemned.

However, this chapter addresses homosex specifically because of the ideological force behind it today. There is no organized heterosexual equivalent of the Pride movement. No government-mandated Straight History Month. No professional consequences for saying heterosexual promiscuity is wrong. That ideological asymmetry is why this issue must be addressed distinctly.

That said, there is a deeper issue at play, and it must be acknowledged.

Modern sex education—even when framed as “inclusive”—often teaches children that sex is for pleasure, not procreation. It normalizes sexual experimentation outside of marriage, heterosexual and homosexual alike. In this way, it subtly but powerfully undermines dharma at the root.

Children are being taught that their sexual desires define them, that pleasure is the telos of sexuality, and that their bodies are for enjoyment, not for divine service. That is the real perversion.

So while homosex has become the ideological spearhead, the deeper issue is this: the entire culture has divorced sex from sacredness. Whether straight or gay, this detachment from dharma is what is truly destroying society.

Objection 6: “But isn’t someone born gay? Doesn’t that make it their natural identity?”

Response:

This objection assumes the modern myth that sexual inclination is an essential, fixed identity rooted at birth. But from the Vedic perspective, we are all born influenced by past karmic impressions (vāsanās) and material conditioning—lust, anger, pride, envy, greed—that shape our tendencies, but do not define our eternal self (ātmā). The modern narrative shifted from needing a genetic basis for sexual identity to a purely subjective self-declaration. Both positions reinforce the misconception of identity as bodily and material.

Śrīla Prabhupāda’s stance is clear: material inclinations, whatever their cause, are not permanent identities—they are conditions to be purified and transcended through spiritual practice. His message is not condemnation, but invitation: no one is doomed by their karma; everyone can approach Kṛṣṇa through sincere devotional practice.

Objection 7: “Isn’t this just targeting gay people, when plenty of straight couples engage in worse?”

Response:

Excellent point—and we agree entirely. The problem is not the form of the desire, but its function. Śrīla Prabhupāda was not just calling out homosex; he was calling out any and all sexual indulgence outside the bounds of dharma. He explicitly condemned sex with contraception, recreational sex, sex without the intention to conceive Kṛṣṇa-conscious children—all of it. In fact, he linked overindulgence, impotence, and homosex together as different symptoms of the same root disease: uncontrolled lust.

“If you indulge in more than necessary, then you will be impotent. This homosex is also another sign of impotency. They do not feel sex impulse to woman. They feel sex impulse in man. That means he is impotent.”

—Morning Walk, July 3, 1975, Chicago

From this perspective, so-called “normal” heterosexual sex becomes just as problematic when it is disconnected from responsibility, sacredness, and procreation. If you are using contraception, if you are avoiding children, if your sexual congress is driven by lust rather than dharmic intention—you are already on the same trajectory.

Sex without the intention to procreate is, functionally, “impotent.”

It’s not about who you’re doing it with—it’s about why you’re doing it.

Thus, Prabhupāda’s position is not that heterosexual indulgence divorced from procreation is good and homosex is bad—it’s that the entire modern sexual culture is built on the rejection of dharma. The acceptance of homosex as “just another flavour” of impotent (non-procreative) sex is evidence of the degree to which sex has been divorced from a dharmic context, and we are now confronted with a new, lower level as civilisation degrades.

Objection 8: "But homosex does exist in the animal kingdom. Doesn’t this disprove Prabhupāda’s claim?"

Response:

No. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s core thesis on homosex is not derived from animal behavior; it is derived from śāstra. His reference to animals was made in support of that thesis, not as its foundation. Even if one argues that homosex occurs among animals, animals certainly do not normalize or institutionalize it. Doing so would lead to extinction. Human society, unlike animals, actively celebrates and normalizes behaviors disconnected from nature’s purpose. Śrīla Prabhupāda’s point remains: human beings are meant to align behavior with dharma, not justify adharma by appealing to instinct or animal behavior.

In all of this, our goal is not to condemn individuals, but to protect dharma—and with it, society's most vulnerable.

SL: Excellent analysis! I like your point about deconstruction of the natural and would like to see it expanded and elaborated on. I think it would clarify the dharmic stance on the modern manufactured gender identities .

TS: Nailed it

PADA: Right. In 1979 I got into a giant tangle with the ISKCON leaders, particularly the gang of four gurus who confronted me in England. I argued -- Srila Prabhupada says -- when a guru is having an affair with a follower -- it is like a father having an affair with his own daughter. On top of that, this guru person is offering LSD to the shalagram, and he is often intoxicated. 

They said sure, we cannot argue that this person is in fact -- lusty and intoxicated. You are correct. But -- we are keeping him in the acharya post anyway because "he is living." And we are making you a one time offer to become one of us, and become the guru of Ireland, or you have to leave ISKCON. So in other words, the standard for guru has become -- a person who is "living" is Krishna's guru successor -- as long as he has the rubber stamp of the leaders. And maybe he has the rubber stamp as the acharya for Ireland etc. 

That means, the actual standards are being changed if not removed wholesale, and an out cropping of artificial standards are being concocted. And this has gone on in many other examples. Unless we accept the actual standards made by the actual acharya, we are going to be diverted from the actual road to bhakti and we will end up not attaining actual bhakti. But yeah, we should not start to second guess statements made by the acharya, this has lead to countless deviations. ys pd

Kdas: A symptom of a truly integrated society is that it contains both a functional center and peripheral zones—each playing their respective roles without being collapsed into one another. This is what gives rise to horizontal texture: a living tapestry in which boundaries, hierarchies, inclusion, and differentiation all find their natural place.

In this regard, the Christian missiologist Paul Hiebert’s concepts of “bounded” and “centered” sets are especially useful. A bounded community maintains meaningful perimeters—it knows what is “in” and “out.” But a centered community orients itself around a shared telos, a gravitational spiritual axis that gives the society coherence, regardless of where individuals fall in their journey.

A dharmic society needs both. To function harmoniously, it must uphold clear boundaries while also drawing all participants toward a higher center. This produces a society that is textured but not chaotic, structured but not rigid. The fractal motif of dharma—the idea that divine structure replicates itself at different levels of existence—must permeate from the top to the bottom. Yet it must allow for qualitative differences across domains: the sacred and the profane, the household and the hermitage, the insider and the edge-walker.

Modernity—and not just secular modernity, but even modern religious attempts at reformation—tends to reduce this rich stratification into a one-speed ontology. It flattens all domains into a single plane, and in doing so, loses the ability to accommodate non-uniform spiritual trajectories.

We see this in extreme examples like Calvin’s Geneva, where an entire city was expected to move in lockstep with a singular religious vision. What emerged wasn’t deep spiritual flourishing, but a hollowing out of interior life under the weight of external conformity. The horizontal variety of life was pressed into the mold of a centralized program, and the result was not elevation, but a kind of spiritual provincialism.

This same error now appears in a secular key: where modern ideology seeks not only tolerance but enforced sameness, not merely rights but rituals of affirmation, flattening the distinctions between center and periphery, between norm and exception, between spiritual principle and social appetite.

This is especially visible in how modern frameworks—whether liberal or religious—try to discipline sexuality using tools that are themselves modern. For instance, evolutionary psychology explains sexual drive in terms of utilitarian reproduction, but this framing is ultimately insufficient. Not even its advocates (e.g., Sam Harris ... he only has two daughters, small odds on the evolutionary front) live by it in any serious or coherent way. I will say that again because it is important : One cannot contain (ie "bound") the domain of sexuality with the telos or tools of evolutionary psychology.

More to the point: this model has nothing to say about the spiritual nature of desire. In a Vaiṣṇava framework, sex life is not reducible to reproductive strategy—it is a distorted echo of the ādī-rasa, the primal rasa of divine intimacy between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. This makes it sacred and dangerous at once. It is foundational to our sense of self (ahaṅkāra), but not something that can be banished by prohibition alone.

This is why prescriptive, one-size-fits-all rules—even when shāstrically motivated—can fail to integrate sexuality into a higher dharmic order. The deeper problem isn’t that boundaries are being erased; it’s that modernity has forgotten how to meaningfully place things in their right location—both within the soul, and within society.

The remedy, then, is not to impose ever-tighter “bounded” rules in the hope of creating purity through uniformity. Nor is it to discard all boundaries in favor of radical inclusion. Rather, the way forward is to resurface the natural, layered complexity of dharmic society—in which peripheries are real and necessary, but integrated rather than erased or stigmatized. In short, it is a moving target. Niyamagrahah will not help.

Such integration requires a revival of hierarchical thinking—not as domination, but as differentiation with telos. In this framework, sexuality, identity, and spiritual struggle are all recognized as part of the human condition—but oriented toward a center that is not merely moral or political, but metaphysical.

A civilization grounded in dharma will not demand that every person perform at the same speed. It will recognize that some live at the margins, that some struggles remain private, and that public celebration and personal compassion are not the same thing.

This is not cultural relativism. It is cosmic realism—a willingness to acknowledge complexity without sacrificing clarity, and to uphold principles without demanding uniformity of expression.

I have practically seen it in India. A group of hijra's were doing their usual thing up and down a bengal train (ie clapping their hands provacatively and being generally being more camp than a boy scout convention in order to collect money). One of the more "convincing" ones was making a killing (between his/her fingers they had reams of folded notes, like some of the fare collectors in public transport do). 

A nearby passenger commented to them that if they ever turned their energies towards bhakti, they could make a great wonderful temple for Mahaprabhu. Without batting their eye, they responded "When He calls, I will come." Sure, its one of the things people in India commonly say to delay, perhaps indefinitely, the high stakes demand that spiritual life demands. But the thing is that it was a small clue about what identity, duty and the play between bounded and centred domains looks like. It is not that they disparaged the idea of bhakti as a centring telos, and it neither required them to be catapulted either beyond the perimeter of boundedness, nor within its centre.

JW: Yes, exactly. They exist, but they are not first-class. No need to hate, but no need to assimilate either.

KD: There is a whole other issue about the western (ie early modern, or at least birthed in enlightenment values) project of simultaneous pursuit of assimilation and rigorous imposing of persecution. Its part of complex fusion of roman "city on the hill" triumphalism and christian "turn the other cheek" tolerance, but there is also the push of technology, that demands a striving for resources to sustain the path of progress. 

I could put it to you that the radical inclusiveness of libralism is simply downstream of the previous radical triumphalist exclusivity. One has to be careful how one pursues pushback against assimilation, since it has an easy dichotomy within history to slide back in to, with predictable results.

GC: Repeat it with a brain….. don’t delete it

NB: I am very impressed by your uncompromising and very acute and insightful analysis, and your faithfulness to Srila Prabhupada, without fanatical adherence. I am sure that Srila Prabhupada must be very pleased with this. This is a chapter of which book?