Please understand I’m not trying to stir up any anti-gay sentiment here.
It’s a common tactic for gays and gay advocates to call gay bashers “secretly homosexual,” many times asserting that it’s a known fact.
I’ve searched on Google, with keywords “gay basher,” “secretly homosexual,” and so forth, but mainly found conservative-leaning blogs saying it was just a cliche. If it’s a fact, is there a study or something similar online that offers proof? How is that tested? Do researchers consult with gay basher volunteers and use some kind of scientific gaydar?
I think that the mayor of Spokane was “caught with his pants down” as far as being a gay basher while being secretly gay himself.
Despite his apparently public anti-gay stance, he’d been found out using city computers to go to gay chat rooms, where he’d solicited young men, trading sex for city jobs. He was ousted in a special recall election.
As Robert Ripley would say, “Believe It Or Not”!
There was a study in 1996 published in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology that indicated that at least some homophobes are aroused by portrayals of gay sex.
Essentially, they tested men for homophobia and then had them watch gay porn, testing them for arousal. The ones higher on the homophobia scale tended to be more aroused.
I don’t know if the work was duplicated, but the study was legit.
Most of them just really hate gay people. Some may try to cover something up with a little reverse psychology. I always thought it was disingenious to say that someone secretly is what they claim to hate. What about anti-black racists. Do they have a stash of rap music hidden out in the shed?
Anyway, when people are uncomfortable discussing something, it’s because they are afraid the same feelings may resonate in them and they don’t want to explore that. (cite: myself. Example: I too was fairly homophobic as a teenager. I’ve struggled with it but since decided, although I love women dearly, I do have bi tendencies)
Well, anectdotally, there were all those Republicans outed by BlogActive.com and other sites a while ago. Of course, that doesn’t prove anything about the general prevalence of this sort of thing.
I think it’s pretty simple really, there are three types of homophobes out there:
[ol]
[li]People who simply hate gays for whatever reason, but are totally straight.[/li][li]People who are secretly gay themselves and hate that fact, they over compensate and act out by hating gays.[/li][li]People who aren’t gay but are scared that they might discover something about themselves they don’t want to know. They hate gays as a defensive measure.[/li][/ol]
To claim that gay-bashers are all one type is as stupid as claiming all gays are abused altar boys or all pedophiles. People’s motives are vaired and complex. Hate is varied and complex.
Hell, one might even be able to make the case that homophobia is no more a learned activity than being gay itself is. Nature versus nurture, in some cases it’s probably both. Maybe some gay-bashers are genetically predisposed sociopaths and have no motive outside the fact that they have abnormal brains and irrationally hating gays just happens to the manifestation of it. It very well could have been a Richard Speck style hate of women under different circumstances.
It’s complex and generalization on either side, be it anti-gay fundies or rabid gay advocates, is monumentally stupid and ineffective.
I think this idea was originated by Freud’s ideas about “latent homosexuality”. It’s logical that someone w/ socially conservative beliefs might compensate for homosexual urges by demonstrating strong dislike of the lifestyle.
I would only add a #4 to this: Those who take the bible literally, according to their interpretation of it, and regard gays as anathema.
(Note: I am not bashing them, just adding another category. I realize this is GQ. And for full disclosure, my church goes by a “hate the sin, not the sinner” stance. While gays would be welcome in my church, they would be regarded as in need of help, or whatever…for the record, I do not accept my church’s stance on this. To me, they are just people, and I do not think any differently of them for that than I would if they didn’t like seafood. Sorry for the TMI, but I don’t want anyone to take any offense.)
…although not liking fresh, wonderful seafood, would certainly give me pause. But hey, I ain’t judging anybody!
In my list these folks were covered under #1. I don’t specify if the hate is due to personal reasons or religious/moral objections or even just a basic misanthropy.
We could add a #5 to that: people who are gay, are not in denial, have an active sex life with other homosexuals, but remain closeted and act homophobic in public so as to advance their personal careers. The aforementioned mayor who was swapping sex for government jobs would likely fit in this category. He wasn’t acting like a homophobe because he was in denial about his real sexuality, he was acting like a homophobe because it was an easy way to garner votes and political donations.
Well, I’m not afraid to judge. I can tell you categorically, that when it comes to bashing gays, it cannot be the result of any defensible interpretation of the Bible.
How about the category where it’s okay to be gay in secret but it’s really bad public policy to allow gaydom in public? The mayor of Spokane could fit that. Hell, I could fit that – I don’t care what you do in the bedroom, but don’t bring it to work and talk about it (that goes for heteros, too).
I don’t know much about the mayor in question, but I’m guessing it’s a stretch to call him a gay-basher. I would even question if he were a homophobe. Let’s not pretend that pushing conservative politics is the same as being a homophobe.
You can believe that homosexuality is a sin without being a homophobe or a gay-basher.
It would be more accurate to say that they’re likely to share the qualities they claim to hate in others (laziness, ignorance, criminality, etc.). In the case of homophobes, those qualities would include “wants to have sex with other men.”
