Sooo, long story short, my eldest grandie is just fabulous. He’s still pre-pubescent, but his mum and I agree that we wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he came out in the next few years.
Aaaanyway, she mentioned his possible gaydom to a peer, lady, single mum, Canadian if that matters…and the mum was totally aghast at the prospect. Her opinion was that whilst homosexuality happens, it’s wrong, wrong, WRONG.
This is not a woman with religious affiliations that I know of, but still, it’s super weird in Aus to find a person under 80 who thinks being gay is somehow wrong and inherently disgusting.
I don’t know a single person with a problem with homosexuality who isn’t religious.
I would suspect there’s some personal history there, from the relatively benign idea that she’s bi, to having had a bad experience with a gay person. Maybe even having been raped by a woman or guy who pretended to be gay to victimize her.
Though I’d consider the most likely thing to be that she has more religious experience than you think. Even if she’s not actively religious, she could have grown up in it. And, despite the myth, one need not be a self-hating bisexual or gay person to buy into the religious belief.
My ex has four daughters (eldest is my daughter). During a convo with one of the other moms, it was realized eldest is bi, next is gay, third is bi, fourth identifies as gay (she’s 8).
The family was discussing it in a chat. My 83 year old very religious mom: “You love who you love, nothing wrong with that!”
My 37 year old nephew: “What? That’s just gross! Why they all gay? Did (their dad) cause it?”…and that was the self-described ‘woke’ nephew, not the very right leaning one.
However, when it comes to the race of a romantic partner, it’s completely opposite.
Hatred and bias doesn’t have to based on logic. It could be “I heard that gays are trying to rule the world” or “Gays are actually lizard people!”. Take just about any racial hatred statement and substitute gay.
People don’t have to be religious to oppose homosexuality. Many heterosexuals have a natural ingrained disgust at the thought of it, or revulsion/aversion to it. I’ve known plenty of non-religious people who hurled terms like gay, faggot, etc. as online slurs. China is a largely atheist nation, and remains largely hostile to LGBT. I’ve read that North Korea is believed to be strongly hostile to gays, too, and it’s definitely not a Christian/Muslim nation.
If true, this is just your limited personal experience. Sure, in more liberal societies religion is the last formally organized bastion of many kinds of prejudice, the fig leaf that people who should know better - people who live in a society with more enlightened morality - use to rationalize that their bigotry is something other than bigotry. But religion is just a vector for bad ideas, the ideas come from humans. As others have mentioned, anti-LGBT bigotry is rife also in many less religious societies. And there are still plenty of non-religious homophobes in the U.S. and Europe.
From the title of the OP, and the early mouseover, I thought the OP was going to have a tale of young people, as in kids or very young adults being homophobic.
But, for the under 80 crowd, homophobia is still a thing.
I have long hair, and was accosted at the post office last year by a couple in their late 40’s and their teenage son about me being a faggot.