I considered adding this to the Christian-gay thread, but decided it was a worthy topic of its own.
WHY are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?
. . . the piece mentions several instances . . .
One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation” — the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled.
It’s a compelling theory — and now there is scientific reason to believe it.
That study appears to have used subliminal messages as part of its methodology; I’m definitely not a psychologist but I was under the impression that in general the idea that quickly flashed messages can be subconsciously recognized was generally not really favored anymore.
Alternative theory: it’s the examples of people being obviously hypocritical that make the news. How many people could have even named Ted Haggard before that national news story? The great majority of straight fundamentalist preachers out aren’t news stories, so we just hear the juicy cases. Hell, Ted Haggard was fairly friendly towards gay people by the standards of fundamentalist preachers, from what I understand.
In fact, we’d see some public figures who are anti-gay outed even if the overall percentage of them who are gay were lower than the general population (and I suspect it probably is, because lots of gay people raised in fundamentalist Christianity end up rejecting it).
So this study is interesting, and I bet there are some people who are anti-gay because they’re trying to reject their own same-sex attractions. But I don’t know that there are enough that they represent a large percentage of homophobes. A few news stories about anti-gay preachers and politicians being outed doesn’t mean there’s necessarily any phenomenon to explain, any more than a few news stories about mothers killing their children would represent a trend rather than a small number of aberrant incidents.
No evidence has been presented that flashing something on the screen too short to register consciously is able to register subconsciously, so subliminal messaging does not work.
Are you agreeing with me? The first link only briefly mentions effectiveness, but it seems to agree with my point that it doesn’t work. The second link is about subtle images hidden in pictures (things like the arrow in the FedEx logo), which doesn’t really relate to this study’s methodology at all unless I’m missing something.
In the 1990s the gayest show on television was The 700 Club. Honestly, I saw more portrayals on homosexuality on Pat Robertson’s show than I did in most mainstream television shows. What got me to really thinking that some of those anti-Gay conservative Christian types might be gay was from reading some of their articles. I wish I could provide a cite but it was a long time ago and I don’t even remember what publication it was.
The long and the short of it was that homosexuals can lure straight people to their side because they’re so good at pleasing other men. Seriously. I think some of those folks are so deep in the closet. They think that homosexuality is wrong but they’ve got these urges they can’t explain. They’re good Christians though. As good Christians, if they have these temptations then every other man must be going through the same thing.
I don’t think all conservative anti-gay people are closet homosexuals, just the ones that talk about how you should resist urges or temptations. Straight people don’t think of homosexuality as a temptation that needs to be fought.
Bingo, if someone is ranting about the temptation of homosexuality, that every straight person is standing on this precipice just barely holding on…yea that isn’t how most people roll.
Also I’ve met plenty of people who hate gays but I didn’t think were actually gay, because they usually say it is gross or wrong and thats all they comment. Some though are so obsessed with homosexuality they think about men having sex with each other more than anyone else, expect weirdly lurid comments about erect penises entering male rectums and that is ho…er gross very gross.:dubious:
And if you are an anti-fascist, you are probably, at least in part, a fascist. And if you are misogynic, you are probably a suffering from a grave case of gynephilia. If you don’t like Sarah Palin, you’re probably a closet Republican. Many of those around these parts.
Rune, I sense sarcasm. I take it your throwaway counterhypotheses have just as much studies and empirical evidence behind them as the protesting-too-much variety of homophobia?
The Master spoke in 1987 and 1977 which is a wee while ago. They’ve found subliminal stimuli does ‘work’ but not for things like advertising, as explained in the link.
This is a new study, the one in the other link was from a fair while ago too, and one thing interesting about it was the lack of research since.
Of course it pretty much confirms what we ‘know’ ie that some people are taught to deny thier own sexuality and others arent.
Maybe if the reason you’re anti-fascist is because you believe that fascism is so tempting and attractive, and that everyone would vote fascist if they were given a choice, so people have to be taught to resist the temptation of choosing the fascist lifestyle…
It’s more that in retrospect he was quite obviously gay and projecting.
There are plenty of studies using briefly presented data to measure almost instant responses. For instance, there’s a study involving presenting letters in rapid succession to measure the shortest gap in recognising two different letters. I think studies on racial bias have involved presenting faces for short periods and asking people to make quick judgements. Still consciously available, but too fast to deliberate AFAIK.