There was a 1999 article in Rolling Stone magazine, “The Holy War on Gays”. The article quoted a certain Dr. Paul Cameron, a former pyschologist and (at that time at least) go-to guy for Christian gay bashers. The article had a number of very interesting quotes from Dr. Cameron:
The only thing in that series of quotes that makes me have just the slightest smidgen of a doubt that the person who said all that was a great big flaming homosexual who secretly longed to have lots of hot man-on-man sex is the bit about lesbians being “particularly good seducers”. Really, I think only a straight guy would say that.
If Gd had intended us to have sex with supermodels, he would have made us either incredibly handsome or incredibly wealthy. Since I’m neither, I can join with you in condemning it as contrary to Gd’s will.
The psychology behind this seems pretty straightforward. Some people were raised believing it is wrong or evil or icky or whatever, at some point they have some feelings that don’t align with their upbringing. Faced with that contradiction, I think most people will either react by reevaluating or rejecting one or both of those. So, inevitably, some of those cases will be people who hold tight to their upbringing and reject their feelings. So their anti-gay rhetoric is as much or more to convince themselves as to convince others. I don’t think that’s true for all of them though, some people just think homosexuality is wrong or evil or icky and never had any feelings in that direction at all. So I think it’s dangerous to think that everyone who is anti-gay is secretly gay themselves.
I do think the observation of those talking about temptations are probably more of a tell of this case. If you’re straight, there just isn’t any sort of temptation or concern of “turning gay” or whatever. The only real reason to separate oneself from something is if there’s actually concern that there is temptation and it might win.
We hear about a lot of people like Ted Haggard before their gay… adventures… make the news. In fact, it’s their very public anti-gay stances, coupled with the later exposure of their private behavior, that make them hypocrites in the first place.
As to how widely known Haggard and his ilk are, I don’t really know. I’d heard of him because I watch and read a lot of news of politics. I suspect people in fundamentalist Christian circles know more about him than the general public.
My prediction as to who’s next… Marcus Bachmann. That is a dude with some seriously unmet needs.
Marcus Bachmann used his influence to promulgate “ex-gay” teachings. There’s an entirely different category of vehemence that goes into perpetuating the culture of the closet and opposing it (and longing for its proponents to be revealed as hypocrites).
An article in Slate does a nice job of putting this study in context. It makes their technique for determining who’s secretly gay sound even more questionable – there’s no strong evidence that it works well, because it’s only ever even been used in one previous study. And apparently the differences in reaction times that it measures can be confounded by the fact that subjects who feel anxiety (for instance, those who might be very uncomfortable at a depiction of homosexuality) also respond more quickly.
It also goes into that older study that used penile plethysmography to make a similar argument, but I assume everyone is already aware of the reasons to doubt the results of that method.
When someone who is closet gay is an anti-gay activist, I tend to believe they scream the loudest to defer suspicion. Typically, these individuals are living in an environment that doesnt seem to be tolerant of gay lifestyles. Rather then deal with the flak, they just scream loud to defer suspicion.
I would like to clarify one thing since “religious officials” were included and I am not saying this was said or inferred, but it seems to be an issue with a lot of people
Pedophile and homosexual are not equal. Im referring to the Priests/boys scandal since that is typically what comes to mind when one includes religion.
A male adult and a male child does not make the adult a homosexual. It is about the age or the partner, not the gender, and boys are far more readily available then girls, and are far more likely to experiment.
I may have opened a can of worms there, but this error in judgment happens alot.
No, his “faggy-ness” isn’t what makes me think he’s a closet homosexual. The way he frames the issue of homosexuality is what makes me think he’s a closet homosexual. He’s another one of those “it’s just the devil tempting you, you have to resist the temptation and I can show you how because I’ve gone my whole life without giving in to that evil urge!” gay anti-gay activists.
It’s not having sex with men that makes you gay. It’s being attracted to men sexually that makes you gay. I’d bet everything I own that he’s resisting his attraction to men.
Yes, I’m totally convinced that you aren’t responding at all to the large number of jokes about his (supposedly) effeminate manner that have been popping up all over the media lately.
You’d be wrong, because I’ve never seen any joke about his supposedly effeminate manner in the media. I’m not quite convinced that there are a large number of jokes about that.
Somebody on the boards (Cat Whisperer?) once posited that the struggle for gay rights was basically a battle between openly gay people on one side and closeted, self-hating gay people on the other.
Whoever it is is an idiot. Do they think that, for instance, the Prop 8 passed in California because of the massive gay turnout to vote against marriage equality?
This is another reason to dislike this study, aside from the bad science. Not that it’s the fault of the authors of the study, of course, but this makes it easier for the logically impaired to blame homophobia on gay people. Because clearly there are a lot of people out there who will reason that, if repressed homosexuality leads to homophobia, then homophobia is a sign of repressed homosexuality. “If P, then Q. Q, therefore P.” Fallacious reasoning, but obviously very appealing to many people.
[QUOTE=Ludovic]
You’d be wrong, because I’ve never seen any joke about his supposedly effeminate manner in the media. I’m not quite convinced that there are a large number of jokes about that.
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