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Today, homophobes seem to know instinctively when gays and lesbians need affirmation, support and love, then withhold these from them. . . They know that the best way to depress gays and lesbians is to put them down in a way that really hurts. A good way is to criticize them when they are wrong, while never complimenting them when they are right. . . . When gays and lesbians complain that they are being treated prejudicially, homophobes counter that they are paranoid; and when gays and lesbians complain that they are being discriminated against, homophobes counter that their negative response to them is not a discriminatory but an appropriate one. Some even provoke gays and lesbians, in an orchestrated manner, just so they can justify banishing them.
Homophobes, like all phobics, deny that they are phobic because they need their phobia, because they are ashamed of it, and because society encourages them to hide any taint of what society misinterprets as weakness.
Homophobes need treatment for two reasons: they cause serious problems for gays and lesbians and they also cause serious problems for themselves. For example, when they abuse or avoid gays and lesbians they deprive themselves of many pleasures in life . . . Nevertheless, homophobes avoid getting help for their problems for at least three reasons. First, through a process of self-denial, they do not believe that they are homophobes. . . Second, if they do believe they are homophobes, they do not realize that they are causing problems for themselves. And third, if they do believe they are homophobes, they deny that they are causing problems for others -- beyond, that is, what they feel others deserve.
Few if any homophobes enter treatment with the chief complaint “I am homophobic” and with the expressed goal of curing their homophobia . . . If they do discuss it, they resist any suggestion that they change.
Gays and lesbians need to recognize hidden homophobia. Too often gays and lesbians deliberately or unconsciously overlook homophobia so they can [forget] they have real enemies . . . Gays and lesbians can handle homophobia best if they learn when and where it exists. If they know what they are dealing with, they will know when and where they have been discriminated against and are not just imagining it. So they will not feel paranoid when they are in fact being persecuted.
-- Martin Kantor, Homophobia: Description, Development, and Dynamics of Gay-Bashing
“The History Behind Trent Lott”
Senator Trent Lott's recent condemnation of homosexuality and a variety of anti-gay initiatives in Southern communities point up an important trend in American politics, and a threatening one for advocates of inclusive democracy. Curiously, this more restrictive attitude toward social freedom is linked to a newly expansive exercise of religious freedom. Starting about 20 years ago, evangelical Christians began shedding their traditional aversion to political activism. In the South especially, they have flooded into the electoral process, settling mainly in the Republican Party. In doing it, they have charged and changed American politics as has no other force since the civil rights revolution. They have transformed the Republicans, bringing to the party a potent bloc vote, boundless energy and an unwillingness to compromise on certain domestic social issues.
Suddenly, a party that had been centered on economic issues and anti-Communism, and that first began to court the Southern vote in the days of segregation, found that its best new troops had concerns other than race: prayer in the schools, abortion and opposition to gay rights. Prayer and abortion got more attention in national campaigns, but the anti-gay theme was there from the beginning. In fact, the crusade by Anita Bryant, a devout Southern Baptist, against a gay rights ordinance in Miami in 1977 was an early rising of what came to be called the religious right.
The fundamentalists won that contest, reversing the ordinance by referendum, and the two movements -- evangelical Christians and gay rights -- have been in collision ever since. For the Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who first brought evangelicals back to politics, and for James Dobson, their newest spokesman, Bible values are absolute. If homosexuals are condemned in scripture, as the fundamentalists say they are, then they must be condemned in society as well. The leaders of conservative religious organizations have been pressing the case with Republicans on Capitol Hill lately, and the effect has been plain to see.
Mr. Lott, the Senate majority leader, said last month that homosexuals are sinners. In Greenville, S.C., the pastor of the Choice Hills Baptist Church went him one better. They are "a stench in the nostrils of God," the Rev. Stan Craig declared. As Kevin Sack reported at length in The Times this week, that kind of sentiment has become the fashion among Republican politicians in several South Carolina towns. "The time has come to take a stand," a local school board chairman who was running for state superintendent of education proclaimed. He was talking about banning the Indigo Girls from singing at a high school because of complaints that they were lesbians. He got the Republican nomination. The new Republican mayor of Myrtle Beach won office by campaigning to stop the opening of the city's first gay bar. The bar opened anyway. But near Lancaster, S.C., a lesbian named Regan Wolf was twice beaten unconscious and tied spread-eagled on her porch. "Jesus weren't born for you, faggot," a spray-painted message said. [ed. note: Wolf later admitted that she was never attacked but staged the porch scene with the help of a friend.]
American history is replete with examples of the connection between the politics of bias and violence. Republican leaders ought to take stock of what is happening in their party leaders' press conferences and in its new areas of grass-roots primacy. The party of Lincoln, which freed the slaves so long ago, should not be sowing the seeds of a new hatred on Southern ground.
-- New York Times editorial, July 10, 1998
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