Hi! I’m so glad you felt compelled to say hello, we all love to see a new face. Thanks for sharing a little bit about yourself. If you have been a lurker previously you probably already know about the “your story” stection and the rest of them so I wont repeat it into redundancy.

Keep up the posts if you feel comfortable enough, the more voices the merrier. 😀

you may want to read yowee’s story freedom4life

http://www.freedom2b.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3011

and did you check out our poll.

http://www.freedom2b.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3155

I thought I would post this because I am a total nerd and find it facinating and I live in hope that others will too. However, a disclaimer first, my examples are not taken from real life experience nor are they a reflection of the way I view gay men or their actual behaviours. It’s just an example to illustrate an idea that would be abstract otherwise. If I come up with a better example I will edit the post.

I was reading about phobias today and as we know they are extreem fear responces. However, they are usually in responce to stimuli of biological importance (hights, snakes, spiders; score one for Darwin) because it makes sense to be afraid of these kinds of things and fear responces to them are more easily conditioned that fear towards other things such as modern appliances, very rarely do people have phobic responces to cars or toasters. They can be conditioned after only one incident too and are extreemly difficult to exhtinguish.

So, in terms of homophobia (in its traditional sense without the more contemporary overtones) if the above is true then its very rare indeed. While I guess an argument could be made that homosexuality is biologically important in the sense that it disenables reproduction I think, generally, thats a pretty dodgey claim. When the term ‘biological’ is used in terms of phobias its coined in an instinctual sense, a fight or flight responce… I would argue that fear of homosexual does not exist on that same, gene orientated, instictual level.

But if, for example, a group of men verbally assulted a young woman for flirting with a gay man in their group (or a lover or whatever) then that women may develop an extreem, instinctual fear responce to all gay men: a phobia. Most esepically if her life was threatened: Biologically important. Does that make sense?

This is why the term homophobic when used to explain prejudice in church members is so wrong. It simply isn’t the most accurate term to convey the meaning. To be homophobic a person has to have at least one, negative, biologically significant, interaction with a gay person… reading the bible simply doesn’t produce this and because of the reluctance of gay people in the church to come out many chruch members have never even met a ‘gay person’ to their knowledge.

I get why the term has been adopted, its snappy and negativly connotated but we wouldn’t call sexist people femalephobic or racist people racephobic, it just doesn’t make sense. Racism and sexism are prejudices as is ‘homophobia’ in its colloquial sense. Call it homoism if prejudice is too general. Please, please, please if anyone ever writes a book, a journal article or even an essay for school try not to use homophobic and if you absolutly have to put in a disclaimer that reciognises your definition of the word in comparison to the psychological defintion. I marked a first year sociology paper six weeks ago on social interactions and homosexuals and I was very tempted to fail her because her entire maxim was put into question because she didn’t clarify her defintion (I didn’t fail her though because its first year and just because I’m anal about this kind of stuff doesn’t mean other markers are) if it had been a psychology paper though she would have failed no question so keep it in mind!!

You have a point Sandy…. I guess the fear amongst people as a whole who hate homosexuals is, “will they try and flirt or have sex with me? making the thought of that quite fearful and disgusting to them………(apart from the fact that some of them are usually closet gays and such or sadly have had abuse issues from gays/lesbians,transexuals..)

I have had someone tell me that they were afraid I would touch them up if they got too close or was given the one armed hug at church even if I was crying just in case I tried something or took it the wrong way 🙄 , even one church was afraid a friend of mine would molest their children if she did kids ministry on her own 😡 , so indeed the homophobia is very real and present but also I guess a new term could be used for those who are just plain ol’ prejudiced , ” Homosexist,Homosexism” (my new word for the mth 😉 )