A Tangled Web

THE BENEFITS OF TOLERANT HOMOPHOBIA...



Here is an excellent article on tolerant homophobia. John, as ever, is on the button. This is my favourite quote from his article,



"We can't help it, we're born this way. To the best of my observation, it is congenital. The people afflicted by it report that they have always felt that way. You can't say it's unnatural, either — there is plenty of evidence for it in the animal kingdom. And, let's face it, in 99.99 percent of cases, it's perfectly harmless.



I am speaking about homophobia, of course.



Reading Louis Crompton's book Homosexuality and Civilization for a review, I found myself thinking that homophobia is, as a social and psychological phenomenon, more interesting than homosexuality. It seems to have been present in all human societies, though more intense in certain times and places than in others. Often — for instance, in the United States until about 40 years ago — it was well-nigh universal.



Where does it come from? Propagandists like Crompton tell you it's all the fault of Leviticus and St. Paul. Nonsense. Plato was a homophobe, at least by the time he got around to writing The Laws, yet he could not possibly have heard of St. Paul and I seriously doubt he was acquainted with Leviticus. If homophobia is socially conditioned, there seems never to have been a society that did not condition it to some extent.



If, on the other hand, homophobia is a "hard-wired" feature of the human personality, then the homo-propagandists have a tough job on their hands. Perhaps we should try to find out just what exactly homophobia is. Why aren't homosexualists agitating for intensive scientific research on homophobia? They're afraid of what we might find, perhaps"