I have been asking myself this question for years now. And I still don’t have a perfect answer, mostly because it isn’t scary to me. Two people loving each other, regardless of their gender is something that I 100% support.
Spiders scare me.
4 million women a year abused by partners scares me.
Human trafficking scares me.
People toting pistols and making racist statements scares me.
Even the dark scares me.
But Homosexuality does not scare me.
Nonetheless it seems to scare a lot of people, and so I think that spending some time understanding why people are scared, might be a part of identifying ways to educate and reach out to them…..
I will speak to three general categories. I do not think that these categories are the only categories, and I want to make sure to acknowledge that there are most likely many, many other more subtle reasons why people are afraid of homosexuality.
But for the sake of conversation, I have chosen three.
1) Those who have diagnosable mental illness.
2) Those who are afraid of losing social privileges.
3) Those who have not had the opportunity to learn anything different.
1) In the first category you have people like Fred Phelps and Shirely Phelps Roper of the Westboro Baptist Church. This type of “anti-gay” psychology seems to be based on primitive projection and splitting. It is not difficult to tell that this group of people has very little insight or complex cognition skills. It is most likely that they are actually NOT scared of gay, but rather scared of their own issues and perceived “internal badness”, and needing a scapegoat on which to project their “sins”. Even FOX news thinks that these people are crazy.
2) The second category of people is one that is trickier to explain. This category is people who have gained or maintained some social power through some identity, and the culture’s acceptance of their identity as mainstream. For example, a man who has married a woman in a patriarchal setting has often gained certain privileges. He may be able to have the final say in marital decisions or spats, he may be considered the “leader” of the household, he may be exempt from certain tedious tasks like housecleaning and child transportation. IF “gay is ok” as I would propose, then Patriarchy is less important because a woman does not need a man to make decisions, and could potentially partner with another woman. This challenges the assumed power of gender constructs within straight relationships just by suggesting the validity of gay partnerships.
This is scary for category two people because it creates an “unknown” variable that challenges current standards of behaviors. For instance if a woman and a woman can partner, then it seems logical that a woman can be a “leader” when leadership is needed in a relationship. And if a man and a man can partner, it seems logical that at one point or another a man is capable of giving power away, being submissive to another’s will or view. In mainstream patriarchal relationships (and most potently in religious contexts), this is a HUGE fear. Without the dogma of gender roles, culture would need to literally be rewritten. As it stands in these types of contexts, the woman is the receiver or child figure, and the man is the provider or parent figure. Homosexuality challenges these false roles, and therefore is a perceived threat to power structures.
3) The last category is pretty self-explanatory. This is a group of people who have been indoctrinated to believe that God hates homosexuality. They are taught that it is “unnatural”. This can only be remedied through education, and dialogue with people who are gay and can teach about the “natural” progression of their sexuality towards the same sex. The problem here however, is that category three people tend to be somehow tied to category two people. This makes it very difficult for a category three person to branch out and consider different perspectives and opinions as it might mean the loss of a significant attachment for them.
I am very curious what other categories people have in mind when they consider the question, “why are so many people afraid of homosexuality?”
