I think the rapid change in public opinion came from the fact that most people didn’t even think about this at all until it suddenly became a hot button issue during the 2008 election season in order to energize a certain electorate. The kneejerk reaction a lot of older people had was “of course we should ban it”, but once they sat down and thought about it a bit and had a chance to talk it over they realized that the ban was dumb and discriminatory and they were wrong.
I think a lot of it has been, “Wait, if I’m opposed to gay marriage, I’ll be on the side of these creeps? Maybe I need to rethink.”
I think that oppressing gays is always a losing battle. Sure, people have kept it up in many societies for long periods of time, but it doesn’t seem that it’s had the enduring appeal of oppressing religions or skin colours.
And I think the reason is that gay people are part of every ethnicity and religion, every age group, every family. Most people have a gay cousin, uncle, parent, child or sibling. Pretty much everyone has a gay friend. At some point, if you hate gays, you are going to find out that someone you care about and respect is gay and you are going to have to question whether you really hate the gays more than you care about that person.
Desmond Tutu (I think it was in his book, God Has a Dream but it might have been in some interview I watched) said that one reason the anti-apartheid movement was successful in South Africa was that pretty much every white person in the country was raised by a black nanny. Beneath the racism was a prior belief that black people were people just like them. That was a unique situation in South Africa, but it is the universal situation with sexuality.
To agree with @jandrese:
The only reason that shit like this is ever a political issue is the charlatan fucks who profit from divisiveness, not because most people actually give a shit about who you’re fucking.
creepy right-wing nuts waking sweatily to dreams of repressed cock-hunger
Nice one.
You know, I find the whole “you’re against something, so you must be secretly this” thing to be childish and disingenuous.
Oh, if only there were some research or something that might shed some light on whether this is “childish and disingenuous” or a valid hypothesis!
So you are suggesting that 69.3% of a population, or a good portion of it, are repressed homosexuals due to their homophobic behavior? While I am sure there are some who are repressed in such a way, they are a minority among the population as a whole.
And this applies to more than the issue of homosexuals. For example, characterizing someone as having a small penis because they have a sports car.
I’m sure an evolving/increasing number of people are in the “I don’t actually care” category, but I personally suspect that the unknowable-but-significant number of LGBT people who actually work in/for the GOP may be making their opinions known or their influence felt. As the core “social conservative” GOP gets more desperate and overtly homophobic, more open & closeted LGBT folk will either stop helping them or actively start working against them.
Yes, if only -
Meanwhile, other scientists are reportedly skeptical of the findings. “This study is asking the right questions, but it’s a pretty big leap to say it’s revealing sexual orientation,” Psychology professor Gregory Herek, of the University of California-Davis, told Opposing Views.
The study had several limitations, the authors write. All participants were college students, so it may be helpful in future research to test these effects in younger adolescents still living at home and in older adults who have had more time to establish lives independent of their parents and to look at attitudes as they change over time.
Here’s the thing, I thought that calling this angry anti-homosexual preachers and politicians closet cases was just a joke back in the 90s. But they just keep getting exposed. Whether it’s taking someone from rentboy.com on a European vacation or trying to pick people up in airport bathrooms, people just keep outing themselves in embarassing ways. I don’t think that everyone who is against gay marriage is gay, that’s an outrageous idea. But it’s gotten to the point that if someone seems really, really angry about gay people, I figure they probably are.
Now now… its just Rob and his faux-gonzo style of writing using pithy micro-agressions. Using his own logic from this article though, he’s probably a closet Republican furiously masturbating over pictures at fox newsgirls.com. 
Its ok to seek professional help for this Rob.
I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere near that percentage had homosexual fantasies at some point in their lives. Gay/straight isn’t quite the binary it’s made out to be.
And yeah, I think it’s pretty goddamn plausible that the otherwise inexplicable hostility of many people towards homosexuals derives from their own insecurities about their own gender images. Do you have a better explanation for homophobia?
Yeah. They have been taught that these people are wrong and weird and to be like them or around them is wrong and weird. Also, they are different. Attacking a minorities differences strengthens the relationship with the majority. It’s human nature, unfortunately.
People aren’t racists because they are insecure of their own race.
I think that’s questionable in a few respects. First of all, I do think at least a component of a lot of anti-black racism (and part of the reason why you don’t see nearly as much anti-Asian racism) is the sexual component of anti-black racism. The myth of the jungle savage stealing the virtue of the white woman, and especially the myth that black men are on average “manlier” than white men. So I think the same sexual anxieties that drive homophobia also contribute to anti-black racism. When you state “people aren’t racists because they are insecure of their own race” it sounds silly but when you get a little more nuanced about it it actually makes sense. Anxieties about sexuality and anxieties about race are not mutually exclusive since part of the construct of race – certainly of the black race – has to do with sexual identity.
Your “it’s human nature, unfortunately” also leaves a lot to be desired. At this point, I don’t accept “human nature” as an argument for anything because frankly no one seems to have any clue what is actually meant by “human nature”. “Human nature” is not really an explanation for anything. I can say I cannot fly under my own power because it is “human nature” not to fly under one’s own power but that’s not nearly so satisfying as an explanation in terms of aerodynamics. If we could dig in to the implementation details of this particular facet of “human nature” isn’t it entirely plausible that we might find that the underlying causes of bigotry are insecurities or anxieties regarding “the other”?
I also have doubts that most people learn homophobia from their parents – mostly since I doubt most socially conservative parents are particularly eager to broach the subject with their children. My anecdotal experience suggests that homophobia more often emerges in middle school when boys are trying to grapple with puberty – i.e. trying to form their gender identities in the first place. A lot of boys seem to think they have to demonstrate their masculinity by relentlessly hating on anything that’s not masculine. And that’s exactly the scenario I put forward in the first place: homophobia being caused by insecurities about one’s own gender identity.
Ultimately, the explanation “homophobia is caused by human nature” is just stating a tautology: people are homophobic because people are homophobic. It’s not actually an explanation at all let alone better than the hypothesis that it’s a result of insecurities about their own identities.
Actually I said "Attacking a minorities differences strengthens the relationship with the majority. It’s human nature, unfortunately. "
This goes beyond homophobia. With confirmation bias we tend to gravitate to the familiar, and shun the unfamiliar and different.
People aren’t racists because they are insecure of their own race.
So in your quest to appose generalizations, you posit your own. Very telling that you went that route.
Many racists are angry racists because they are insecure in themselves, some are racist simply because their brains are fuck-wired, some are racist because of a lack of exposure to other cultures, etc. - many because of all of the above and then some…
Look, if you can’t see the pattern with closeted, self-loathing, conservative, homophobic homosexuals that destructively obsess over “the gays”, you’re just fooling yourself like many of them are.
Maybe direct more of your concern for all the suicides of gay kids, etc. that result from this situation, than for the hypocritical scumbags that push them to this brink?
Our pandering to conservatives with mental problems has led us down all kinds of destructive paths including rampant homophobia, wars based upon lies, terrible poverty, gargantuan wealth disparity and a global climate running off the rails.
Maybe it’s time we stopped pandering to the massively destructive, conservative lunatic fringe, shame them, put them aside and focus on the work we need to do before yet another gay kid turns to suicide, we feed the 0.01 percent another war or cold war, further throw away our dwindling middle class into poverty and sit on our fucking hands while we leave future generations a fucked environment?
Pandering to these assholes has been incredibly destructive to society at large. It’s well beyond time for a new direction.
I bet the average penis length of sports car owners is less than the average penis length of men.
[quote=“Cowicide, post:18, topic:26331, full:true”]
So in your quest to appose generalizations, you posit your own. Very telling that you went that route. [/quote]
What exactly is telling? I guess I haven’t heard of one being insecure of their own race as cause for racism in order for me to have somehow formed a generalization. I thought it was nonsensical, like if I had said, “People aren’t racist because they wear red shoes.”
[quote=“Cowicide, post:18, topic:26331, full:true”]
Look, if you can’t see the pattern with closeted, self-loathing, conservative, homophobic homosexuals that destructively obsess over “the gays”, you’re just fooling yourself like many of them are.[/quote]
Again, while I am sure this creature exist, it’s going to be a small minority. You can’t tell me that even a quarter of the vocal anti-gay population is secretly gay. Generally I thought stereotyping was bad.
