One of my favorite social-theory quotes comes from Henry David Thoreau who, in Walden, said
I believe that what so saddens the reformer is not his sympathy with his fellows in distress, but, though he be the holiest son of God, is his private ail. Let this be righted, let the spring come to him, the morning rise over his couch, and he will forsake his generous companions without apology. My excuse for not lecturing against the use of tobacco is, that I never chewed it, that is a penalty which reformed tobacco-chewers have to pay; though there are things enough I have chewed which I could lecture against. If you should ever be betrayed into any of these philanthropies, do not let your left hand know what your right hand does, for it is not worth knowing. Rescue the drowning and tie your shoestrings. Take your time, and set about some free labor.
italics mine
The Bay Window a New England regional gay and lesbian periodical, has a fascinating article about homophobia that lends credence to my suspicion that homophobia correlates strongly with homosexual feelings.
As with Red Staters who froth at the mouth over something as benignly nonsexual as nursing infants in public while annually breaking records for divorce, infidelity, incest, and teen-and-unwed-pregnancy, I’ve always wondered what could possibly motivate homophobes to care in the slightest whether other men have sex with each other.
One possible answer:
Lending credence to that assertion are the results of a study published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Abnormal Psychology in 1996. Researchers at the University of Georgia conducted an experiment involving 35 homophobic men and 29 nonhomophobic men as determined by the Index of Homophobia scale, a 25-item test used by sociologists and psychologists to determine levels of homophobia. Study participants were self-described straight men as far as sexual arousal and experience. Participants were exposed to an array of videotaped straight, gay male and lesbian “explicit erotic stimuli” while hooked up to a penile plethysmograph. Known in some circles as the “peter meter,” the somewhat controversial device measures the degree of arousal in men based on changes in blood flow to the penis. The results? While both groups were about equally aroused by the straight and lesbian porn videos, researchers noted that, “The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not.”
Perhaps not surprisingly, when it came time for participants to offer their own subjective assessment of the degree to which they were turned on by watching the various sex acts, the homophobic men “significantly underestimated their degree of arousal by the male homosexual video,” according to an APA press release that announced the study.
I will leave it to others to catalogue the spitefully anti-gay legislative agenda of recently outed Spokane mayor and former Republican legislator James West, who springs most recently to mind.
Instead I’ll just say that we have nothing to fear from heterosexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, bi-sexuals, transsexuals or abstinents. In fact we have nothing to fear at all except those seem to have the most, and paradoxically the least, reason to be afraid.
I say paradoxically because, to quote Dan Savage from the same article “I think part of the backlash right now is the sense of loss that these people who are afraid of [homosexual] sex are going to lose their bogeyman if we all just show up at PTA meetings and appear to be as boring as they are.” The only thing that makes same-sex attraction more titillating or taboo than opposite-sex attraction appears to be the absurd stereotypes promoted by overwrought and evidently repressed and severely-in-denial homophobes.
As a (confirmed) heterosexual I probably oughtent care, but if everyone would just take a deep breath and relax maybe I could just get a damn prostate checked once a year without everyone making a federal case out of it. Case in point: Check out this Laura Tooth repost about a guy who goes all Hamlet (“To be or not to be wanked till my eyes roll back by a very attractive woman who first examines my prostate.”) during an otherwise extraordinary medical exam.
(Bay Windows link via Nyx at sxxxy.org)
