It’s never made sense to me; some guy sitting in his lounger in front of television enjoying a Coors Light, yells out to his wife: ”I hate them queers! I’d kill one if they ever tried to put the make on me!”. As if.
In 2004, polls showed that most Americans opposed Marriage Equality, with only 31% in favor, according to the Pew Research Center. Today, those numbers are reversed: 61% support same-sex marriage, while 31 percent oppose it.
The fascinating thing is is that support for Marriage Equality has increased across different generations, political affiliations and religious faiths. Even with White Evangelical Christians support for same-sex marriage has grown from 11% a decade ago to 29% in 2019, according to Pew.
50 years after police raided the Stonewall Inn, bringing two days of riots that became a catalyst for the modern Gay Rights Movement, a record number of LGBTQ candidates have been elected to Congress. Colorado elected the country’s first openly gay governor, Chicago has a lesbian mayor and the first openly gay Democratic candidate is running for president. Yet, LGBTQ Rights are under threat in Donald Trump’s America, leaving me to wonder what drives the president, his cronies and his acolytes to be working so hard to roll-back rights for queer people. Could it be that there are so many closet cases?
It’s no surprise that many studies have explored the reasons behind homophobia. One interesting study, conducted in 2012, presented evidence of a possible link between implicit homosexuality and homophobia. Putting it simply; a closeted gay man is more likely to be anti-gay. Surprising no one.
Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the study found there are higher levels of homophobia in those who have unacknowledged attraction towards the same sex. These levels were exacerbated when the parents of those people also held homophobic attitudes and people who come from authoritarian homes.
People who identify as straight, but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex, may be threatened by LGBTQ individuals because they remind them of themselves, or rather, what they keep hidden.
According the study:
In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves, and they are turning this internal conflict outward.
A previous study from 1996 found that homophobic yet self-identified straight men showed an “increase in penile erection” in response to gay male porn – significantly more so than non-homophobic heterosexual men.
I wonder if Vice President Mike Pence gets a boner from Calvin Kline underwear ads, or if Wilbur Ross sneaks a peek at GayTube, or if Eric is sometimes sneaking in the bathroom while Don Jr. is showering?
