Hating Gays: An Overview of Scientific Studies – by Gregory M. Herek - Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)

…It frequently is assumed that feelings of personal threat result in strong negative attitudes toward homosexuality, whereas lack of threat leads to neutral or positive attitudes. This perspective often is associated with the term homophobia, and it derives from a psychodynamic view that prejudiced attitudes serve to reduce tension aroused by unconscious conflicts.

Attitudes are likely to serve a defensive function when an individual perceives some analogy between homosexual persons and her or his own unconscious conflicts. Subsequently, that person responds to gay men and lesbians as a way of externalizing inner conflicts and thereby reducing the anxiety associated with them. The conflicts specific to antihomosexual prejudice presumably involve a person's gender identity, sexual object choice, or both. For example, unconscious conflicts about one's own sexuality or gender identity might be attributed to lesbians and gay men through a process of projection. Such a strategy permits people to externalize the conflicts and to reject their own unacceptable urges by rejecting lesbians and gay men (who symbolize those urges) without consciously recognizing the urges as their own. Since contact with homosexual persons threatens to make conscious those thoughts that have been repressed, it inevitably arouses anxiety in defensive individuals. Consequently, defensive attitudes are likely to be negative…   Photo - International Day Against Homophobia

…Many particular empirical findings I have mentioned make sense if we assume that negative attitudes often are based in part on a defensive function: the finding that people are more negative toward homosexuals of their own sex than toward those of the opposite sex (since same-sex homosexuals presumably are more threatening); the positive correlations between hostile attitudes toward homosexuality and variables such as authoritarianism' cognitive rigidity' intolerance of ambiguity, and dogmatism (all of these personality traits presumably indicate higher levels of defensiveness); and the positive correlations between hostility and sex-guilt sexual conservatism, and nonpermissiveness (all of which might indicate conflicts about sexuality). . . .

Read complete article:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/roots/overview.html


"Beyond 'Homophobia': A Social Psychological Perspective on Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men" by Gregory M. Herek in the Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 10, No. 1/2 (1984), pp. 1-15.


"Beyond 'Homophobia”
http://www.beyondhomophobia.com/blog/


Facts About Homosexuality and Child Molestation, Dr. Gregory Herek, University of California at Davis & Yale University & City University of New York
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/rainbow/HTML/facts_molestation.html


Roots of Homophobia - Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/assault/roots/


Public Broadcasting Service (PBS)
http://www.pbs.org/

The origins of homophobia – August 23, 2003

Introduction

Homosexuality is just one of many variable traits among humans. People vary in height, skin colour, musical talent, food preferences and religious beliefs. Most differences are not made into issues. Where they are, e.g. race, religion or gender, we don’t usually consider the trait itself, but the hostility to it, as the issue.

Race is not the issue, racism is. People’s differing faiths are seldom the issue -- we treat that as a matter of private belief -- but religious intolerance is the social issue before us. We understand that to be female is not in itself the issue, but sexism is.

With sexual orientation, people tend to focus on homosexuality as the issue, when by the same principle as the above examples, it should be homophobia that should be the real issue. Here, homophobia is loosely defined as negative attitudes towards and intolerance of homosexual persons.

Some may argue that homosexuality is unique in that there are moral constructions against it. But moral constructions are merely the rationalisations for underlying homophobic attitudes, just as once upon a time, moral constructions were used to justify slavery or to subordinate women (and are still used today)…

Read more:

http://www.plu.sg/main/facts_04.htm


Homophobia Is Killing Our Youth – by Jason Mannino – April 17, 2009 – Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jason-mannino/homophobia-is-killing-our_b_188042.html


White-Hot 'Outrage' Over The Capitol Hill Closet – May 9, 2009 – National Public Radio (NPR)
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/white-hot-outrage-over-capitol-hill.html

Homosexuals-> HOLOCAUST – Hitler –> JUSTIFIED DISCRIMINATION - Benedict XVI
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/homosexuals-holocaust-hitler-benedict.html


Shining a light on closeted politicians - By Richard Leiby - The Washington Post / May 27, 2009 – Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2009/05/27/shining_a_light_on_closeted_politicians/

Gay Marriage - WITCH HUNTS ->The Crucible (1996) -> McCarthyism 1940’s -1950’s, -> Benedict XVI 2005
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/witch-hurts-crucible-1996-mccarthyism.html


VATICAN like TOBACCO COMPANIES - Responsible For The Lifetime Harm They Caused Children and Continue to Cause by Their UNSUBSTANTIATED Antigay Teachings - By Fr. Marty Kurylowicz
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/vatican-like-tobacco-companies.html


Vatican's Gay Witch-Hunts Cause -> Lifetime HARM to Children
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/vaticans-gay-witch-hunt-continues-peter.html

Pope described as …"so averse to anything intellectual that everyone has to play dense and ignorant to gain his favor"-- The Trial of Galileo - by Douglas O. Linder (2002)
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/pope-described-as-so-averse-to-anything_920.html

THREATS, SILENCE, HARM AND DISPOSAL of Catholic Personnel Supportive of LGBT Adults and Children - Ratzinger/Benedict XVI’s Directives To Hierarchy
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/09/threats-silence-harm-and-disposal-of.html

“Someday, maybe, there will exist a well-informed, well considered and yet fervent public conviction that the most deadly of all possible sins is the mutilation of a child’s spirit.”

Erik Erikson