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Open Letter to My (Un)Favorite Homophobe

By Fannie

Dear "Jose,"

Remember when you wrote this?

"Homosexual ?marriage?? What nonsense! Committed homosexual relationship? Ridiculous! They need to stop those practices as quickly as possible! We don?t want our kids learning about depraved behaviors! Keep it to yourselves."

And this was a good one too:

"The homosexualists, for the most part unconscious of their marriage deconstruction efforts, are working hard at all levels to re-educate, that is, indoctrinate the masses and our children to accept and affirm their sexual practices....They can rant and rage, foam at the mouth and spew bile, while reason and the facts remain cool and collected."

Oh ho ho yeah, and this?

"[The Homosexuals] are on a quest for the Holy Grail. [Marriage] is the ultimate societal recognition and blessing of their desire for homosexual intercourse. That which has throughout time and in almost every society been seen as a loathsome and depraved activity may now be sanctified in holy matrimony."

And this precious gem?

"It is always a moral travesty to pass any law that rewards perverse relationships. Such is the domestic partnership bill that passed the Oregon Senate recently and similar laws in many states that single out those engaging in homosexual practices for special privileges afforded only to marriages. For some unknown reason the Oregon Senate imagined that because men, for instance, wish to engage in long time sodomite practices, living together or even separately, enjoying anal and oral intercourse, government should award them special privileges."

(All emphases added)


*Sigh*

Fun times.

(Don't worry gays, all these judgments aside, Jose really does love you. And he's definitely not a bigot.)


But for real, Jose. It is clear that you base your opposition to gay rights on your firm (pun not intended) belief that sex between two people of the same-sex is unnatural, wrong, or otherwise vile. (Ah yes, "perverted," "depraved," and "absurd" are the words you use.)

The other day, I happened upon an interesting study and, as I know that you and your Opine blogger gang are really into (mis)using science to "prove" your absolute truths about the world, I think you may be interested. It's from the Journal of Abnormal Psychology and, specifically it was studying homophobic attitudes (such as yours) and the response of homophobes to different types of pornography:

"The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies." [emphasis added]

What does this mean for you, Jose?

*Sigh*

You can guess where I want to go here, and honestly, that route would be too easy.

It would be so, so unbelievably easy (and tempting) to chalk up your anti-gay ranting and blustering about the evils of butt sex to your possible latent homosexuality.

But I'm not going to.

See, if I wanted to act like your buddy who refers to himself as "On Lawn" and some of your other Opine co-horts who regularly mis-use studies with small sample sizes to make sweeping and unwarranted generalizations about groups of people, I could say that the above study is sort of a fancy-shmancy way of "proving" that men like you who loudly proclaim that two men having butt sex is wrong and who think about it more than any gay person I know secretly have, or want to have, butt sex.

But I won't. See, I've actually read the entire study. And as much as it is my personal inkling that homophobes who are as obsessed with "sodomy" and "perverted sex practices" as you are, are latent homosexuals, I am willing to suspend that belief in the face of the limitations of this study.

For one, the sample size of 64 men is extremely small. Two, and perhaps most importantly, the scientists acknowledge that the aroused response of homophobes to homosexual stimuli could be a function of homosexual feelings or it could be a function of anxiety.

So, what this all really means is that the study suggests that homophobes get turned on by gay porn because they find it arousing or they get turned on because they are anxious. Only you can answer what is true for you, Jose. Neat-o. As for me, I'm going to be honest here and admit that "more research is needed" before we can make, ahem, firm conclusions as to whether homophobes are secret homos.

To further knowledge in this area, perhaps you could be a participant in future studies. Your writings indicate that you would make an excellent case study. Oh, and a tip for you? You might want to start basing your opposition to everything gay in something other than the "icky-ness" of gay sex. Because yes, Jose, we all get it. Lest we forget, you must continually remind us: "Jose thinks anal sex is wrong, dammit!"

Neat.

Toodle-loo,
Fannie

Full post as published by Fannie's Room on April 07, 2008 (boomark / email).