(Submitted by Mark Tindall)

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What is Homophobia? Homophobia is defined as fear, loathing and hatred of homosexuals and/or homosexuality. A homophobe is a person who believes homophobic beliefs. Homophobes generally fit into four levels of homophobic attitudes:

REVULSION In this most extreme expression of homophobia, homosexuality is seen as a crime against nature. Gays are seen as sick, crazy, immoral, sinful, wicked, etc. Anything is justified in order to change them, including prison, hospitalization, negative behavior therapy, and the former use of pornography, drugs and electric shock at BYU. One of the church's most outspoken examples of this kind of person is Boyd Packer, who once stated that it was okay to hit a homosexual.

Discussion Questions:

1.. Is homophobia ever justified? 2.. What other examples can be found in the church of this kind of homophobia? PITY Pity is better than revulsion, but it is heterosexual chauvinism. In this type of homophobia, the assumption is that heterosexuality is more mature and certainly to be preferred. Any possibility of becoming straight should be reinforced, and those who seem to have been born "that way" should be pitied, the poor things. Discussion Questions:

1.. How many of our families fit this description? 2.. Why should this level of homophobia be discouraged? TOLERANCE (Hate the sin, Love the sinner)

In this view, homosexuality is seen as just a phase of adolescent development that many people go through and most people grow out of. Thus gays are less mature than straights and should be treated with the protectiveness and indulgence one uses with a child. Gays and lesbians, in this view, should not be given positions of authority because they are still working through adolescent behaviors. Evergreen (one "unofficially" church sponsored group), for example, suggests that gay men simply need to learn how to become "men," and so play sports as a method to achieve this goal. Discussion Questions:

1.. How many of us can claim to be "victims" of this kind of prejudice? 2.. Why is tolerance not enough? ACCEPTANCE Acceptance, while the most positive form of homophobia, still implies that there is something to accept, characterized by such statements as, "You're not gay to me, you're a person." "What you do in bed is your own business." "That's fine as long as you don't flaunt it." Acceptance ignores the pain of invisibility and the stress of closet behavior. "Flaunt" usually means saying or doing anything that makes people aware of your homosexuality.

Discussion Questions:

1.. In what way does this prejudice deny social and legal realities? 2.. How would this kind of homophobia be viewed if we turned it around and told straight members that although we don't approve, we will be accepting of their ways (as long as they don't flaunt it!)? 3.. How does "coming out" help to eliminate homophobia?

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Homophobia--What Is It?

Homophobia is the intense, irrational fear of same-sex relationships. The root meaning of the word is: fear of homosexuality. Its meaning has evolved over time; it is now usually defined as fear, loathing and hatred of homosexuals and/or homosexuality. There are several possible explanations. One is that homophobia is an attempt to repress or deny one's own homosexual impulses. This "internationalized homophobia" is a possible explanation for the way some of our outspoken homophobic church leaders act.

Someone once wrote that what the country (and our church) is going through with the gay issue is similar to what a family often goes through on learning that one of their own is gay or lesbian. There might be shock, fear, hostility, and hysteria before there is understanding and acceptance.

One can hardly open a magazine or newspaper, or turn on the television without seeing something gay. People who would prefer not to deal at all with the lives of gays and lesbians presently have little choice. Short of burying their heads in the sand to avoid seeing our reality, they are forced to make choices about what it means to be gay. Of course, since these people are not gay or lesbian (presumably), they have little to go on. This includes our church leaders, who have never claimed to have received revelation to back up their current personal beliefs, beliefs which have changed drastically over the past 30 years from a former attitude that was not only tolerant, but accepting.

Betty Berzon, Ph.D., has written in her book Setting Them Straight: You can do something about bigotry and homophobia in your life: Homophobia, sexism, and sexual harassment all have one thing in common. The real issue is power-who has it and who doesn't. Our society has developed mainly around the needs of men, in whom most of the power has been vested. One important way of expressing male power has been the subjugation of women. That may or may not have appeared to be consensual before, but it surely is not now. Women have taken power of their own and, for the most part, no longer serve as "society's handmaidens."

This is less true, sadly, when it comes to women within our church who are still, as one woman once said, "trained to take care of everyone, serve the refreshments and clean up the mess." Nowhere within the church's empire can an organization be found that is run by women. Everything, including the Relief Society and Primary programs, are headed by men. This was not always so. When women do take power, certain men resent this and act out their resentment in sometimes brutal ways.

Heterosexuals as a group have always had more power than homosexuals. "Those people" are subjugated by ridicule, disdain, and marginalization. Now gay and lesbian people are beginning to claim power through visibility in politics, and in the media. They are no longer willing to stay quiet and in their closets like they were taught. As they begin to impose new rules for how they are willing to be treated, the power balance is shifting once again.

Homophobic straights are not willing to give up easily. Most do not understand that the assertion, or at least the illusion, of power is the driving force behind their efforts to put limits on our freedom. But we must stand up to them, just the same.

A billboard along the freeway said: Ignorance isn't bliss, it's ignorance. What of all the power-hungry men (and some women) in our church and society who refuse to face their own reflection in the mirror, a reflection that shows a homophobe? It's to these people that we must raise the mirror of truth. We must learn why people are prejudiced and the psychological payoff of scapegoating strangers. We must then use this knowledge to fight intolerance and injustice, even in small instances. We are all diminished by discrimination when the value of our very existence is questioned. When we don't respond, when we don't fight back, our integrity as human beings is further compromised. Talking back to bigotry is posing the issue of our right to love versus their right to hate.

Why People Hate-The Origins of Prejudice

Everyone is a potential hater. Aggression is a part of every person's makeup. Depending on one's family training, the culture one lives in, and the circumstances of one's life, aggression is expressed openly, covertly, or repressively. Just take a look at men wild about sports to see one of the "accepted" ways our society approves of and supports aggression in action.

Sometimes people hate because they are unable to love. Most of us have been in love at least once. You remember the rush of emotion you experienced when the object of your affection walked into the room. But there are those for whom love is anything but a welcome visitor, for whom it is a dangerous emotion that makes you vulnerable and defenseless. Love carries with it the potential of oppressive responsibility. You are expected to have relations with people you love, to care about their well-being, to selflessly support and protect them.

Hate, on the other hand, makes no such demands. You don't have to form relationships with people you hate. You don't have to care about what is happening to them. You don't even have to relate to them as human beings. Hating others creates an illusion of superiority and strength, which works as protection against those who are different enough to be threatening.

Hating helps to make the world seem more manageable by reducing many of the complexities of life to simple concepts: good and evil, right and wrong, safe and dangerous. These concepts are not seen as oversimplified abstractions. They are true guideposts of the hater's journey through life, defined by one "authority" or another, ways to know that you are okay, because someone else isn't.

Hating can provide those who are powerless with "explanations" for what is wrong in their world. "They" are ruining everything. Pat Robertson says that homosexuality is a "shameful lifestyle that destroys all it touches." Even though this statement makes no sense at all, it provides the powerless person with a compelling reason to hate homosexuals, "who are ruining everything." That is a significant part of what hating strangers is about-a target to aggress against-toward whom anger can be discharged with little or no fear of retaliation.

Hating often serves an important purpose for the self-esteem of the hater in that it is used to justify antipathy toward a person or group who can then be blamed for what is wrong in one's own life, making it possible to abdicate responsibility for doing something about one's own failures and misdeeds.

Some people learn to hate because they have been cheated of nurturing love in their development. The developing child feels insecure, threatened, and confused. The pain of vulnerability gives way to a self-protective rejection of emotional openness. The child grows up suspicious of the motives of others, defensively excluding people rather than including them, and intolerant of anything that might compromise a delicately balanced equilibrium.

These are people to whom loving with an open heart feels dangerous because they are already too hurt to allow another person access to the vulnerable inner self. They tend to have controlled relationships that do not demand too much intimacy. On the outside they look like good citizens who lead exemplary lives. On the inside they are embattled, always wary of someone getting past the barriers, too frightened of betrayal to allow love. They come to substitute the emotional high of hating for the passion of loving. This is the psychopathology of bigotry.

Their emotional highs come from the hatred they feel for individuals and groups whom they have demonized, usually in concert with others similar to them, often endorsed by religious "authority." These are the core constituents the demagogues recruit offering approval, affiliation, and protection-the very things that were missing in the early lives of these people. This is how hatred takes root in the individual psyche and is then tapped into by the demagogues to build a political, social or religious constituency founded on human vulnerability.

Understanding Prejudice

We have described some of the attitudes and ideas that are used by people to justify their hatred. What we have described are their prejudices.

One dictionary definition of prejudice is:

An adverse opinion or leaning formed without just grounds or before sufficient knowledge; an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics.

Since prejudice is defined as an attitude that is irrational, hostile and without basis in fact, why would people hang on to such ideas? Of course, they don't identify their ideas as irrational, hostile, or uniformed. To the contrary, such ideas form the cornerstone of their belief system. Unless there is a reason to be analytical about one's belief system, these prejudices can be passed from generation to generation giving them an aura of authority and truth, even when they are products of folklore and fantasy with no grounds in reality.

What compels individuals to stay invested in their prejudices? It's handy, for one thing. It makes life easier to have beliefs that appear to define what's okay and what isn't about other people's behavior, and more importantly, about one's own behavior.

Prepackaged judgments about right and wrong feel safer because they are shared with other like-minded people-there is the endorsement of majority thinking and a reason not to have to do the hard work of figuring out the morality of every situation life presents. The danger in this lies in the fact that this kind of thinking, or lack thereof, leads to blind obedience. It also thwarts our progress toward becoming "adults of God." How can we mature spiritually if we're forever kept at the "third-grade" level?

Relying on someone else to do all your thinking has become in recent years, omnipresent. One cannot go to church anymore without hearing the phrases "Follow the Brethren" and "When the leaders speak, the thinking has been done." What these imply, of course, is that obedience is the only acceptable response to them. Even to question their will is a sign of apostasy. This is, by definition, blind obedience. Some members of Affirmation jokingly tell friends that the current motto at the entrance to BYU now reads "The Glory of God is Obedience."

Blind obedience, if this is God's will, makes having the Spirit unnecessary. All we have to do is whatever we're told. Go along with the flow. Don't make any waves by asking challenging questions and don't ever refuse to endorse the will of those in "authority" over you. Sounds dangerously similar to the plan we were taught of one of God's children in the pre-existence, doesn't it? Much of our teaching in the church is highly prejudicial to anything that does not follow our religion. To ask the typical Mormon to question their prejudices is to challenge the monolith of Mormon theology. A pretty big challenge, but a necessary one if we are ever to "grow up."

Another condition that often complicates the process of unlearning prejudice has to do with the way children are disciplined. If our parents were harsh disciplinarians, using authoritarian methods to teach obedience, it is likely the adult child will have an authoritarian personality-what social psychologists identify as the "prejudiced personality"-rigid thinking, intolerant, and punitive.

A different version of this personality results when individuals are taught obedience by parents who threaten the withdrawal of love as a major means of discipline. The child's life is spent figuring out how to earn affection and avoid abandonment. These people grow up feeling insecure and fearful, angry at parents but unable to express that anger or, often, to even admit it to their own consciousness.

For those who cannot manage the frustrations of their own family relationships, gay and lesbian people-"out to destroy the family"-make good targets on whom to displace aggression.

Since the prejudiced personality is someone who is rigid, suspicious, intolerant, and punitive, it is unlikely this person will be able to sustain nurturing, supportive, loving family relationships. Unable to identify or face their failure, the individual seeks someone to blame-to aggress against.

Ironically, these family failures are often the people one hears mouthing the rhetoric of the religious right regarding preservation of "family values." Typical of the prejudiced personality, their own family problems are not seen as a product of their actions but are the fault of a predatory outside force. Feeling threatened, these people "force the deviants out" for being who we are. No matter its origins, this prejudice is always irrational in that it generalizes from the few to the many, and is based on misinformation or distorting stereotypes in the first place. The fact that this prejudice serves a psychological purpose makes it difficult to combat and for the homophobe to overcome.

One must wonder why they feel so threatened. For some it is a realization that he or she may have homosexual feelings and hopes by keeping us away that they might somehow stay straight. This viewpoint, if it applies, would bring their understanding of human sexuality into question. Surely they don't feel that we humans sit down one day at puberty to decide whether we will be straight or gay?!

The problem with shutting people out and closing the curtains on the world around them, is that it is going to become ever increasingly difficult to do so. The world is becoming so small, and the movement of people in it so uncontrolled, that trying to maintain homogeneity in one's personal environment is now close to impossible, especially in our larger cities. We cannot even turn on the TV now without seeing a gay or lesbian character portrayed in a positive light. Individuals like this are left with either adjusting, or waging psychological (or physical) war on their unwanted neighbors.

Even if we were to accept all that our church leaders are currently teaching us about homosexuality, wouldn't it be better if homophobes simply stated: We don't understand why people are gay, but we are taught by our church leaders that this is a sin. As fellow members of our ward family we must love them in spite of their choices. We need to talk about them because we will be encountering gay people in the world around us and we need to know how to deal with them . . ." Instead, they try to "protect" themselves from the "evil," shutting gays and lesbians out, pretending they don't exist, which prevents them from learning by experience. Unfortunately, they miss out on an opportunity for moral development.

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Moral Development in Human Beings

Psychologists and sociologists break up moral development into three periods:

a.. Ages four to ten years, b.. Ages ten to thirteen years, c.. Ages thirteen years to young adulthood. Level One (Ages four to ten years)

In this period, morality-whether behavior is right or wrong-is judged according to outcome. The child wishes to avoid punishment; therefore, what does not get punished is right and what does get punished is wrong. While the temptation is here to label people in the church who consider only what "authority" says in making moral decisions, hopefully most people do not fit into this level of development. Those who believe that God gives rewards (a miracle such as much needed cash from an unexpected source) or punishment based on what we do (AIDS is God's punishment for immoral behavior) would be at this level of moral development.

"What can I get away with?" is the question that often shapes decisions about what actions to take for the level one adult. These adults are the truly amoral people since their development has not incorporated the shared concepts of right and wrong that most of us live by-concepts that do not take into account the needs and wishes of people around them.

Level Two (Ages ten to thirteen)

In this period, right and wrong are judged according to whether or not the adults in one's life are pleased and show approval of an action. Approval means it's right. Disapproval means it's wrong. A lifelong pattern is established in which morality is determined by what other people think of one's behavior.

In a later stage of this period emphasis is on following the rules with a tendency to see rules and laws as fixed and unchangeable (as many people see the Bible). External authority is all-important, as is conforming to what are perceived as the expectations of most people-the rule of the majority.

This level describes most members of our families, church and society. These people are the true followers, the true believers, individuals who are suspicious of anyone who is different from them-who doesn't follow the crowd. Level two people are the traditionalists, who resist change and mistrust anyone who seems to want to bring about change.

The many silly "rules" we grew up with are a result of this level of development. "White shirts for all men." "Partake of the sacrament with the right hand." "Women must wear only dresses (with lots of lace)." "A church leader with more seniority gets to walk through a doorway (as they do in the church office building) before others." "Passing the sacrament to the bishop first."

Level two people are the best candidates for any demagogue who can pull off a credible show of authority. Extreme examples are cult members such as those who surrender their individual judgment to Jim Jones in the Johnstown tragedy, and the people who lived, and died, with David Koresh in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Less extreme are the level two adults who respond to the likes of Pat Robertson who tell them that they must follow his lead or the nation will "continue to legalize sodomy, slaughter innocent babies, destroy minds of her children, squander her resources and sink into oblivion!" Or when any church leader sounds the alarm, asking for unthinking obedience, and we respond with robotic predictability, even when the actions are questionable. This type of unquestioning obedience was condemned by a former prophet of the church, yet it seems to be more integrated today than when it was first introduced in an Improvement Era article in 1945.

An interesting aside here is the response of women who use this level of morality. They tend to be guided more in their dealings with others by the quality of the relationship involved. There may be just as much followership by women at this level but it will be influenced more by whom they relate to than by strict adherence to a set of rules.

Level two people are redeemed from their own spiritual inertia by joining right-wing fantasy wars against the forces of evil-predatory homosexuals out to steal their children and destroy American life. (The current church-led battle against legalization of same-sex marriage in Hawaii is a clear example of this.)

Or, to be less extreme about it, these are also people who have simply grown up in a conservative environment and take their comfort from the conviction that their parents were right and they will be okay if they just follow the values they were taught as children. The fact that the world is changing around them seems to have little impact (or importance).

Level Three (Ages thirteen years to young adulthood)-Our Goal

In this period, right and wrong are judged not according to what others think but according to internal criteria-personal decisions based on ethical principles evolved from the lessons of life. Moral judgments take into account such things as the circumstances of an action and the rights of the individuals involved.

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This is moral maturity-the ability to think for oneself, not just depend upon outside sources to dictate what is right and wrong. Moral maturity always includes an openness to learning and changing, a commitment to human rights, and respect for individual differences. We fall short of this level of morality by excluding and judging others. This level of arrested moral maturity reveals why some people cannot see their moral blindness. This way of seeing the world keeps them from understanding the Gospel as taught by Christ.

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And what of the homophobes? Do they really love us as they claim? They can start showing it by asking themselves if their views are based on personal prejudice. They can help us by resisting the temptation to call our lives perverse and unnatural. They can help us by trying to understand who we are rather than condemning a way of life they really know nothing about in reality. Will they find the courage to do this? Can they?

(This article is heavily indebted to Betty Berzon's book, Setting them Straight, from which major sections have been adapted.)