Homophobia – the hitherto elusive “gay cure”

Star post

Sometimes hope *is* hate

One of the clichés often uttered or written in what nowadays passes for intelligent “debate” of contemporary social issues, is that those who are most vociferous against the evils of homosexuality (the behaviour, not the recently-postulated “orientation”), are often people who have experienced most strongly the temptation to engage in homosexual behaviour themselves.

In short, homophobes are often accused of being “gay people” themselves, and of “being in denial”.

That stereotyping cliché isn’t always well-received by those on the receiving end.  But I think there might well be an element of truth in this cliché.  I find it entirely plausible, based upon my own experiences, that there really could be a correlation – though how to measure it is another thing entirely – between homosexual child sex abuse victimisation, thoughts, feelings, impulses or deeds during one’s formative years, and so-called homophobia in one’s mature character.

Many homophobes accused of being “in denial” of their having a “sexual orientation” that is homosexual, tend to confirm the facile observation that they are indeed “in denial” (speaking literally), by promptly denying ever having been drawn towards homosexual practices.  Undeniably, denying something one hasn’t actually thought, said, felt or done in the first place, still surely amounts to “being in denial”.  The Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six were “in denial” from the moment they were accused of the crimes of which they were wrongly convicted, weren’t they?  What else is pleading “not guilty”, but “being in denial”?

I would never be so rude as to flatly contradict a homophobe who denied ever having experienced same sex attraction, by accusing him of lying.  I would certainly not insinuate that he was homophobic because he possessed a repressed homosexual “orientation”, but was in denial about that, a jibe often levelled against homophobic people.  However, were it to have been as he insists that it is not, this would be, to me, all the more reason to congratulate him for his wise choice to flee from homosexuality, not greater reason to condemn him for resorting to homophobia to help him to flee.

Homophobia is a jolly effective defence mechanism – a coping mechanism – which I am almost certain many homophobic people adopt, usually on purpose, as an exercise of their free will, and from which they benefit themselves and others enormously.  As the saying goes, “there’s none so pure as the purified.”

I would like to promote an increase in homophobia in society.

Homophobia isn’t a bigotry or a hatred.  It isn’t caused by wicked or unhealthy repression of one’s own homosexual inclinations.  Rather, it is a mechanism of healthy repression of one’s own homosexual inclinations – working up a righteous fear or hatred of those inclinations in oneself and others.  That, primarily, what so-called “homophobia” really is.

As such, homophobia meets a personal need of the homophobe himself.  It arguably meets a social need.  It often is perceived to meet a spiritual need.

In a society that permits individuals freedom of thought and conscience, homophobia is no more illegal than any other thought crime.  There is no Clause 28 provision prohibiting the promotion of homophobia, any more than there is a provision prohibiting the promotion of homosexuality that is rife nowadays.  Not even amongst youth, provided that this promotion of homophobia is done in a manner that is at least as age-appropriate as the manner in which the promotion of homosexuality to the young (even pre school children) it is nowadays proposed should be publicly funded.

Anybody who says that there is no such thing as a “gay cure”, cannot have given homophobia a serious try yet.

Choosing homophobia, working on one’s homophobia, and in time perfecting one’s homophobia, cures and prevents one from choosing homosexual behaviour for oneself very effectively indeed – either from choosing that behaviour for the first time, or from choosing it again, for example in a moment of drunken lust, just to get through one night, when it wasn’t what one chose when sober, in the cold light of day, when sitting down to plan one’s whole life, if not also one’s eternity.

Why do so many people nowadays consider that it is noble to choose homosexuality, but ignoble to choose to refrain from homosexuality, and therefore to cultivate homophobia in oneself instead, as a deliberate defence mechanism?  Homophobia is the defence against homosexuality that works.  It is OK to be fearful of homosexuality, lest one might lapse, or relapse, into a vice in which one has resolved never – or never again – to indulge, and which one recommends that others also eschew or forsake.

Why do those who have chosen homosexuality as a habitual way of life, and become set in their ways in that behaviour, get so angry with those of us who have chosen to run away from homosexuality instead, and have become just as set in our ways?  Why do they so hate those of us who use the only defence mechanism that works, to prevent or cure homosexual behaviour in ourselves, and to enable us to keep our resolutions and to resist any and all temptations towards homosexual behaviour that come our way, throughout our lives? Why shouldn’t we who have discovered the joys and liberation of homophobia encourage our young to make the same choice as we did for ourselves, their deliberate cultivation in themselves of homophobia like ours?

Why wouldn’t we fear the recruitment of our young into homosexuality, and fear this all the more when we happen to have been recruited into homosexuality ourselves during our own youths, and are so regretful of our pasts, and so glad that we escaped from that way of life?

Before I offer any answers of my own, to my own questions, please may I have some readers’ answers?

To summarise this post as an exam-style question:

“Homophobia – the fear of homosexuality – is a legitimate, effective and desirable defence mechanism against homosexuality in the individual and in society.”

Discuss.