IS HOMOPHOBIA GAY?

I never thought about it before really, until I ran into an old college classmate recently.  In college, he was the most homophobic guy I’d ever met.  You could be discussing pizza, yet he’d somehow find a way to include homosexuals in the conversation and how much he despised them.  It was odd.

But perhaps what was more odd was when I ran into him one late night at a deserted subway stop in New York City.  Here was the most homophobic guy I’d ever met, locked in a passionate kiss with his tongue in the mouth — of another man!

Yes, the homophobe was himself a closeted gay man.  Interesting twist to the story?  Perhaps.  Rare? Not really!

Theories have long concluded that many of the most hardcore, anti-gay homophobics are often repressed homosexuals themselves.  Recent examples including everyone from anti-gay evangelical pastors to the most conservative political figures have proven this theory to be true.  But now, science has stepped in with some good old, hard-core facts.

A recent article published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, covered 6 studies conducted in the U.S. and Germany, using a total of 784 university students.  Students were first asked to rank their sexual orientation from 1 (highly gay) to 10 (highly straight). They then took a computerized test designed to determine their actual sexuality. Subjects were shown pictures and words closely associated with homosexuality and heterosexuality (words like “gay,” images of straight or gay couples, etc.), and were then asked to sort them into the appropriate categories (gay or straight) as quickly as possible.  But Dr. Richard Ryan, who led the study, included a very critical additional element.

The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds — long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

From the group that identified themselves as “highly straight” about 20% of them indicated a high level of same-sex attraction. Further, those that self-identified as highly straight but exhibited homosexual impulses were “significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming).”

Dr. Ryan cautioned that the test did not imply that all those who are anti-gay are secretly in the closet. However, if we were to extract the numbers from the study (20% of self-identified “highly-straight” people), it’s not difficult to theorize that 1 out of 5 might be.

Interesting how my college classmate turned out to be that 1 in 5.