It's Not Hate

One of the main impetuses for this blog is my constant need to understand the actions of others. And not just their actions but also the psychological path to those actions. I'm one of those people who can't accept things merely for the sake of accepting them and moving on. I'm a notorious dweller, especially upon negative actions, becoming obsessed with understanding why people do the things they do. Even in my fiction, understanding people's actions is a major component of my stories.


All that said, I feel that I have come to an understanding of the anti-gay movement that has become so aggressive as of late. We in the gay community seem to have forgotten that the homophobia expressed by the anti-gay movement isn't about their hate of homosexuals but their fear (phobia) of the homosexual lifestyle and all its perceived implications if that lifestyle were to be accepted by mainstream society.


Their fear isn't a fear of their own homosexual feelings (the old adage: "me thinks she/he doth protest too much" is used often when a homophobe rears their ugly head. Mainly when that homophobe is male.). I believe their fear is mired in the idea of society coming unbound. It's the fear of possibilities.

So many times, I've wanted to ask one of these opponents: "What does my love have to do with yours? How does my desire to be married to my partner effect your marriage?" I personally have never seen the correlation, until now. It dawned on me that my love, my sexual desires, and my refusal to deny them in the name of God and societal pressure effects the traditional existence by presenting alternate options. I represent the freedom to be human, not a robotic follower of God, or, probably more accurate, a robotic follower of the patriarchal system of religion and society which seeks to "control" people and their actions to more closely resemble an archaic and more understandable way of life.

Options are scary. Even mundane everyday options such as what outfit to wear and what to make for dinner can be daunting on occasion. So when the presented options seem to disturb our patterned way of life, well then, options become downright evil. I actually understand the concept. No one wants their lives to become untethered from their understanding, and the narrower that understanding the easier it is to become untethered. I get it. Hell, there have been many times in my life when I wished I didn't have these options set in front of me, but that was my fear of walking against the usual flow of traffic. Going all Sandy Dennis and walking up the down staircase and all. Most of us don't want to be that person who disrupts, which underlies the push for equality, the push to get an understanding of homosexuality and homosexuals out into the mainstream so that being homosexual isn't a disruption of life, or even a option, it just is.

Fear is the true disruptor of the anti-gay movement participants' lives. Even if the option to be a homosexual isn't one that they feel in themselves, the idea of the option existing still opens windows and door heretofore sealed shut to them by religion and/or society. Maybe, if the option to be homosexual is out there, then other options exist too: the option to not always have sex in the missionary position; the option to not get married at all despite society's constant pressure to do so; the option to have sex outside the marriage and it not effect the marriage negatively; the option that my child will live a life unlike my own; and myriad other options. The idea of homosexuality brings with it so many other options that aren't even related to it: hence the fear of it in general.

Homosexuality is a gateway option and that gateway swinging wide open is apparently cause for much fear. I say: step outside the gate and see for yourself that there is nothing to fear in having options. Step outside and realize that we are not robots or sheep (as it is, the Lord is not your shepherd, it's the men who wrote the Bible in the name of the Lord who are shepherding you and their flocks in the same field, walking you around in circles inside the fence that they, not the Lord, constructed for you). We are individuals who can face our fears head-on and survive them, mainly because the fear not faced, the fear unknown and not understood merely makes that fear seem larger than it really is. Most fears, when faced, turn out to not be fears at all.