. . . And Hijacking the Language of Pathology

I wrote yesterday about how the gay rights movement has hijacked the Civil Rights legacy. They've done the same with the language of mental illness. The word "homophobic" sounds very medical, but its only real value is propagandistic.

"Phobia" came from a Greek word referring to fear, and became familiar in the 20th century as a suffix attached to terms denoting irrational fear: a mental or emotional weakness. Acrophobia, agoraphobia, and (from Lucy of Peanuts) pantophobia ("the fear of everything") are reasons to seek therapy.

"Homophobia," then, apparently refers primarily to a mental or emotional weakness characterized by fear of homosexuality or of matters homosexual. Now, if that were the way the word was really used, I'd have no trouble with it. A generalized fear of gay men or lesbians is irrational and harmful. I'm all in favor of treating one another just as real human beings, and not attaching fears to members of any group unless they've done something to harm others. A small number of homosexuals have harmed children and others, sure. Yet it's as rational to be phobic regarding energy company executives (who certainly have had extremely damaging criminals among their ranks) as homosexuals. (By the way, I had dinner with one such executive--not from Enron--last week, and he wasn't the least bit frightening.)

"Homophobia" is used to cover a lot more than that, though. I'm labeled a homophobic because I have a principled disagreement with homosexual behaviors in general, and with enshrining them under the approval of marital law in particular. It's not because I have a fear of any gay or lesbian persons. I don't consider myself at any personal risk. I certainly do not avoid gay men or lesbians. (I could document that, but it would be offensive to those friendships to use them in that way, so I won't.)

Yet the term seems broad enough to include me as well. I do not have fear or aversion, my relationships with others and my life functioning are not hindered, but somehow still I merit a term that signifies mental illness. I do have an aversion to certain behaviors, but does that qualify for the "phobia" term? If it does, we'll see other words follow it into our language: pedophilaphobia, genocidaphobia, embezzlementophobia. No, we do not label disagreements with behaviors that way.

A comment yesterday took this apparent pathology one step further: "homophobes are almost never going to admit their condition." Boy, if that isn't accusing people of neurotic repression, suppression, projection, or some other defense mechanism, I don't know what it is. And here you have it: I certainly have not admitted my "condition" here, not in the terms he thinks "homophobes" should own up to. I guess I'm proof of his principle. (Maybe I should see if he'll admit to being religionophobic*. If he doesn't, that shows he has the problem; he just won't own up to it.)

This same commenter seemed to imply that there might actually be some of us who have principled objections to homosexual behaviors, marriage, and so forth. He was somewhat careful not to call that group homophobic, for which I give him some credit, though he indicated that the great majority of those who speak like this are really "cloaking" a phobia. So I don't know what difference it makes.

Here's the truth: there are some people who are irrationally afraid of homosexuality. On the other hand, there are many of us who take a principled moral and/or pragmatic/societal stand against homosexual behaviors and against legitimizing them. A great many of us take these positions with no personal fear involved whatever.**

There are others between these two positions, and probably others who have still other kinds of disagreements with gay rights. Using the same term for all these groups is just silly--except for this: it is very politically effective. The word has such emotional power that it fogs out any real meaning, while making its objects look defective.

I started this whole post with another very politically loaded, emotional term: propaganda. I did that intentionally, so you could observe your own reactions to it. Did it seem fair? Did it seem overly loaded? Did it seem unexplained or unsupported? Did it seem highly political? The same is true of almost every use of "homophobia." It is unexplained, unsupported, and used for political rather than rational, descriptive purposes. (I think I've actually made a case in favor of my use of "propaganda" here, though.)

*I changed a word here a couple hours after first posting this, because I realized the first version was not well written.

*Many of us are concerned, of course, about what will happen to society if marriage is drastically re-defined. If that is a phobia, you may call me divorceophobic as well, because I have the same kind of fears regarding what rampant, widespread marriage failures are doing to our culture. But I don't run away from divorcees in fear that I'll catch something by being in the same room--and I don't do that with gays, either, though that's what "homophobes" are often thought to do.

Posted: Thu - June 8, 2006 at 09:37 AM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

. . . And Hijacking the Language of Pathology

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson