An Aside Regarding Homosexuality

I love the irony inherent in Syne's comments considering many believe Homophobia merits its own category of recognized personality disorders:

Mary H. Guindon, PhD, Chair of the Department of Counseling and Human Services at Johns Hopkins University, et al., wrote in a Apr. 2003 article, "Intolerance and Psychopathology: Toward a General Diagnosis for Racism, Sexism and Homophobia," published by the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry that: (pictured below, Diane Gramley, President of the Venango County-based HATE GROUP American Family Association of Pennsylvania)

"[W]e explore the characteristics of persons who perpetrate pain and injustice on others through racism, sexism, or homophobia. We propose that those who engage in such harmful behaviors are in fact displaying a type of psychopathology that deserves its own particular category... In other words, behind racism, sexism, and homophobia, there seems to be a common core of intolerance that supports and contributes to these attitudes or mindsets in their various manifestations. The traits associated with this form of intolerance, when taken as a whole, seem to be descriptive of a personality disorder.

This is a disorder that deserves full acknowledgment as a psychological problem unto itself. It is not enough to merely note the harm or lament the damage. Researchers and therapists need to develop treatment approaches that have the capacity to alleviate it." -- Apr. 2003 - Mary H. Guindon, PhD​

http://endbigotryinvenangocounty.blogspot.com/2011/05/is-homophobia-diagnosable-psychological.html

Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). It can be expressed as antipathy, contempt, prejudice, aversion, or hatred, may be based on irrational fear, and is sometimes related to religious beliefs.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Homophobia is observable in critical and hostile behavior such as discrimination and violence on the basis of sexual orientations that are non-heterosexual.[1][2] According to the 2010 Hate Crimes Statistics released by the FBI National Press Office, 19.3 percent of hate crimes across the United States "were motivated by a sexual orientation bias."[7] Moreover, in a Southern Poverty Law Center 2010 Intelligence Report extrapolating data from fourteen years (1995–2008), which had complete data available at the time, of the FBI's national hate crime statistics found that LGBT people were "far more likely than any other minority group in the United States to be victimized by violent hate crime."[8]

Recognized types of homophobia include institutionalized homophobia, e.g. religious homophobia and state-sponsored homophobia,[9] and internalized homophobia, experienced by people who have same-sex attractions, regardless of how they identify. Forms of homophobia toward identifiable LGBT social groups have similar yet specific names: lesbophobia[10] – the intersection of homophobia and sexism directed against lesbians, biphobia – towards bisexuality and bisexual people, and transphobia, which targets transsexualism, transsexual and transgender people, and gender variance or gender role nonconformity.​

Bolded emphasis mine. From Wiki, love it or hate it...

Had a psychiatric check up lately Syne? Just looking out for your welfare bud...

 

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Excellent article. Here's the abstract:

"Men who have sex with men (MSM) have unique health-care needs, not only because of biological factors such as an
increased susceptibility to infection with HIV and sexually transmitted infections associated with their sexual
behaviour, but also because of internalisation of societal stigma related to homosexuality and gender non-conformity,
resulting in depression, anxiety, substance use, and other adverse outcomes. Successful responses to the global HIV/
AIDS epidemic will require the development of culturally sensitive clinical care programmes for MSM that address
these health disparities and root causes of maladaptive behaviour (eg, societal homophobia). Health-care providers
need to become familiar with local outreach agencies, hotlines, and media that can connect MSM with positive role
models and social opportunities. Research is needed to understand how many MSM lead resilient and productive
lives in the face of discrimination to develop assets-based interventions that build on community support. Optimum
clinical care for sexual and gender minorities is a fundamental human right. MSM deserve to be treated with respect,
and health-care providers need to interact with them in ways that promote disclosure of actionable health information."

Personally it is hard to estimate how much psychological damage homophobia has inflicted upon me. In my teens I was zealously fundamentalist Christian to the point of just ignoring my same sex feelings. Later I joined the military and basically put up with 9 years of suppressing my true self just to play a role that was mandatory for all military personel at that time. I feel to this day my anxiety disorder and depressive inclinations were spawned directly by this ongoing consciousness I had that I was considered abnormal and a pariah by society in general-- what in psychological circles is known as "internalized homophobia." There comes a point where unconsciously you always feel ashamed and guilty about something vague and undefined, even though consciously you know it is perfectly ok to be gay. Support from a totally accepting family and my best friend/school buddy works to undo some of this. But I will probably never be rid of it entirely, especially when there are people still around like Syne who stigmatize homosexuality in any way they can.

 

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Great articles! I'm totally on board with the view that homophobia and other forms of bigotry be treated as mental disorders in need of treatment. It has all the hallmarks of a complex: the strong yet unwarranted projection of inferior traits on a social class, the inability to function normally around gay people, the emotional stress and anger that arises out of delusional stereotypes, and an overpersonalized disvaluation of people you don't even know. This is why homophobia is so often linked with religious fundamentalism, which imo is but another expression of psychopathy and delusional states of mind. The cure? Exposure therapy. Just like how we treat all phobias. Get to know some gay people. Soon you begin to realize that gay people are just as human and individual and diverse as heterosexuals are. I saw the movie "Dallas Buyer's Club" yesterday and it demonstrated how homophobia really can be cured with direct familiarity with gay people.

 

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This is the luxury of being a homophobe. You get to condemn a class of people for nothing more than what they choose to do in bed, and then you get to condemn them for reacting badly to being condemned by homophobes. It's a no win situation. Like with promiscuity. We are condemned for sleeping around, but when we try to become monogamous and push for marriage rights, we are condemned for corrupting "family values." There is, in the end, no rationality to support bigotry, and hence no end to the attempts by bigots at supporting it. It will find whatever reason it can to justify itself, even if those reasons turn out to be contradictory.

Drugs and alcohol are also popular ways of self-medicating to treat your own depression and anxiety in a health care system where it is costly and difficult to acquire the proper treatment.

Syne hopes that by spitting out contextless CDC stats we will, by sheer uncritical association, stigmatize all gay people for the traits only a few of their members have. That's why he likes these risk factor assessments. As if being gay in and of itself means I am more likely to be mentally ill, promiscuous, and a drug addict (your basic generic derelict) without considering any other more decisive traits I might have like my socio- economic status, genetic predispositions, my childhood raising, my intelligence, and my moral character. Certainly NOT a very scientific way of evaluating ANY person, unless you have already stereotyped them as just a small subset within certain minority of the population.

Bingo!