Homophobia

Professor David A. F. Haaga says that contemporary usage includes "a wide range of negative emotions, attitudes and behaviours toward homosexual people," which are characteristics that are not consistent with accepted definitions of phobias, that of "an intense, illogical, or abnormal fear of a specified thing.

[28] In 2015, attorney and author Roberta Kaplan stated that Kim Davis "is the clearest example of someone who wants to use a religious liberty argument to discriminate [against same-sex couples].

In Religion Dispatches magazine, Candace Chellew-Hodge argues that the six or so verses that are often cited to condemn LGBTQ people are referring instead to "abusive sex".

[34] In the United States, a February 2012 Pew Research Center poll shows that Catholics support gay marriage by a margin of 52% to 37%.

In 2009, the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) published a report entitled State Sponsored Homophobia 2009,[44] which is based on research carried out by Daniel Ottosson at Södertörn University College, Stockholm, Sweden.

This research found that of the 80 countries around the world that continue to consider homosexuality illegal:[45][46] In 2001, Al-Muhajiroun, an international organization seeking the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate, issued a fatwa declaring that all members of The Al-Fatiha Foundation (which advances the cause of gay, lesbian, and transgender Muslims) were murtadd, or apostates, and condemning them to death.

[55] In some regions, gay people have been persecuted and murdered by Islamist militias,[56] such as Al-Nusra Front and ISIL in parts of Iraq and Syria.

[57] State-sponsored homophobia includes the criminalization and penalization of homosexuality, hate speech from government figures, and other forms of discrimination, violence, persecution of LGBTQ people.

[67] The North Korean government condemns Western gay culture as a vice caused by the decadence of a capitalist society, and it denounces it as promoting consumerism, classism, and promiscuity.

[70] Robert Mugabe, the former president of Zimbabwe, waged a violent campaign against LGBTQ people, arguing that before colonisation, Zimbabweans did not engage in homosexual acts.

[74][75] In Poland, local towns, cities,[76][77] and Voivodeship sejmiks[78] have declared their respective regions as LGBTQ ideology free zone with the encouragement of the ruling Law and Justice party.

[76] Since 2006, under Vladimir Putin, regions in Russia have enacted varying laws restricting the distribution of materials promoting LGBTQ relationships to minors.

[82][83] Weinstein and colleagues[84] arrived at similar results when researchers found that students who came from controlling and homophobic homes were most likely to reveal repressed homosexual attraction.

[91] Internalized homophobia also applies to conscious or unconscious behaviors which a person feels the need to promote or conform to cultural expectations of heteronormativity or heterosexism.

This can include repression and denial coupled with forced outward displays of heteronormative behavior for the purpose of appearing or attempting to feel "normal" or "accepted".

[13] Some researchers also apply this label to LGBTQ people who support "compromise" policies, such as those that find civil unions acceptable in place of same-sex marriage.

[92] Researcher Iain R. Williamson finds the term homophobia to be "highly problematic," but for reasons of continuity and consistency with the majority of other publications on the issue retains its use rather than using more accurate but obscure terminology.

[82] In other cases, a conscious internal struggle may occur for some time, often pitting deeply held religious or social beliefs against strong sexual and emotional desires.

[94][95] For this reason, homophobia is allegedly rampant in sports, and in the subculture of its supporters that is considered stereotypically male, such as association football and rugby.

[98] Homophobia is not evenly distributed throughout society, but is more or less pronounced according to ethnicity, age, geographic location, race, sex, social class, education, partisan identification and religion.

[108] In a 1998 address, civil rights leader Coretta Scott King stated, "Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

"[110] A study performed in 2007 in the UK for the charity Stonewall reports that up to 90 percent of the population support anti-discrimination laws protecting gay and lesbian people.

[113] M. V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, presented in March 2014 in a meeting of the World Bank the results of a study about the economic impact of homophobia in India.

Only in health expenses, caused by depression, suicide, and HIV treatment, India would have spent additional 23,100 million dollars due to homophobia.

Taking into account that in 2015 homosexuality is still illegal in 36 of the 54 African countries, the money loss due to homophobia in the continent could amount to hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

The researcher suggested that a 1% decrease in the level of homophobia is correlated with a 10% increase in the gross domestic product per capita – though this does not imply causation.

Successful preventative strategies against homophobic prejudice and bullying in schools have included teaching pupils about historical figures who were gay, or who suffered discrimination because of their sexuality.

Warren J. Blumenfeld argues that this emotion gains a dimension beyond itself, as a tool for extreme right-wing conservatives and fundamentalist religious groups and as a restricting factor on gender-relations as to the weight associated with performing each role accordingly.

[127] Furthermore, Blumenfeld in particular stated: "Anti-gay bias causes young people to engage in sexual behavior earlier in order to prove that they are straight.

Some of these alternatives show more semantic transparency while others do not include -phobia: Negative attitudes toward identifiable LGBTQ groups have similar yet specific names: lesbophobia is the intersection of homophobia and sexism directed against lesbians, gayphobia is the dislike or hatred of gay men, biphobia targets bisexuality and bisexual people, and transphobia targets transgender and transsexual people and gender variance or gender role nonconformity.