Latent homosexuality

Latent homosexuality is an erotic attraction toward members of the same sex that is not consciously experienced or expressed in overt action.

The researchers reported that 24% of the non-homophobic men showed some degree of tumescence in response to the male homosexual video, compared to 54% of the subjects who scored high on the homophobia scale.

In addition, 66% of the non-homophobic group showed no significant increases in tumescence after this video, but only 20% of the homophobic men failed to display any arousal.

A possible explanation is found in various psychoanalytic theories, which have generally explained homophobia as a threat to an individual's own homosexual impulses causing repression, denial, or reaction formation (or all three; West, 1977).

[2] Another explanation of these data is found in Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck's (1983) theory of the role of anxiety and attention in sexual responding.

Throughout the film, Fitts makes several statements that are narrow-minded and homophobic, and it disturbs the colonel that his son Ricky might be homosexual.