So basically – what I can gather so far is that it’s all about fear. The more fearful a population, the more right wing it seems to be. This may explain the way individuals seem to become more conservative as they grow older and enter middle age – they have more to fear – like the prospect of mortality.
Like homophobes reacting violently to gay people – it’s because they feel threatened. Did anyone read that study? Some researchers attached probes to the penis’s of two control groups – one group had been determined as homophobic, and the other had been determined as straight, but not homophobic. Then they played gay porn videos for the men and measured sexual arousal. Guess who was turned on? Even though the evidence was right in front of them and the researchers, the homophobic men still denied being aroused. The non-homophobic men showed no signs of arousal.
An interesting situation happened a few weeks ago – I was at my boss’s house for some cocktails and conversation, a guy who just started working with us showed up as well – during our conversation he claimed he was a Christian conservative, and follows Jesus’ teaching – then went on to say how he couldn’t understand why some men dress up as women because he’d never be attracted to them – which I thought was funny – but throughout the course of the evening I noticed him getting more and more defensive and aggravated. At first I thought it was bizarre and couldn’t see any reason for him to be acting so strangely – but then I realized that as the night had gone on my boss’s apartment had filled with his gay male friends. This guy’s behavior progressively got worse and worse until I actually started to worry about how safe I was sitting next to him – and was relieved when he left. The evening couldn’t have been more innocent – good conversation with intelligent and interesting people – but from the way this guy was acting I may as well have strapped on a dildo and conducted a mass gay orgy in middle of the living room. My theory is he projects his self-hatred onto others because he feels threatened that something will be revealed about his own nature that goes against his adopted beliefs.
So many more situations like this I have been witness to – not just with homophobia, but with right wing ideologies in general – constantly I am witness to hypocrisy and hatred. I highly doubt that’s what Jesus taught. What is this thing called right wing Christian conservative republican??? What a strange and fascinating animal.
