Do you believe that homophobia is a choice or is it genetic?

Question

Or is it an indication of uneducated, poor in spirit and without compassion to human beings, narrow minded bigot?

Fre@k, my dad doesn’t call me a fag, but your mom did last night after I turned her down….

Answer 1

I think homophobia is mostly learned but it is also genetic. Well, let me clarify that: what I mean is that the limited thought process that underlies homophobia is probably influenced by genetics to some degree.

Imagine someone whose brain, because of the way it is wired, has serious difficulty coping with ambiguity and complexity. The world is a vastly complex place, of course, and sometimes it feels like it might be too much to handle. However, our fellow has found a way of making sense of the world and of reassuring himself by sorting things into dichotomous, inflexible categories: good/bad; white/black; male/female; straight/gay; etc. (Perhaps religion helped impose some of this structure.)

Any attempt to blur these categories or bend the rules that hold his rigid worldview together are going to be met with resistance, because that would just topple the entire house of cards and leave this person awash in anxiety. His beliefs are intractible and immune to all information that might challenge them - which is how he can continue to believe that the world is only 6,000 years old and that mankind partied with the dinosaurs despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary.

Now imagine that this person then has children. The offspring will be likely to share some of the similarities in neural wiring that make complexity hard to handle in the first place. Now imagine this in conjunction with the kind of upbringing such a rigid, defended father would furnish. He will do everything he can to make sure his children share his exact values, because only his values are the "right" ones. How do you think that kid is gonna turn out?

Surprisingly, some of these kids will manage to have happy endings. Their brains are yet nimble enough to accommodate several different worldviews, and they have friends of various races, creeds, cultures, and sexualities. The world is an interesting place to them, full of richness and experience.

But some kids will not have happy endings. Their brains become as calcified and inflexible as their father's, whose love and support are conditional on conformity. They are comfortable only with what they "know," and everything and everyone else must be wrong. The world is a terrifying place to them, full of sin and horror. And God (i.e., dad) forbid they were gay themselves...

So, perhaps we should look at homophobia, not merely as a bad attitude, but as a serious mental handicap that cannot be overcome without significant effort and support from the environment.

Answer 2

Obviously it isn't genetic, you aren't born hating things, you have to learn what something is before you can hate it (and for anyone thinking you can say the same about being homosexual in the first place, your body knows the difference between male and female, we were all female at one point). As to whether its a choice or not it may not always be, some people are raised in homophobic, deeply religious families and homophobia is just a natural part of their lives, it's very hard to stop doing something or thinking something that you've just always thought and everyone around you thinks. That's still no excuse for being homophobic but i'm just saying, not all of them actually have something against gay people, they were just raised in homophobic families.

Answer 3

Homophobia is an entirely learned fear. There have been many gay men and women who do not look or act in a way that shows they are gay and many homo-phobics have no problem with these people. If a homophobic finds out that a person is gay, they suddenly treat that person differently.

The best example of this type of learned behavior I have ever seen was with one of my friends and his disgust at eating salmon. He always said salmon was disgusting and made him sick. My friend and I double dated and my girlfriend got his dinner and vice-versa.

My girlfriend ordered the salmon and my friend ordered the chicken. Since it was a French restaurant, the meals were not clearly identifiable by appearance. My friend proceeded to eat half a salmon steak before my girlfriend noticed that she might not be eating salmon. I tried a taste of her dinner and it was definitely chicken.

All I had to do was look at my friend's cut salmon to see the pink fish. When he discovered it was salmon, he was suddenly sick to his stomach. His illness was entirely psychosomatic.

People learn to be homophobic in the same way that my friend learned to be ill upon eating salmon. There is no one who is really afraid of homosexuals.

Take care,
Troy

Answer 4

its a choice,but they are that way for a reason that being they had bad experience with a man in there life for example there father. or they were sexual abused by a homosexual and now hates them,but some homophobic's are homosexual them selves. There was a test down in a lab,where the homophobic's and other men had to look at gay porn or male nudity(not sure witch) and the homophobic's got aroused while the other ,men didn't and the homophobic sill couldn't admit there attractions to men.

Answer 5

Homophobia is not genetic.

I think it's more of a choice, a bunch of uneducated people, no compassion for humans, and simply a bigot.

Answer 6

That is how God punishes the sinners. After all, he created the Homo Sapiens, not the Hetero Sapiens. It can also be intensified by the mental trauma of not having a Straight Parade.

Answer 7

i would say it's neither. they just don't understand. you can get away with saying it's genetic and a choice becuase if parents are homophobes they will pass it down to the kids.
and sometimes they refuse to stop being such a bigot

Answer 8

I believe that homophobia is a learned behavior. People grow up to learn how to hate gays from a young age.

Answer 9

i think it can be both. some people are truly born gay and have always had those feeling inside them. but i also think that you can meet someone of the same sex and just start talk and all of a sudden you choose to let them in ( not saying you can choose who you love.) therefore becoming gay.

Answer 10

It's a choice! You can choose to be afraid of homosexuals or try and understand them and accept them as people.