Dennis Claxton wrote:
>
> At 06:44 PM 5/4/2010, Joseph Catron wrote:
>
> >the notion of "homophobia" has always
> >struck me as uniquely ridiculous.
>
> Do you have a problem with xenophobia?
An illness is individual, different in each person who suffers from it. Hence trying to interpret a general political phenomenon in terms of an illness is a bit iffy at best.
I objected to "heterosexism" and favored "homophobia" in a post on the marxist-feminist list about 10 or so years ago, on the basis that we already had too many terms coined on the analogy of racism. Yoshie persuaded me otherwise on the basis of an argument similar to but perhaps less aggressive than those being made here. "Phobia" is a technical term (though usage is not consistent here), and most phobias so identified are rther dramatic. They don't, for example, _say_ they hate spiders and think they should be abolished; they scream when one lands on them. And gay men who conceal their gayness but oppose gay rights presumably aren't feeling too much of an impulse to scream and run as they penetrate their partner's anus.
Making the family a political issue seems absurd to me, but a rather large number of conservatives (independently of their own sexuality or attitudes towards gays) do make it an issue. And some really stubborn concwrvatives are still campaigning for the formal submission of woemen to their husband, etc. In other words, there are _some_ men and women at least who have no impulse to scream and run when gay sex is mentioned but as part of their political or religious principles oppose gay rights. Heterosexcism, which is a political not a medical term, seems to be a more comprehensive term than homophobia, leaving the latter term to describe specific individuals whose cases can be examined.
I'm not sure how big a deal this issue is. My post on it merely expressed a doubt abut the wisdom of "outing" gays, regardless of othr features of the gay person outed.
Carrol