Degrees of Discomfort

Is homophobia equivalent to racism ?
by Jonathan Alter

(Published in Newsweek, March 12, 1990)

When Andy Rooney got in trouble last month, gay activists complai- ned he was being publicly rebuked for his allegedly racist remarks and not for his gay-bashing. They wanted to know why homophobia was viewed as less serious than racism. The case of Martin Luther King III last week brought the comparison into even sharper relief. After a speech in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in which he said "something must be wrong" with homosexuals, the young Atlanta politician met with angry gay leaders and quickly apologized. His father's legacy, King said, was "the struggle to free this country of bigotry and discrimination." In that light, he added, he needed to examine his own attitude towards homosexuals.

King will need to ask himself this question: is homophobia the moral equivalent of racism ? To answer yes sounds right; it conforms to commendable ideals of tolerance. But it doesn't take account of valid distinctions between the two forms of prejudice. On the other hand, to answer no - to say, homophobia is not like racism for this reason or that - risks rationalizing anti-gay bias.

Discrimination against homosex"uals" is not the same as personal distaste for homosex"uality". The former is clearly akin to racism. There is no way to explain away the prejudice in this country against gays. People lose jobs, promotions, homes and friends because of it. Incidents of violence against gays are up sharply in some areas. Hundred of anti-sodomy laws remain on the books, are gays are shamelessly discriminated against in insurance and inheritance. The fact is, a lot of people are pigheaded enough to judge a person entirely on the basis of his or her sexuality. Rooney's mail - and that of practically everyone else commenting publicly on this issue - is full of ugly anti-gay invective.

But does that mean that anyone who considers the homosexual sex act sinful or repulsive is the equivalent of a racist ? The answer is no. Objecting to it may be narrow-minded and invasive of privacy, but it does not convey the same complete moral vacuity as, say, arguing that blacks are born inferior. There is a defendable middle position. Recall Mario Cuomo's carefully articulated view of abortion: personally opposed, but deeply supportive of a woman's right to choose. That tracks quite closely to polls that show how the majority of Americans approach the subject of homosexuality.

Like all straddles, this one offends people on both sides: straights, who consider all homosexuality sinful, and gays who consider a hate-the-sin-but-not-the-sinner argument merely another form of homophobia. Moreover, the "personal opposition" idea rings more hollow on homosexuality than on abortion; after all, there is no third-party fetus - just consenting adults whose private behavior should not be judged by outsiders. Of course there are times when squeamishness is understandable. In coming of age, many gays have made a point of flaunting their sexuality, moving, as one joke puts it, from "the love that dare not to speak its name" to "the love that won't shut up." Exhibitionnism and promiscuity (less common in the age of AIDS) are behavioral choices that, unlike innate sexual preference, can be controlled. It's perfectly legitimate to condemn such behavior - assuming heterosexuals are held to the same standard.

Simply put, identity and behavior are not synonymous. A bigot hates blacks for what they "are"; a reasonable person can justi- fiably object to some things homosexuals "do". The distinction between objecting to what someone is (unfair) and objecting to what someone does (less unfair) must be maintained. The worst comment about gays allegedly made by Rooney was that he would not like to be locked in a room with them. That would be a tolerable sentiment only if the homosexuals were having sex in the room. Otherwise it's a form of bigotry. Who would object to being locked in a room with cigarette smokers if they weren't smoking?

"Acting gay" often involves more than sexual behavior itself. Much of the dislike for homosexuals centers not on who they are or what they do in private, but on so-called affectations - "swishiness" in men, the "butch" look for women - not directly related to the more private sex act. Heterosexuals tend to argue that gays can downplay these caracteristics and "pass" more easily in the straight world than blacks ca in a white world.

This may be true, but it's also irrelevant. For many gays those traits aren't affectations but part of their identities; attacking the swishiness is the same as attacking them. Why the visceral vehemence, particularly among straight men? Richard Isay, a psychiatrist and author of the 1989 book "Being Homosexual," suggests that homophobia actually has little to do with the sex act itself. "This hatred of homosexuals appears to be secondary in our society to the fear and hatred of what is perceived as being `feminine' in other men and in oneself."

Such fears, buried deep, are reminiscent of the emotional charge of racial feelings. At its most virulent, this emotion leads to blaming the victim - for AIDS, for instance, or for poverty. In its more modest form, the fear, when recognized, can be helpful in understanding the complexities of both homosexuality and race.

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