In light of the anti-gay gay George Alan Rekers’ RentBoys.com kerfuffle, Michelle Goldberg at The Daily Beast cites a study which supports what many of us know already, those most hostile to gay people are often driven by terror and shame about their own desires.
Goldberg cites a 1996 study by researchers from the University of Georgia published a study in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology about the links between homophobia and homosexual arousal.
The authors, Henry E. Adams, Lester W. Wright, Jr., and Bethany A. Lohr, started with 35 straight men identified as homophobic and 29 straight men that were not. Both groups were shown heterosexual, lesbian and gay male porn while their erectile responses were measured. “Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli,” reported the researchers.
Does being anti-gay mean one is gay? Of course not. We are talking about folks who are passionately anti-gay.
Goldberg concludes her piece by saying,
Satisfying as it is to see such a man unmasked, Rekers deserves a measure of pity as well as scorn. If he portrayed homosexuality as a life-destroying temptation that only the strictest of measures could contain, that’s because, for him, it was. /* My emphasis */ He seems like he’s devoted his life to a hysterical battle to preserve his own threatened sense of masculinity, and now he stands defeated and exposed.