Legendary film critic Pauline Kael is once said to have remarked that she didn’t understand how Richard Nixon was elected President. No one she knew–and her circle of acquaintances all lived east of the Hudson River–had voted for him.
Here comes Sarah Westwood, a “lonely College Republican.” Here’s her version of Pauline Kael: “Most kids my age bristle at the word ‘conservative,’ and I don’t blame them. The right has done nothing to welcome young people.” Now I don’t doubt that in her set–students at relatively elite colleges and universities that have no discernible religious affiliation–there aren’t many who are willing to call themselves Republicans, though she seems blissfully–well, not blissfully–unaware that the exit polls tell us that while Barack Obama won the youth vote 60 percent to 37 percent, Mitt Romney won the white youth vote 51-44. This tells me that the GOP problem with young people is a product of its problem with non-white voters.
She’s right that Republicans need to do better still, but wrong in her diagnosis and prescription. For her, the problem is those darn social conservatives–”the religious right and the gay-bashing, Bible-thumping fringe that gives the party such a bad rap with every young voter.” According to her, “the evangelical set essentially hijacked the Republican Party in the 1970s,” and she and her essentially libertarian buddies need to take it back.
I’ll concede her this much: There’s oodles of evidence of a sea change in opinion about same-sex marriage. In a sense we’re reaping what we sowed some decades ago when we–I’m speaking loosely here–abandoned a conception of marriage that made children and obligation central and replaced it with one that emphasized self-actualization. (Indeed, I could be so bold as to blame John Locke’s contractual reimagining of the family, for though he made reproduction an important goal of the marriage contract, once self-interest and consent take the front seat, people can agree to all sorts of arrangements; and once, some time later, reproductive technology became available, you didn’t need a man and a woman in the same room at the same time to make babies. If this doesn’t persuade you to blame Locke, let me add this: he thought that virtually every “social” function of a parent could be, in effect, contracted out.) I don’t know what’s going to put that genie back in the bottle.
This doesn’t mean, by the way, that I’m going to abandon the defense of traditional marriage, and of the religious freedom of those who support it. In the short run, I don’t expect to win many of the battles on that front of our culture war, and I can only hope and pray that we’ll be more successful on the second front.
But let me get back to Ms. Westwood. I wonder how liberty-loving and “rebellious” it is of her to employ the term “gay-bashing” in the metaphorical sense. That term once had a precise meaning, applying to homophobes who literally assaulted gays. She seems to apply it to anyone who has moral objections to homosexuality. This move lends itself to limitations on liberty–of speech and of religion–which I wouldn’t think would be her cup of tea. And, indeed, if I were to follow her lead–characterizing criticism, perhaps based on stereotypes, as “something-bashing”–I might call her an Evangelical-basher. Another term for that would be religious bigot. Or hater.
But I’ll refrain from following Ms. Westwood into that thicket.
I will, however, remind her that the youth vote is 19 percent of the electorate (11 percent if you restrict it to 18-24 year-olds), while evangelicals comprise 26 percent of the electorate and those who attend religious services weekly are 42 percent of the electorate. Of the latter two demographic categories, 78 percent and 59 percent voted for Romney. I’m going to be generous and assume that a GOP that takes her advice can win 60 percent of the youth vote; 60 percent of 19 percent is 11.4 percent. On the other hand, 78 percent of 26 percent is 20.2 percent and 59 percent of 42 percent is 24.8 percent. Alienating or marginalizing voters that comprise almost a quarter of the electorate seems like a bad trade for the uncertain prospect of winning slightly more than 10 percent of the electorate.
Perhaps there’s another way, one that begins by refraining from bashing anyone and indeed from using the word “bash” to characterize any moral disagreement. Beyond demanding civility and a careful attention to data, I won’t at the outset ask Ms. Westwood for anything. On my side, I have to recognize that the country is changing and that politics can play some part in defending what I hold dear, but that recovering an appropriate appreciation of the centrality of marriage and family is a much larger theoretical, cultural, and social undertaking.
Right now, Ms. Westwood may or may not be a part of the problem. I invite her to become part of the solution.
November 13th, 2012 | 11:18 am
That may be a slight overestimate.
November 13th, 2012 | 11:30 am
Oh my head is this good. Am I allowed to nitpick a piece in which I loved all but one word? Mr. Knippenberg writes:
Let me suggest the following rewrite of the second sentence: “That term once had precise meaning, applying to (mostly) men who assaulted other men for no justifiable reason other than that they believed them to be gay.” My point is that 99% of the people who use “homophobe” also mean it to apply to anyone who has moral objections to sodomy. Could there be any doubt that Sarah Westwood will call Joseph Knippenberg a homophobe today?
November 13th, 2012 | 2:07 pm
I’d like to amplify Douglas Johnson’s mild criticism. Whenever I encounter the term “homophobe” asserted in a piece of writing, I have one of three reactions, listed here in descending order of frequency:
1. Flip the page: This is drivel that deserves no more of my precious time.
2. Roll my eyes: This is an otherwise intelligent piece that is sorely compromised by inclusion of such insipid ad hominem slurs.
3. Groan: Shouldn’t this writer have known better than to pull out this inane canard?
In this case, I groaned.
November 13th, 2012 | 2:27 pm
She seems to apply it to anyone who has moral objections to homosexuality.
Let me draw attention to messages by someone in the thread titled Radical (Secular) Fundamentalism. I think this is a fair summary: She is distressed by the “injustice” that gay men with AIDS are getting Medicare benefits. “Resources,” she tells us, “are limited. The people controlling these resources are profoundly biased and hog large resources to distribute them in a profoundly unjust way.” We are not told exactly who is being deprived of Medicare benefits while gay men with AIDS hog them. And there’s more: “To add insult to injury, no perverted homosexual is ever held accountable for spreading STDs—no matter what the cost to society.”
Here is her analogy to help explain the injustice of gay men with AIDS getting Medicaid benefits:
So a man who has sex with men is analogous to a man who gets a sexual kick out of gouging out other people’s eyes.
Is this an example of someone who merely agrees with traditional morality and disagrees with the gay-right movement? I think it goes far beyond that. The Catholic Church is certainly opposed to the gay-rights movement and homosexual behavior, but to its credit, it has done tremendous work in caring for gay men with AIDS. (Or should I say squandering its money on the undeserving when they are others who need care?)
I can respect, and have cordial and rational discussions with, people who believe that homosexuality is immoral or people who believe there should be no gay marriage. But I think many who disapprove of homosexuality and gay marriage go well beyond moral disapproval in their comments and in their apparent attitudes.
As I have pointed out again and again, Catholic believe there is no such thing as marriage after divorce (without an annulment), and they hold this position strongly. But do we ever see heated discussions in which Catholics accuse the divorced and remarried of being adulterers who are unfit to teach or live in a respectable apartment building? There was a time when a divorced person was judged much more harshly than today, but Catholics who consider the divorced and remarried to be living in adultery have come to tolerate this kind of “adultery” to such a degree that if it has been an issue in the past several decades, I haven’t been aware of it.
My point is that when discussing the immorality of divorce and remarriage, it’s almost as if it were purely academic and theoretical. No one ever suggests “adulterers” should be treated any differently from those who are in their first marriage. That the divorced and remarried are living in adultery, or that Catholics who use contraception, or that the 80% plus of young people who have sex before marriage (including Catholics and Evangelicals) are committing serious since according to Catholic teaching is indisputable. And yet none in these categories are discussed in the same tone as gay people often are.
As I pointed out in the other thread, more deaths are caused each year by tobacco use than by all deaths from human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), illegal drug use, alcohol use, motor vehicle injuries, suicides, and murders combined. Begrudging the money spent on AIDS victims is not a rational position based on either economics or morality. My mother, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer ten years ago. I remember discussing with her in 1964 the Surgeon General’s report on cancer. She had misread it to say there was a “casual” connection between smoking and lung cancer. (What in the world is a casual connection?) I pointed out to her that the word was causal—smoking caused cancer. As she was dying, she said to me, “I guess I asked for this.” I replied, “Don’t say that. Nobody asks for these things.” Every human being deserves the best medical care we can give them. We don’t write off smokers, or alcoholics, or drug users, or obese people or people who make any other lifestyle choice, even when they are blatantly and unquestionably self-destructive. Last time I checked, we didn’t have a policy of letting attempted suicides die. But some people are ready to write of gay people or AIDS victims because they “hog” resources. And that goes far beyond simple moral disapproval of homosexuality.
November 13th, 2012 | 6:23 pm
Ray,
I’ll concede the likelihood that the exit polling data on weekly church attendance is questionable. Still, those who SAY they attend weekly exhibit different voting patterns than their fellows. I’m sure that the combination of those who actually do attend church on the sabbath and those who’d like pollsters to believe that they do represents a significant share of the national vote, a share that tilts in a pronouncedly Republican direction.
November 13th, 2012 | 10:39 pm
I am on the faculty of an elite east-of-the-Hudson college and can testify that all the College Republicans on campus are libertarians. The social conservatives are concentrated in the evangelical and Catholic student groups which don’t seem to go nearer the College Republicans than a 10-foot pole can reach.
November 13th, 2012 | 11:21 pm
I agree that the term ‘homophobe’ should be banned in debates. It is designed to induce a sneer in the listener. I think one can capture the pain and exasperation at arguments used by opponents of same-sex marriage without needing to use inflammatory terms. Why counter ‘intrinsically disordered’ with ‘homophobe’? Take the high road.
I do wonder if young adult acceptance of homosexuality is a phase and whether they will become more conventional as they get older. (Just like some people used to believe same-sex attraction was a phase and one would grow out of it.) I doubt it, but we shall see.
November 14th, 2012 | 9:09 am
Young adult acceptance of homosexuality, like Hollywood promotion of homosexuality, has almost nothing to do with approval of real homosexuality, which tends to horrify both groups as much as it horrifies ordinary adults.
Pretending to believe in the existence of a subset of humanity which is “born gay” and affecting outrage at the “bigoted” suggestion that they should not indulge their appetites is a way of putting an altruistic varnish on one’s own crude desire to be free of social restraint. It’s a clumsy piece of rhetorical legerdemain designed to preempt any condemnation of sexual misbehavior by implying that such demands are “discrimination” on a par with Jim Crow laws.
Hollywood is probably irreformable, but in hormone-crazed twenty-year-olds, this is understandable, albeit annoying. Most will outgrow it about the time they stop wanting to live on pizza and beer.
November 14th, 2012 | 9:21 am
Jfm – How about ‘sodomite’? Should that term be banned, too?
November 14th, 2012 | 1:51 pm
“Phobias” are psychiatric disorders that usually call for clinical intervention. “Homophobia” and “homophobe” resonate in the mind of most people hearing or reading the words with “agoraphobia” and “agoraphobe,” “arachnophobia” and “arachnophobe,” and so forth, none of which is intended positively, and always pejoratively.
Use of he word “homophobe” is a clumsy and fairly contemptible way of saying that hose who object to homosexual behavior on moral grounds are clinically crazy. It really shouldn’t be tolerated any more than tolerance or understanding should be extended to anyone claiming that to be pro-homosexual rights is to be homophilic.
November 14th, 2012 | 6:03 pm
There seems to be a correlation between the degree to which people are disapproving of homosexuality and the degree to which they object to the word homophobia. It is a perfectly good word, although one to be used sparingly. When Joseph Knippenberg said, “That term [gay-bashing] once had a precise meaning, applying to homophobes who literally assaulted gays,” there was nothing offensive or objectionable about the sentence.
November 14th, 2012 | 11:31 pm
The suffix “-phobia” in every instance that I am aware of but one indicates a psychiatric disorder often, but not always, requiring medical treatment. The exception referred to is “homophobia.” The DSM lists a dozen phobias; “homophobia” is not one of them.
The word is NEVER a proper or even a useful word but is instead a misleading one that was (a) coined about 40 years ago by a San Francisco psychiatrist who was very prominent in the homosexual-rights movement (b) and deliberately intended to stigmatize objections to homosexual conduct as a result of “fear” of homosexuals and having sort of scientific foundation that is entirely counterfeit and has no clinical content whatsoever.
Only an ignoramus could believe that attaching a Greek root to a word is all that is necessary to create an illness. Yet that is what was done in the case of “homophobia.” It is moreover illiterate. “homo” in Greek means only “the same.” Homophobia would mean, therefore, “fear of the same.” The same what?
Since it has no objective basis in medicine, what is the purpose of choosing a substantial form that suggests it does? To ask the question is to answer it. It’ s intended as a put down. Arguing that it is anything more than an insult is. It is a variety of what more honestly would be called a lie.
November 15th, 2012 | 2:23 am
By the way, no one seemed to be upset by the post titled Christianophobia a few days ago.
November 15th, 2012 | 7:37 am
Photophobia: A non-psychiatric medical term used to describe intolerance to light. Happens in some eye infections and in meningitis. But it describes intolerance and not fear. Is this what homophobia was originally meant to convey?
I still think ‘homophobia’ is not a useful word in debates. Of course, no words should be banned. But when someone accuses another of homophobia in a debate, it comes across as an ad hominem attack and not an attack on the substance of the argument. Re. sodomite. Same thing — ad hominem and not part of a true discussion.
November 15th, 2012 | 9:50 am
But it [photophobia] describes intolerance and not fear. Is this what homophobia was originally meant to convey?
jfm,
I think you have made a good point. Also, remember technophobia, computerphobia, and xenophobia. And consider anglophobia, francophobia, germanophobia, russophobia, etc. In pop psychology there’s also commitment-phobia. None of these are intended to describe clinical conditions.
November 15th, 2012 | 12:52 pm
“Photophobia: A non-psychiatric medical term used to describe intolerance to light.”
That the “phobia” in “photophobia” is understood to mean “intolerance” is not particularly relevant; it is undoubtedly a synecdoche. One could mention “hydrophobia” (water fear), also non-psychiatric. The point is that true phobias are illnesses. They have clinical symptoms such as loss of appetite, sleeplessness, and tension. Introducing a word like homophobe, apart from being unnecessary, to denote someone who objects, say, to legalizing homosexual marriage, is like imputing “copulosis” to someone who enjoys regular sexual intercourse. Why should anyone put up with ridiculous, not to mention Orwellian, parti pris characterizations? There is no reason.
“Phobos” in Greek means “fear” and nothing but. Phobos and Demos—Fear and Panic—are the sons of Ares, God of War, whose name, at least in Homer, who regularly calls him “andreïphontes”, “man-slaughtering,” is a synonym for havoc, mayhem, and generally nothing good at all. Its use in forming the neologism “homophobia” is malicious and there is simply no prettying it up.
The fact that it is not pretty does NOT mean banning its use, only that it cannot be pointed out enough that anyone comfortable using it is a slanderer and a slob. Push the filth thing right back in his face.
Homophobia was coined by a physician precisely to describe a “fear” of homosexuals or, in some cases, a paranoid fear that one might oneself BE homosexual. It is not recognized as a medical condition by doctors. The justification in using it is stigmatization of one side in the current debate over homosexuality, nakedly displacing the controversy from one concerned with public morality to one concerned with private sanity.
Even in the case of so-called gay-bashers, which is no more a legal term than homophobia is a medical one, it is sheer assumption that what motivates such an assault is fear. It might be. But it is even more likely, I would suggest, that “disgust” is the motivating factor. Clearly disgust can be no justification for an assault on another to anyone but an assailant and should be dealt with as a crime, one possessing no more metaphysical significance than any other assault of similar severity.
Disgust, along with regret, shame, sorrow, and so forth, but usually not fear, are sometimes called “affective intuitions” by psychologists and without any simultaneous inference of mental illness in anyone exhibiting one of them. They are in fact for the most part laudable sentiments, whatever their origins within us may be. Whether they are discoverable in sundry evolutionary pressures on the species or, as St. Paul suggests, “are inscribed on the fleshy tablets of the heart” instilling the Christian virtue of temperance is enough to keep such emotions under control, not writing a prescription for Haldol, which quite frankly serves to trivialize the problem.
“anglophobia, francophobia, germanophobia, russophobia.”
Why not throw in sinophobia, hispanophobia, indophobia, and so on if all you are interested in is pointlessly multiplying synonyms. Are you serious? Loggorhea to one side, those words all describe ONE thing called xenophobia, “fear of foreigners.” The point you seem incapable of recognizing let alone admitting is that in plain English not one of them is a compliment. All are pejoratives: xenophobia is defined as an IRRATIONAL fear of foreigners. A technophobe has an irrational fear of technology. A francophobe is unreasonably afraid of Frenchmen. Must I go on? You are grasping at straws here to evade the plain meaning in words.
A homophobe would be someone with an irrational fear of homosexuals, yet it is employed indiscriminately to anyone opposing the homosexual-rights agenda, amounting to promiscuous question begging. Whether someone who opposes homosexual marriage is rational or not would in fact seem to be the very point at issue. You clearly think so. Big whoop, and who cares but you? What one may not do assume that ANYONE is irrational in advance of any evidence. So I am sorry, you don’t get to steal a march to the high ground in that way and will have to climb down from the mountain. You’ll suffer fewer nosebleeds.
Any word containing the ending “phobia,” as does homophobia, ALWAYS conveys and is intended to convey a sense of irrationality, which means mentally disordered, by the way, and if you are capable of ordinary English comprehension you know that perfectly well.
To top it all off, the man who invented the term, in 1969, the execrable Dr. George Weinberg in his book “Society and the Healthy Homosexual,” explicitly characterizes homophobia as a “clinical problem.” But of course that has had no bearing or consequences for its use later.
November 15th, 2012 | 3:50 pm
Why not throw in sinophobia, hispanophobia, indophobia, and so on if all you are interested in is pointlessly multiplying synonyms.
Joe Sansonese,
Because all the words I mentioned are in the dictionary (Merriam-Webster Unabridged), and the ones you mention are not.
The point you seem incapable of recognizing let alone admitting is that in plain English not one of them is a compliment.
Describing someone as homophobic is not meant to be a compliment. It is also not necessarily meant to be a slander. But allow me to point out here that the only people who have been described as homophobic are “homophobes who literally assaulted gays” in Joseph Knippenberg’s original post.
You clearly think so. Big whoop, and who cares but you? What one may not do assume that ANYONE is irrational in advance of any evidence. So I am sorry, you don’t get to steal a march to the high ground in that way and will have to climb down from the mountain. You’ll suffer fewer nosebleeds.
Might we try to keep this civil? I am merely trying to discuss the meaning of the word homophobia. I have not said, nor do I believe, that anyone who opposes same-sex marriage is necessarily homophobic. I do not believe that anyone who considers homosexuality immoral is necessarily a homophobe. I do believe that some are, and I do believe that people who mock, ridicule, beat up, and occasionally kill gay people just because they are gay can reasonably be called homophobic.
November 16th, 2012 | 7:16 am
The fact that “homophobia” is not meant to be complimentary is utterly beside the point. I certainly have no objection to disparagement per se. It is the particular insult offered that is the source of the problem, basically: “You’re crazy” or “You’re not thinking straight,” all dragged in for no good reason other than to send the debate off on a tangent. The hunt for homophobia, I’d suggest, is a wild-goose chase 99% of the time.
For 70 years capitalists sparred with communists and I don’t recall once hearing a partisan of one side tell a proponent of the other that he was off his rocker.
Using a term like “homophobia” does not further the discussion. It is deliberately intended to short-circuit it, and it seems to me you are putting yourself through fantastic cognitive backflips and somersaults in order to deny that.
Homophobia, as you perfectly well know, is THE accusation used against anyone who object to the homosexual-rights agenda for any reason. It is the go-to insult used by homosexual and their allies because it is designed to END all debate.
Perhaps it’s a manifestation of the so-called therapeutic culture we are said to inhabit nowadays. In my opinion it most resembles the classic Freudian con of “repression” wielded by the analyst toward an analysand who for some reason just can’t seem to remember the critical sexual traumas of childhood that are responsible for his condition. “Get with the program! You’re avoiding the truth because of repression.” Substitute “homophobia” for “repression,” and you have the substance of an argument to be deployed against anyone anytime, which is no accident. That’s the task the term was intended to accomplish from inception. We don’t even have to speculate about the matter.
At the risk of shocking you, I would claim that even in the case of someone who viciously assaults and, perhaps, kills a homosexual primarily because he’s homosexual, “homophobia” is a very ill-advised word to use to explain a murder. It’s a deplorable trivialization of a horrific crime, for one thing, like calling an NFL tackle “aggressive.” Second, because the word has no clinical content, it doesn’t seem to mean much more than a dislike of the particular homosexual who is murdered, which more than likely had nothing to do with fear, and so does not serve the cause of understanding at all. the world is not short of murderers whose motivations have nothing to do with their being “irrationally afraid” of their victims.
Now I don’t know if those using the term are confused about its meaning or just opportunistic and intellectually lazy. It is a faux clinical term for an ailment that clinicians do not recognize, an
all-purpose, unfalsifiable red herring whose use should be aggressively confronted and discouraged.
November 19th, 2012 | 1:00 pm
“The religious right and the gay-bashing, Bible-thumping fringe…”
When JK used the word “Homophobe” he was probably making a concession, unnecessary though it was, to Ms. Westwood. It was an unfortunate use of the word in the context of his argument.
He did do well to point out however, that the terms Ms. Westwood used did not belong in any rational discussion. He was right to point this out to her, since (he says) she is a young person and the sooner she drops these bad habits the better.
I have been taught that people who feel constrained to resort to ad hominems are either lazy, and unmannerly, or know they haven’t got a leg to stand on.
If Ms. Westwood wants her “arguments” to be taken seriously she must actually have some that she can present, so she would not have to wield the twin clubs of insult and injury.
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