Dear Jim Bob,

I read the other day  that US Congressman Barney Frank referred to Supreme Court Justice Antony Scalia as a homophobe.  Isn’t a ‘phobia’ some kind of condition that involves being afraid of something?  Why would Rep Frank say that a Supreme Court Justice is afraid of gay people or “gayness”.  Come to think of it, I hear lots of people called homophobes.  What’s this about Jim Bob?

Latisimus J. Forscan

Fern Park, Florida

Dear Latisimus,

You ask a legitimate question Latisimus.  To explain this I first need to give you the definition of “Homophobe”.  By the way…did you know there is a ‘Gay Dictionary’?  If you don’t believe me, just Google it.  There is some real interesting reading in the thing.  Anyway, according to the Gay Dictionary,  homophobe is a term that originated in the 1970’s. 

Here’s the definition:  “homophobia: Irrational fear or hatred of gay people and of homosexuality.

Latisimus, the first thing you have to understand is that there are two camps of people when it comes to the subject of homosexuality.  There are people who believe there is nothing morally wrong with people of the same sex playing around with each other’s private parts.  Then, there is another camp of people who believe that same sex activity is a form of sin and a form of sexual  perversion.

The people who believe that homosexuality is morally ‘wrong’ base their opinions on common sense about what is normal and what isn’t normal.  Their opinions are supported by various descriptions of homosexuality in the Bible.  Since the vast majority of human beings are not homosexual, they find  the acts homosexuals perform on each other to be repugnant and offensive, just on the basis of common sense. If you want to understand some of those acts, just go browse through the homosexual dictionary for a couple of hours and you’ll get the picture pretty quick.

The people who believe there is nothing morally wrong with homosexual activity are mostly people who are gay, along with ‘straight’ people they have persuaded to agree with them from a political perspective.  Homophobia is the term the people who like homosexuality use to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. 

When you see that the definition of homophobia  paints people who do not approve of homosexuality as being “irrational”, you can understand why it is used. When people are trying to defend something that is pretty hard to defend on the basis of common sense and right and wrong, they usually resort to name calling to marginalize their opponents.  The way the homosexual lobby does it is by painting all people who disagree with them as being  “irrational”.  In other words, if their opponents can be made to appear as unreasonable, hateful, crazy people, then they don’t have to debate them on the basis of fact, or common sense.

So, Latisimus, Rep Barney Frank, who is gay, accused Supreme Court Justice Scalia of being ‘homophobic’ because Scalia believes homosexuality is a sexual perversion and a sin.  I’m pretty sure Justice Scalia doesn’t hate gay people.  He just has an opinion that is different from Rep Frank.  It is an opinion that Rep Frank is unwilling to debate on the basis of morality, so he chooses to paint Scalia as “irrational”. 

Hope that clears it up for you.

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