Right off the bat, let me offer an explanation so that, instead of going off on a tangent and missing the point as is often done on social media and in blog comments, the topic can be considered.
Quite often when the word “Homophobia” is used, self-appointed. Literal linguists who view things in tunnel-vision absolutes will point out that, although the “Homo’ part is correct, the “Phobia” part is the source of the claim the term is a misnomer. Phobia means fear, and as people do not fear Homosexuals, but pity them and hate them, their dislike should not be seen as fear, but the hatred it is.
However, just as with Christians, by their fruit you shall know them.
In all the recent anti-Gay legislation proposed, passed, and signed into law, the reasons for them generally deal with fear.
They fear that Trans girls will destroy sports, kids using the restroom that matches their correct gender, Gay teachers being visible might turn the good kids Gay.
In spite of the hundreds of books, poems, essays, short stories, movies, school activities, school staff with spouses and children and constant religious reminders, books are being moved out of school libraries because all the latter could be erased if a child reads a book where Heather Has Two Mommies.
They fear the innate power of people who cause tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, wild fires, all manner of natural disasters, and, most recently. the war in Ukraine.
Regardless of the claim you do not fear them, if all your laws concerning Homosexuals are based on the fear of what destruction we can wrought, then it is obviously a phobia.
They may not say they fear Homosexuals, but they certainly base their motivation on the fear of imagined horrors.
They are so concerned about the name as opposed the actions based on it, they can even confuse themselves.
If you only say negative and exaggeratedly so things about Gay people with never a positive word, you really cannot say you like someone and all the things you do and say should not influence people’s perception of that love, then you cannot say you like someone.
When it comes to the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation in various states, Marjorie Taylor Greene has stated that she intends to introduce a federal bill while referring to Gay men as predatorial, and because these bills apply to all those letters that represent people, by extension all of them too.
She has stated that the GLBT movement is “predatorial.
Previously she had called for violence against Transgender people.
At a recent white nationalist conference, she spoke against Trans people.
Getting desperate with her anti-Gay idiocies, she also attacked Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, totally showing her lack of understanding about what Gay actually is, advising Mayor Pete and his husband to “stay out of our girls’ bathrooms.”
They are Gay men. Why would that be a fear?
Years ago, as an openly and well-known Gay teacher in the Bible Belt, I was in the grocery store one day when a woman with a gold cross around her neck pulled her daughter closer to her and hissed that I better leave her daughter alone. I was, at the time, across the aisle reaching for a can of soup. I also had some parents remove their daughters from my classes to protect them from the Gay predator.
As far as their daughters were concerned in both situations, I was the safest person they could be with, unlike the Anti-Gay assistant principal who promoted the Gay predator trope, and was dismissed from his position losing his certification and his license to practice law that he had just earned after years of night school because he had sexually propositioned female students in his office.
Regarding the overpowering ability of Gay people to undo society as we know it, Greene has warned,
“Every single person needs to be all hands on deck and protecting our children and stopping this radical sexualization of children. They’re basically exploiting them, brainwashing them, indoctrinating them.”
“This is outrageous. We need to be willing to stop it. They have an agenda. And the agenda is very clear: It’s to sexualize children, and it’s to confuse them and make them think they can choose their gender, which absolutely they cannot. And I will stand on God’s truth every single time, there are two genders—male or female. … It’s in the Bible. It’s in Genesis.”
Greene went on to double down on her comments about Pete Buttigieg’s husband, suggesting he was exhibiting predatory behavior for expressing GLBT pride at a day camp for GLBT kids and letting the kids know they have more to be proud of than ashamed of.
“This is predatorial. Anyone who is against stopping this and is saying, ‘No, they should be allowed to indoctrinate children into wrong sexual immorality,’ you know what that means: that they are pro predatorial behavior.
“These are predators, these are absolutely child predators,” Greene said. “Not only are we talking about pedophiles, but were talking about anyone who is willing to coerce a child, indoctrinate a child about sex, about themselves and their own body—that is indoctrination, that his predatory behavior and it must to be stopped at all means necessary.”
The offending pledge was
“I pledge my heart to the rainbow of the not-so-typical gay camp. One camp, full of pride, indivisible, with affirmation and equal rights for all.”
Marjorie thought he should have said the Pledge of Allegiance because, well, just because.
“We’re not hateful, we’re not homophobic,” Greene added.
When asked what could be done, Greene called for legislation.
“There should be no federal funding for any school, any school anywhere that is indoctrinating children, that is teaching them to change their gender, that is teaching them anything sick and disgusting like this.”
When asked if she would write a bill or introduce a bill to this effect, she replied,
“Absolutely, 100 percent,” Greene I will meet with my team right after this interview and we will get to work on it.”
Interestingly her statements were made on InfoWars run by Alex Jones not known for caring about children
If you base legislative action on the fear that if children are exposed to Gay-positive information and people, and, in spite of their church, their family, the books, TV shows, movies, advertisements its being available in a school library but not mandatory will turn children, this is a fear, a Phobia.
It also brings into question how, if being heterosexual is the natural, ordained by an all- powerful, incapable of making mistakes deity sexual orientation, why would it be so easy to erase all that because of one book.
That is fear.
And, you cannot say when using the term “Homophobia” that you do not hate the Gays and then refer to them as predators and pedophiles by nature, and claim you like someone.
And you cannot base legislation on preventing what simply is just not there because you are afraid of the consequences and the people bringing them about without acknowledging it is based on fear.
So, in spite of reality and the experience of people who know Gay people, have worked with them, and who might be part of a loving generational family with Gay members, Greene and those like her are going back to the long-debunked claim that all Gay people are predators from who children must be protected.
For Greene, Gay is the New Cooties, and we must stop the Gay “radical sexualization of children.”
We can leave that to the sexual deviant politicians and church clerics and the GOP participants in coke fuel “Sexual Get Togethers.”
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