Homosexuality, Fear and Hatred

This from CNN.com on the "gay panic" defense. This legal defense goes like this: A discovers that B is homosexual, A kills B, A defends himself by saying that he isn't guilty because he couldn't control his anger at B's sexual orientation. Of course such a defense will only be even vaguely plausible when there has been some close contact between A and B.

So stated, this could just as well be called 'the bigotry defense,' and could just as well be used by racists as homophobes.

While we're at it, let's compare the phrases 'homophobic' with 'gay panic.' They both seem to me to border on the same mistake: confusing hatred with fear. 'Homophobia' isn't a very apt term for the condition I've noted in many people I've known. They don't so much fear homosexuals as hate them. I'll admit that it's sometimes hard to tell hatred from fear, and that the two are often intertwined...but it's hatred and disgust that has predominated in such folks in my experience.

I sometimes conjecture that 'homophobia' was coined in a burst of rhetorical inspiration, to try to dissipate the effect in question by suggesting to those who hate homosexuals that they are just being pansies...that it's fear they are experiencing, not hatred. This would constitute a kind of covert challenge to their manhood, the equivalent of calling them chickens. Real men don't fear gays.

If that's true, then the rhetorical strategy backfired, because anti-homosexual bigotry is now, apparently, being characterized as fear in order to excuse anti-homosexual crimes.

But, as is so often the case, things are more complicated than this. Take the case of Gwen Araujo, briefly discussed in the CNN story. If this is the case I've read about in the past, here's what happened:

Araujo (aka Gwen), a male, decided that he wanted to be--or really was in some sense--a female. So he pretended to be female. He started hanging out with a group of low-life teen thugs and having sex with them--always oral or anal so that they--and remember, these are not the sharpest tools in the shed we're talking about here--wouldn't get suspicious. Finally they figured out what was going on, and brutally murdered Araujo.

Now: what the teen thugs did was without a doubt vicious and wrong. Nothing that follows should be construed as an attempt to deny that.

However, what Araujo did was wrong, too. People's sexual orientation is important to them--as Araujo should have known better than anyone else. Araujo tricked the teen thugs into doing something to which they never would have consented if they had been fully informed. He tricked them into doing something that they considered disgusting and, perhaps, morally wrong--something that might very well plague them for the rest of their lives.

Now, I don't share this view about homosexuality. I'm not homosexual, but I don't see the big deal. Nevertheless, if somebody tricked me into doing it, it's more likely than not that I would punch their lights out. Not because it's wrong or disgusting, but because that's a choice that I get to make, and nobody gets to make it for me. Again: there is no justification for killing Araujo, but he was in no way blameless in this matter.

Furthermore, it is worth noting that Mr. Araujo had intentionally picked out some very bad people to consort with. He had to know that a bad end was a real and relevant possibility. This kind of violence sickens us all, but I have to say that my sympathy for victims is mitigated when they have intentionally picked out violent people to associate with, expecially when it is precisely the violent nature of these people that attracted the victim in the first place. I think it's sick to get a sexual charge out of violence, and people who do get such a charge, and who seek out violent people to have sex with are playing with fire. Consequently, they bear partial responsibility for violence that is inflicted on them.

Insert snappy conclusion here. I got nothin'.