Homophobia and Self-Hatred http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/homophobic-maybe-youre-gay.html?_r=0

Jendy VanHeyningen

Summary
          In the article I chose, Richard Ryan and William Lewis talk about people being homophobic. They talk Anjou how maybe homophobia is just self-hatred and how people try their hardest to get over it. It also says, "An evangelical leader who preached that homosexuality was a sin, resigned after a scandal involving a former male prostitute." There is also a theory about the suppression of your sexual orientation out of fear, maybe shown as homophobia. In the United States and Germany there are 6 different using college students. One of the studies was called "semantic association." You are given a computer, with either the word "me" or "other" on the screen for 35 milliseconds. So basically when certain images that pertain to you're sexual orientation are flashed on the screen after the word "me", you will shown not faster than if an image is shown not pertaining or associating your sexual orientation. Something that may lead to the concealing of sexual orientation might be if you have parents who may or may not accept your sexual orientation any way. It may not be the case for everybody concealing how they feel or for every that shows homophobia but you have to consider this theory as well.

Reflection
              I think that this theory is a very much valid, especially when you apply the factor of if your parents are accepting or not about not being heterosexual. I honestly think that it is not even a majority of the homophobic people that are in fact homosexual but it is a significant amount of them repressing this. It makes me feel uneasy knowing that prod have to hide who they truly are just because society doesn't accept and even more surprising is their parents. I don't think that society even to this day is exactly "accepting" homosexuality, but they are tolerating it made than they have before. When I say "society" mean the heterosexual community because in order to accept the people of different sexual orientation, it has come from them. This situation we have in the United States is ridiculous. If somebody is homosexual then that's none of your business so you should just let them be and do what they want to do because they aren't worried about your life.