All Hail Homophobia?

It's been months, maybe years, since I have gone a day without hearing "no homo." It's become second nature to heterosexual men, and even women, to ensure that nothing about their statements are taken to be GAY.

I went to see Bruno recently, and although pretty much everything Sasha Baron Cohen did was over the top, I recognized his goal in certain parts of the movie. He did a pretty good job of revealing the hatred and discrimination in ordinary people. Don't get me wrong, it was gross of him to eat an invisible ass, but take the wrestling scene into consideration. An entire crowd of people went bananas when Bruno, as a wrestler, started doing gay shit with the other guy. Slurs were shouted and shit was thrown like it was nothing. It was like these people's first instinct to try to harm anything moving that showed signs of homosexuality. Bruno's gay antics even caused person after person to walk out of the theater, and presumably get their money back.

The hatred is hypocritical though - try to envision the same scene with two attractive women. No chairs would whiz past their heads as they made out with each other. Shouts of "FAG" would be replaced by horny hooplah. Women are sexed up in the lesbian community, whereas gay men are mostly shunned, or turned into some sort of comic relief a la B. Scott on YouTube.

No straight guy I know would admit to liking the movie Brokeback Mountain, even if it was a legitimate love story. But there's absolutely nothing wrong in liking Wild Things.

We don't want to recognize gayness. We try our best not to acknowledge it. It's still considered "unnatural" and "wrong" by a lot of people, despite its lack of malevolence. Very rarely does a person's sexual life and preferences speak to their character, straight or gay. The gay community continues to get the short end of many sticks, most notably when it comes to marriage. It would make too many people upset and uncomfortable, but why?