A huge part of what animates homophobia among young people is paranoia and fear of their own capacity to be gay themselves.
Interpretation
Homophobia often stems from individuals' fears and insecurities about their own sexuality.
In this quote, Dan Savage highlights that many young people who express homophobic attitudes may actually be grappling with their own fears regarding their sexual orientation. This internal struggle can manifest as paranoia, leading them to project their insecurities onto others, thus fostering a culture of homophobia instead of acceptance.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the importance of acceptance in schools.
When I was in high school I got involved in the fringe theater scene in Chicago, and I met some openly gay people. I could see that it got better, that they were happy and loved and supported. I saw with my own eyes that it got better.
My dad was a homicide cop in the gay neighborhood in the city when gay neighborhoods were desperate, depressing, sad places run by the mob. The only gay people he'd met when I came out to him were corpses.
It's going to take generations of gay people marrying before these things start to feel natural. We haven't had it long enough to remake it as our own, so it does feel like you're getting dressed up in straight drag to do it.
And that really captures the difference for the bullied straight kid versus the bullied gay kid, is that the bullied straight kid goes home to a shoulder to cry on and support and can talk freely about his experience at school and why he's being bullied. [...] And I couldn't go home and open up to my parents.
A lot of kids are bullied because of their sexual identity or expression. It's often the effeminate boys and the masculine girls, the ones who violate gender norms and expectations, who get bullied.
Like it or not children are being raised by gay and lesbian parents all over America - as many as 10 million children. And it does nothing to make their lives more stable and secure to attack their families, to attack their parents to prevent us from marrying each other.
Each betrayal begins with trust.
In many ways, a song-writing partnership is like a marriage. Apart from just liking each other, a lyricist and a composer should be able to spend long periods of time together - around the clock if need be - without getting on each other's nerves. Their goals, outlooks, and basic philosophies should be similar.
I was born of heterosexual parents. I was taught by heterosexual teachers in a fiercely heterosexual society. Television ads and newspaper ads β fiercely heterosexual. A society that puts down homosexuality. And why am I a homosexual if I'm affected by role models? I should have been a heterosexual. And no offense meant, but if teachers are going to affect you as role models, there'd be a lot of nuns running around the streets today.
We have a tendency to assume or believe saying I love you means we are ready for love, or that hearing it from someone else means they are ready. We just assume that we are on the same page about what it means. We don't know what someone else is thinking, projecting, assuming, expecting when they say that.
Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.
Be obedient to the bishop and to one another, as Jesus Christ was in the flesh to the Father, and the apostles to Christ and to the Father and to the Spirit, so that there may be unity in flesh and in spirit.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.