is described as common sense, not as a scientific finding – hardly surprising, for there has been too little research into the aversion that most men feel for homosexuality. But what research does exist suggests that straight men do not fear gays, nor do they fear the possibility of gayness within themselves. ‘Common sense’, indeed, suggests the very opposite: gays, as a group, are not perceived as threatening, and since most men are oblivious of any homosexual urges within themselves, why should they fear such urges? Fear, or phobia, does not seem to play any part in the average man’s dislike of gays. The bisexual explanation of homophobia might be ‘common sense’ to the gay lobby, but it also might be plain wrong.
Heterosexuality is the norm for sexual attraction. This is not to assume or imply that homosexuality is deviant. It too is natural. Although most Americans still believe that our sexual orientation is a matter of choice,6 it is not. But that is a society in which you are meant to be free to become what you want – not least when that want implies a moral choice. And where there’s a choice, one should choose to be upright: straight. There is a confusion here. Gayness is no more a matter of choice than being born American or Mexican, black or white.
A new explanation is required for the average man’s anti-gay attitude. And the word ‘average’ is used deliberately, for research reveals that a majority of heterosexuals do have negative attitudes towards homosexuals. Those attitudes range from mild distaste to the extremes described in the dictionary definition, but their widespread existence suggests that ‘homophobia’, far from being an ‘individual aberration’, is in fact a reflection of something more than cultural and biological values. But what values?
One study correlated the masculinity profiles of male college students with their attitudes towards homosexuals and discovered, unsurprisingly, that the most masculine students were the most anti-gay. This might suggest that those who argue that ‘macho’ men fear their feminine side are right, but the survey did not uncover that fear. Instead the ‘homophobic’ subjects complained of gay harassment. Gays were ‘getting too close’ or ‘brushing against my body’. Another complained he was being ‘checked out’. Such homosexual behaviour made 42% of heterosexuals move away.7 A common heterosexual aversion to overt homosexuality is captured in these studies, but never commented on. Instead the ‘common-sense’ explanation is advanced; that the most masculine heterosexuals are really gays in flight-denial.
Another study reports that 47% of men have a purely negative reaction to gays. ‘I don’t like them’; ‘I want nothing to do with them’; ‘I hope Aids wipes them out’.8 At least 47% is a minority, but the same study discovered that a further 45% of men were mildly anti-gay; their attitude was summed up as, ‘[Gays] generally don’t bother me so long as they don’t try and press their beliefs on me.’ So if this study is right, then an astonishing 92% of heterosexual males will experience anti-gay feelings if homosexuality is overtly pressed on them. Again, this hardly suggests an ‘individual aberration’: it begins to look more and more like a common feeling. And once again ‘fear’ does not come into it. These heterosexual males show no fear of homosexuals, but merely feel distaste or revulsion at a homosexual approach.
And it is not men alone who experience this aversion. Alan Wolfe, a professor at Boston University, interviewed two hundred suburban Americans for a book on the state of American society and discovered that his slice of middle America was happily unprejudiced, open-minded and tolerant. ‘Yet,’ he reported, ‘there is one exception to America’s persistent and ubiquitous nonjudgmentalism. However much they are willing to accept almost anything, most of the middle class Americans I spoke to were not prepared to accept homosexuality.’9 Wolfe’s interviewees used words like ‘abnormal’, ‘immoral’, ‘sinful’, ‘unacceptable’, ‘sick’ or ‘unhealthy’ to describe the gay lifestyle, and other American studies show a similar widespread aversion. One such study reported that no less than 66% of American adults, male and female, condemned ‘homosexual behaviour as morally wrong or as a sin’.10 A similar result was yielded by another American study which reported that 60% of adults (male and female) thought that homosexuality in and of itself was no great problem, but it was still ‘obscene and vulgar’.11 The same survey suggested that these negative attitudes to homosexuality were associated with ‘sexual conservatism, anti-feminist attitudes, and with strong beliefs in male sex-appropriate behaviour’. For the gay or feminist lobbies this is a litany of horrors, but try putting it another way: so-called ‘homophobia’ is associated with men and women who lead decent lives, respect sexual fidelity and consider the male–female relationship to be natural. These same socially conservative people supported the right of homosexuals to attend church (80%) and their right to consensual sex in private (70%).
The broad conclusion to be drawn from these studies is that something under half of all straight men harbour strong anti-gay attitudes, and that about the same proportion possess a milder antipathy. Women share these attitudes, but perhaps the important thing to remark on is that the majority, despite their reservations about the morality of homosexual behaviour, are on the side of toleration: if the gays leave us alone, they seem to be saying, we will leave them alone. And yet the average person is condemned for feeling a dislike of homosexuality. Homophobia, the extreme manifestation of the aversion, is obviously reprehensible, but instead of trying to understand it the gay lobby attempts to eradicate it with the message that homophobia is mere denial. Once we all recognize our bisexuality, the argument claims, we will lose our irrational and sometimes violent prejudices, but the research suggests a much simpler reason for the straight’s aversion to the gay, and a reason which really is rooted in common sense.
The attraction of gay to gay, or of lesbian to lesbian, is natural. The gay or lesbian is attracted to members of the same sex. The gay does not want sex with women, nor does the lesbian want sex with men. There is a corollary. A heterosexual male is attracted to a heterosexual female. He does not want sex with men. That too is normal.
It is a consequence that gays (or lesbians) may cruise on a crash course. Gays are naturally attracted to those of the same sex, which means they are attracted to men in general. A problem arises in that the majority of men are not sexually attracted to gays nor, indeed, to any other men. Again, that is natural. What to the normal gay is natural and desirable is to most men unnatural and they recoil from it. No one accuses a woman of a ‘phobia’ if she repels an unwanted sexual advance, yet men are apparently phobic if they dislike being ‘checked out’ by a gay. The intolerance of straights is not of gays as such, but rather of the assumption by gays that others are like, or have the capacity to be like, themselves. The conventional male can be unsettled by those who are not plainly heterosexual. The thought of a homosexual act is unenjoyable to him in the obvious sense that it is not what he enjoys. Nor does he feel mere indifference towards it: it troubles him. The gay man desires what he finds undesirable and so the gay advance is unwelcome. It is a foray across conventional boundaries, an invasion of the Eros and private space that is part of the self, and it is seen as gay harassment. Any gay reviewing the results of the studies might decide that the best way to reduce society’s antipathy towards homosexuality is for the gay to be more aware of the heterosexual’s need for a private space; in other words, to practice more restraint.
‘What I don’t understand,’ Anne asks, ‘is why you men are so rude about gays, calling them bloody shirt-lifters, fairies, queers.’
‘We can call them much worse than that,’ Bill says.
‘But why? They aren’t a threat to you. They’re not competing.’
‘Perhaps it’s because what they desire of us,’ Bill says, ‘is abhorrent to us. I can’t stand the idea of having sex with another man.’
‘You fear it?’
‘What’s to fear? I might as well be frightened of becoming a vegetarian.’
‘No chance of that!’
‘I suspect most men shun gays,’ Bill says, ‘and maybe even despise them, because they don’t compete in the great male race.’
‘In which women are the prizes?’
‘Thank God, yes.’
‘But