Biological reasons behind homophobia

Animal behavior: for those who believe that human behavior comes from sort of soul the inclusion of this as a way to explain human behavior may seem odd. Fortunately what little religious background I absorbed from the media includes the idea that Yes animals do have souls and so No you can't claim that makes humanity special. This leads us back to Animal Behavior, humans are animals, deal with it, so a lot of the behavior patterns that have evolved over billions of years to allow species to make the most efficient use of their resources do in fact exist within us as well.

But this post isn't about animal behavior, it's about how it applies to homophobia. When examining homophobia it becomes apparent that there are three primary mechanisms behind it, all of which have been useful in the preservation of the species. These mechanisms are Empathy, removal of aberrant individuals (or blue monkey reaction), and repulsion from inefficient sexual practices. It should be noted that I am horrible at names and as such I can't remember the technical terms for all these behavior patterns. So, lets see how these normally beneficial mechanisms work together to produce something harmful.

Empathy is a psychological mechanism which allows one individual to identify with another. This includes allowing one individual to understand the other's viewpoint. Enabling one individual to recognize the other individual as a member of their family, social group or species. The absence of Empathy has been cited as one possible cause of autistic behavior patterns (forgive me, for as someone who does not specialize in humans I have not kept track of whether that theory is still valid). Obviously empathy is a useful trait, most of the time.

Expulsion of aberrations. This is sometimes referred to in conjunction with the words "blue monkey" because of a famous experiment some years ago (before animal rights movements made it illegal) in which a random monkey was removed from its troupe, painted blue, then returned to the troupe. The result was that the monkeys noted the strangeness of the blue monkey and tore the unfortunate animal apart. This behavior pattern is, believe it or not, beneficial as it means that group members instinctively avoid fellow members of their species with aberrant behavior patterns, something which in a wild animal probably denotes disease. The fact that in humans this behavior pattern has lead to most of the worst atrocities in history (in conjunction with a territoriality or tribal pattern) shows that this behavior pattern has the potential to be quite harmful.

Repulsion from inefficient sexual encounters is what it sounds like. It is the mechanism that deters individuals from mating with close family members (which would produce young with below average immune systems and potentially harmful genetic diseases), mating with those of the same sex (which produces no offspring and so wastes energy) and deters individuals from mating with significantly unfit individuals (such as those who are old enough to not be reproductively viable, the very ugly or the very diseased). While this may seem heartless, it is, but it’s also the best way to survive.

So, how do these come together to produce homophobia? Well it’s simple. Lets take five humans, a heterosexual male, a heterosexual couple and a homosexual male couple. When the lone hetero male empathizes with the hetero male in a relationship he places himself (at some level, probably unconscious although it may vary on the individual level) and feels that this is good, he probably feels jealousy that he’s not getting any. When that same heterosexual male tries to empathize with a homosexual male he puts himself in the shoes (or shall we say bed?) of the homosexual male, instincts immediately send him an abort signal. He feels a queasy sensation in the pit of his stomach, not dissimilar to the queasy sensation members of this blog should get when you, say, contemplate killing a random toddler that crosses your path. If it feels wrong it is wrong, at least that’s what the man’s gut tells him. What happens next depends entirely on the personality of the hetero male in question, if he’s a self-centered individual he wonders how anyone can possibly be that wrong and his first impulse is to eliminate the aberration from his society. If the hetero male actually tries to gage the way the homosexual couple is reacting he will note that they seem to be enjoying themselves as much as a hetero couple would be, this individual then asks themselves “if I were deeply in love with somebody, but society were to forbid me to marry them, would this be a just society?” or something of the sort. The self-centered male has no reason to consider the feelings of his compatriots because if they are normal, he reasons, they must feel as he feels, conclusion: either they are not normal or they are normal but purposefully going against the rule written into his genome. Add some sort of divine commandment that backs up the instinctive reaction and suddenly the self-centered man has justification, he can hate what he feels like hating because god made him hate it, therefore god must wish it to be hated.