TheProgressivePatriot
Platinum Member
Homophobia and is a mental illness Sparky, Not homosexuality:Why do you defend mental illness with ridiculous comparisons?Not following you here. While I've yet to see a "Retard's Right's Parade" and LWers praising someone as "brave" for "coming out" as retarded, the fact remains a person born with a mental disability cannot change who they are, therefore they shouldn't have to hide themselves in a closet.Just because certain behaviors are hard-wired in some humans doesn't mean such behaviors are desirable to include in the societal structure.
Same goes for people who are left-handed, very smart in math, skilled at soccer, gay or anything else.
Beyond Homophobia » Is “Homophobia” A Mental Illness?
Another important event roughly coincided with the DSM change. In 1972, against the backdrop of a growing national gay rights movement, a new book was published, Society and the Healthy Homosexual. Its author, psychologist George Weinberg, began his first chapter with a provocative statement:
“I would never consider a patient healthy unless he had overcome his prejudice against homosexuality …. Even if he is heterosexual, his repugnance at homosexuality is certain to be harmful to him.”
A few pages later, Weinberg introduced a term he had coined during the late 1960s: homophobia, which he defined as heterosexuals’ “dread of being in close quarters with homosexuals” and homosexuals’ “self-loathing.”