we should replace the word “homophobia” with “anti-gay” or “anti-queer”.

phobia suggests fear and those who are anti-gay aren’t afraid of us. they’re vehemently against us.

to this day, i still see people making the assertion that gay people are “useless” because they think we “cannot reproduce,” maybe not with someone of the same sex, but we still can generally reproduce.

by the way there are still infertile, heterosexual couples. heterosexual couples who simply choose not to have kids. hetero-romantic, asexual couples. and do they refer to them as useless? no, because they’re not gay.

they refer to gay and queer people as useless because they are anti-gay and anti-queer. period.

suggesting that sexual trauma causes homosexuality? this is inconclusive. and guess what? it’s anti-gay.

anti-gay folk will often try to suggest that if a lesbian woman was a victim of csa (child sexual assault), their “lesbianism” would have then been an effect of their trauma bc they relate all men to their (likely) male abuser and therefore will not sleep with men.

there are problems with this. so let’s talk about it.

child sexual assault knows no gender and can happen to any child regardless of their gender by any predator, regardless of the predators gender and who seeks to assert power over that child.

if the predator/abuser is male and sexually assaults a young boy who grows up to be gay, would the boy be exempt from the same assertion made about the lesbian woman exampled prior?

anti-gay folk would say so. they would say the reason why the boy grew up to be gay was

because he was sexually assaulted by a man, but would then say the reason the girl grew up to be a lesbian woman was because she was sexually traumatized by a man.

it doesn’t make sense. it is a gender discrepancy.

what would they say if the girl who grew up to identify as a lesbian was sexually assaulted by another woman?

they might try to suggest that this doesn’t happen because women aren’t as likely to be predators/abusers, but let’s not rule it out since they still can.

now what about if the boy who grows up to identify as gay was sexually assaulted by a woman?

anti-gay folk try to make the same argument for the boy as they would the lesbian who was abused by a man- that he is traumatized by women therefore that makes him gay.

but let’s not ignore what’s been going on in christian households. there are numbers of cases where women would sexually assault their gay sons after their coming out as a twisted attempt of trying to “save” them by trying to familiarize them with “a woman’s touch,”

but what needs to be understood here is that the child was a homosexual before their assault. in any of these examples. homosexuality is a predisposition, it is an experience we were meant to have, not a disorder like ptsd or depression.

to try and classify homosexuality as a trauma, “confusion,” or mental illness in a world that tends to discourage mental health is anti-gay.

you can cite as many examples as you want of gay people being victims of csa. but they were gay before it happened.

anti-gay is also believing that a child cannot be gay, but can still somehow be straight when those are both sexual orientations.

anti-gay folk don’t want to believe a child could be gay because it’s not what they’ve known or like, therefore it cannot happen. but humans are more complicated than that.

here’s to help clarify what i’m saying in this thread:

(source: https://www.pflagatl.org/the-problem-with-the-belief-that-child-sexual-abuse-causes-homosexuality-bisexuality/)

now let’s talk about gay people who are sexually assaulted as adults, which happens at a rate unfortunately.

would the trauma caused by one man to another man cause the victim to be straight due to trauma if they identified as gay prior?

of course not. they’re more likely to withdraw from sexual activity with a partner altogether while still identifying as a homosexual or homo-romantic.

let’s help further the understanding on how gay people aren’t dysfunctional:

(source: https://www.pflagatl.org/the-problem-with-the-belief-that-child-sexual-abuse-causes-homosexuality-bisexuality/)

anti-gay is not wanting to accept gay people as normal because it doesn’t fit in with their vision of what’s “traditional,” i.e relationships between one man and one woman.

i am a gay man. i am not a victim of child sexual assault. i grew up in a “traditional,” catholic household with a mother and a father.

i am a gay man and i’ve known about my predisposition as such since as early as four years-old, even when i didn’t have the proper words to describe my feelings.

and guess what? my instincts were so dead on that as a child, i ended up befriending other gay kids in my class before any of us came out as gay but still weren’t shocked by each other when we did come out.