He's big on Crevo and Atheist threads, IIRC.
I'm still not sure why evolution wouldn't have weeded out a gay gene eons ago.
Posted on 06/08/2002 3:48:34 PM PDT by Clara Lou
NEW ORLEANS -- Homophobia is not an actual phobia, according to three University of Arkansas psychologists. In a recent study, these researchers showed that homophobia originates not out of fear or anxiety -- as true phobias do -- but from feelings of disgust.
The UA researchers also found close associations between homophobic tendencies and concerns about contamination as well as conservative views about sexuality in general. Their findings suggest a social, attitudinal basis for homophobia rather than a psychopathological one, as the term itself implies.
"If you can identify the underlying emotions of certain attitudes and behaviors, you can better understand how those attitudes formed," explained Bunmi Olatunji, a UA doctoral student and lead author of the study. "That has implications for treatment, but it also enables you to consider a condition in the proper context. In this case, homophobia shouldn't be pathologized."
With the help of various graduate students, Jeffrey Lohr, a professor of psychology at the university, has spent the past several years attempting to identify the emotional mediators behind a variety of phobias, including fears about blood injection or injury and spider or insect phobias.
The study on homophobia -- conducted by Olatunji and Suzanne Meunier, a doctoral student -- represents the latest chapter in that program of research. On Sunday, Olatunji will present the findings of their study at a convention of the American Psychological Society in New Orleans.
To assess the emotional constructs behind homophobia, the UA researchers asked 138 participants to complete a series of surveys. These included the Index of Attitudes toward homosexuals, the Sexual Attitude Scale, the Disgust Emotion Scale, the Padua Inventory -- which assesses contamination obsessions -- and three questionnaires that measured levels of fear and anxiety.
Statistical analysis of the results showed a negative correlation between attitudes about homosexuals and measures of fear or anxiety. However, results from the Index of Attitudes toward homosexuals were positively correlated with results from the Sexual Attitude Scale, the Disgust Emotion Scale and the Padua Inventory. In other words, subjects who showed homophobic tendencies on the Index also displayed conservative sexual attitudes, elevated levels of disgust and dread of contamination.
"We included the Padua Inventory because fear of contamination clarifies the type of disgust that people are feeling. Without information about contamination fears, you could assume that homophobic people were just disgusted by the abnormality of the homosexual lifestyle," Olatunji said. "But this tells us there's a perception of contagion that feeds into homophobia."
The purpose of identifying such specific emotional components is not just to quibble with use of the term "homophobia" but to understand the origin and nature of the condition. For example, fear and disgust tend to arise out of different circumstances or contexts, and they manifest in very different ways.
Fear causes immediate physiological arousal, leading to elevated respiration and heart rate, and it inspires a flight reaction. Disgust, however, triggers a bi-phasic physiological reaction, with heart rate and respiration initially rising but plummeting shortly thereafter. While fear causes a "get me away from that" reaction, disgust manifests as "get that away from me." These different emotional reactions can lead to very different behaviors, according to Lohr.
"The same emotions that mediate attitude can mediate behavior," he said. "If fear mediates avoidance, other emotions may mediate attack. That distinction becomes very important when what a person intends to avoid or attack is not an animal or an inanimate object, but another human being."
Additionally, different emotional constructs require different approaches to treatment. Clinical psychologists often treat true phobias by forcing patients to confront their fears. Flooding -- or prolonged, repeated exposure to the feared stimulus -- can weaken the fear response and allow people to practice controlling their reactions. But such a procedure may not be effective in eliminating disgust and, furthermore, would be inappropriate if the object of that disgust is another person.
Lohr suspects that the type of disgust associated with homophobia arises from social conditions rather than psychological ones -- that it represents a prejudicial attitude more akin to racism than to phobia. If that's the case, any attempt to treat or reduce homophobia would have to be conducted through a process of attitude reformation, which could occur in a social context such as homes or schools rather than in a clinical setting.
"If contempt and disgust drive homophobia, then it seems more of a moral or social problem than a psychopathological one," Lohr said. "If we start to consider negative attitudes pathological -- implying that there's something medically wrong with prejudiced people, that they're somehow sick with their own attitudes -- that seems to me misguided."
He's big on Crevo and Atheist threads, IIRC.
I'm still not sure why evolution wouldn't have weeded out a gay gene eons ago.
Without my glasses I read that as logjam, or log jammer. Might be a synonym of fudgepacker.
Having tripped over more than my share, I would agree.
Queers are really just children who fell off their tricycles, IMO.
Non-lethal mutations are not common, and certainly not commonly recurring.
While not in itself lethal, a gay gene would compel an organism to sex acts that would make reproduction unlikely, and passing along the gene throughout the eons highly improbable.
jlogajan is on other threads as well - any thread where he can express his hatred of Christians, or his pro abortion views.
Perhaps because it (or they) would affect males and females differently? Simple hypothesis: there is a gene which will cause people of either sex to be unusually strongly attracted to males, and another which causes people to be unusually attracted to females. The former gene would tend to cause males carrying it to lean toward homosexuality, but females carrying it to nymphomania; the latter gene would have opposite functions. While homosexuality may not promote dissemination of one's genes, nymphomania most likely would.
I have no idea whether the hypothesis is correct or not, but it suggests that a genetic predisposition to homosexuality could be an evolved trait. Of course, societal factors would probably play a much larger role.
Actually, to be fair, the majority of leftists are "Antisemitic". They hate Israel and Jews. In fact they are fond of calling them fascists and Nazis. Sort of ironic don't you think?
I find it very unlikely that there exists a gene which will cause both males and females carrying it to tend toward homosexual attractions. I see nothing improbable, however, about the existence of genes which will cause carriers (or either sex) to be unusually attracted to males or which cause carriers to be unusually attracted to females. Since the former type of gene would enhance the reproductive success rates of females and the latter would enhance the reproductive success rates of males, such genes could easily be propagated through millenia, especially since the most likely pairing would be a female with the former gene and a male with the latter. The effect would be that there would be many individuals who had both sets of genes and did not inherit either trait, but who could pass one or the other set of genes to a potential mate without the other.
Note that I believe the genetics would only affect one's 'attractions' to other people. Part of living in society is learning to restrain oneself and not engaging in sexual relations with everyone to whom one is attracted; this applies to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals.
OK. They're perverted. We're disgusted. We need treatment.
I'm surprized that little line slipped by the usually perceptive eyes here.
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