Here’s an unhealthy definition of homophobia that I recently came across:

There is really no such thing as homophobia. It is a false concept created by the gay community to smear the healthy aversion to a unnatural and disgusting deviancy.

I found it on the Rapture Ready Christian board. It’s the herald of one Mr. Mannn, a 23 year old rapture-ready fundamentalist who admits to going out on dates. Why date, if rapture ready? Didn’t Paul say that it’s best to hold off on romance and marriage and family making, as to get ready for the big lift? Is Mister Mannn really ready for rapture? Can he say that three times fast?

But seriously. The biggest problem that the heterosexual majority has about homosexuality is that it focuses too much on the “sex” part. With our dirty, self-centered minds, we picture what homosexual sex must look like. Then we say “yuck, that couldn’t be any fun; what a mistake, what a perversion”. Aside from the chauvinism, that view misses the more important thing, which is relationship. We (and I do mean we; my right hand index finger and ring finger are of equal length and I don’t have any older brothers) miss the fact that a homosexual relationship really isn’t much different than a heterosexual relationship. We forget that sexual activity (including “lite” forms like holding hands or hugging) takes up — what, maybe 5% of a couple’s waking hours? Maybe 20% in the first few months, then after that maybe 10% if you are under 30 and really lucky, probably less than 5% if you are over 40. What about the other 90 to 95%? Well, that’s all food shopping and arguing and having dinner and watching TV and gardening and painting walls and going to work, etc. etc.

Mr. Mannn and other homophobes out there might be surprised to learn that there are a lot of long-term exclusive relationships between gay men or gay women, and that most gays want such a relationship. However, the gay crowd did do themselves a disservice by adopting that term to describe themselves. It implies lack of responsibility, promiscuity, swinging sex as an end in itself versus sex as a matrix for relationship. So the heterosexual crowd focuses on the sexual acts of gays, and thus focuses on the severe differences between us and them. If the “gay” community would drop that worn out name and adopt something that encourages relationship and common ground, it might help. But even if not, it’s time for “not gay” people (like Mr. Mannn) to grow up too and see that the differences are much smaller than the samenesses.