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Despite
an overall decrease in violent crimes, there was an 8% increase in bias-motivated
incidents reported to the FBI in 1997 as compared to 1996.
A
psychoanalytic frame of reference is very useful in trying to understand
why it is difficult to achieve attitudinal changes. (People's attitudes
towards themselves and towards other people depend not just on conscious
factors-what they believe or don't believe-but also on unconscious factors
like thoughts and feelings that are outside their conscious awareness.)
In
some (perhaps many) people, homophobia derives, in part, from a heterosexual's
fear and anxiety about his (it seems to be more common and most dangerous
in young men) own sexuality. Such a person worries that he has homosexual
desires.
Psychologically
the homophobic activity actually represents the EXTERNALIZATION of the
homophobe's self-hatred, of his hostility toward something that lies within
himself.
An
unwanted pass from a gay person has been used as a justification for a
violent response. In fact, "crimes of passion" have been ever-present
in human history (where a sexual pass at a man's girlfriend provokes a
violent reaction by the spurned man against the other man).
Because
it involves issues of sexual identity and sexual orientation-both issues
involving the body-anti-gay bigotry may be a deeper phenomenon than either
anti-Semitism or racism.
The
most significant psychoanalytic approach is one in which there are no
a priori assumptions about what a therapist or analyst should or should
not do in treatment with regard to sexual orientation or any other aspect
of life.
Therapists
who do not take into consideration the impact on gay children (or children
who will grow up gay) of social and familial hostility, do not understand
how this hostility undermines gay children's self-esteem, and therefore
their emotional and psychological functioning.
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