Do you know anybody who is a secret homophobe?

Most people.

Wonder how many are for real and how many just say it. Overt aggressive homophobia isn’t cool any longer for most but there is still unequal seeing, such as complaining about gay people in ads/tv/films.

My mother

My sister

Straight people.

Christians.

half the posters on DL

Most people do not give a fuck one way or another.

Straight women.

Questions to help OP figure out if they have closet homophobes in their life:

Are you the designated bank in your family - “lending” money because, well, what else do you need so much money for?

Do you work harder than anyone else where you work because others need time off/come in late/go home early?

When you invite people from work for a drink or activity, do you get weird nervous reactions?

Do neighbors give you the white people grin when you chat with them even if you’re white?

Do you catch people muttering about brown people, foreigners, or (yes, still happens) Jewish people?

R8 What a charmed life you must lead.

Yes.

Penny Wong

If you know them, are they really secretly homophobic?

^well that's a good point

Fucking cocksuckers! 🤡

R12- She's a LESBIAN anyway

Umm hello?

muslims chinese blacks

90% of the non-western world hates gays.

Walk down the street holding your man's hand or give him a kiss, you will find out real fast! In NYC.

Another, mention boyfriend/partner to nice neighbors/coworkers and see their smiles go fake and very awkward as they say "that's so awesome!"

Homophobia is alive and well. It is just PC to hide it more now.

I think many straight women are like this. Not all of them, but the ones who have conservative values and gay friends are certainly homophobic in their private lives.

R20, you must not actually be in New York. People don’t care if you are gay here.

A gay guy is a faggot the minute he walks out of the room.

R22: I lived and work in NYC and have experienced the above personally.

Jackie on Assistance and her equally trashy sister, Princess Lay

Princess Slaya!

The thing is that a lot of people are perfectly fine with the LGBT Community. However, when push comes to shove and they are pushed into a corner for some reason, old habits take over and people use homophobic slurs and such to defend themselves.

Of course, there are plenty of two-faced fakes (straight or gay) who act gay friendly to your face and badmouth gays behind their backs.

R22 Bullshit.

Just as there are people who think diversity is fine and dandy on paper but if a person of color moved next door, they'd suddenly have an issue.

Yes - my former boss. She acted like a true social justice warrior and talked a big game about supporting gay rights.

One day, she got pissed off at me because I went to her boss to run an idea by her while my boss was away on vacation. She accused me of trying to undermine her authority, and our working relationship was very icy after that.

About a month after that incident, while I was away on vacation, she was in her office and started whining to a co-worker about me and how she knew I was gay, then unleashed an anti-gay tirade. Another co-worker overheard and alerted me to it.

It was a real sobering wakeup call and realization to me that most people are all talk, and when it comes right down to it, there's a lot of hate and prejudice still festering inside folks.

Straight guys, esp. the gym freak ones. Sure they have the pride flag at their gyms in June, but as the poster above said, the minute the gay guy walks out, he becomes regarded as either the disgusting faggot or the freakish clown. All the while, ironically, these bro-dudes vaunt each other with, "your form's aesthetic, bro" -- which, I've never seen, pass the lips of a gay guy.

My thoughts on homophobia:

1) 9 times out of 10 if someone is racist, they are more than likely homophobic. The two tend to go hand in hand.

2) Some people are fine with gay people as long as it's not their child or their very close family member. It's okay if someone else's child is gay or someone else's brother is gay, but not "MY" child or "MY" sibling.

3) The root of homophobia is truly based in hatred of women. Why would a man want to be like a woman and have sex with another man. A woman who wants to have sex with another woman hates men and wants to rule over men and just hasn't found the right man.

4) Yes, gay people can be homophobic because this shit gets internalized. How else do you explain the closet, after a certain age. If you are not reliant on anyone else to clothe you, feed you, and provide you with shelter, why stay in the closet among family and friends?

5) The world is much more homophobic than a lot of gay people (especially those who live in blue bubbles) want to believe. They aren't locking us in asylums any longer and they are no longer airing PSAs warning kids about gays, but I don't believe those polls of gay acceptance are truly accurate.

R30, you should've told your HR about it. Jobless would've looked good on her.

I know a girl who is really close with a gay couple. She was at their engagement and everything. She told me once that while she loved them, she still thought being gay was a sin. She gave me the “love the sinner, hate the sin” bullshit and explained that we all sin so it’s ok. It was several years ago and I’m no longer friends with her, so maybe her opinion has changed— I doubt it. I only have a slight acquaintance with the guys so I’ve never said anything, but I hate that they are sharing important moments in their lives with someone like her and they have no idea.

Yes, most people I know are secret homophobes.

R33 I did. The whole situation was a real mess. I explored legal options, but surprisingly, no attorneys would take my case. The general consensus these days is that anti-gay lawsuits just aren't that profitable and worth pursuing. I was eventually reassigned to another manager and my former manager just got her wrist slapped.

If it hadn't been for COVID, I probably would've left the company because I wouldn't have been able to be in her presence on a daily basis. But since I've been working at home for the last year, the situation's bearable.

My mother. She has said seeing two gay men kissing in movies makes her uncomfortable. And if there is a sex scene between these two men she'll turn the movie off completely. She has said that the idea of two gay men having sex repulses her. And she complains often about how she was bullied as a child for having a gay brother as though it was his fault. My father also cheated on her with a man once. It wasn't his first affair but the other times were women and the fact that this one was with a man made it a lot worse in her eyes.

Yet despite all this, she still loves and accepts her family members and friends or at least claims to.

R10 hits the nail on the head with some of those examples. We really do deal with microaggressions and fakeness a lot. Homophobia is a lot like racism, in that it's socially unacceptable to be vocally racist or homophobic. It's shameful, so there is a lot of "alluding" to things, or avoiding altogether. I'm from the midwest and when a straight white female who is homophobic is confronted with something gay, in media or news etc, they will say something like "humm, not sure how I feel about that..." but you know they already know exactly how they feel about it.

[quote]9 times out of 10 if someone is racist, they are more than likely homophobic. The two tend to go hand in hand.

Exactly, r32. I'm a gay white male and come from an area where making shit out of minorities is a casual hobby for many. Straight white people will dig straight in and start with the derogatory stuff in all-white spaces; they just assume other white people will go along with it. Whether they know I'm gay or not, my guard still goes up immediately. Homophobia & racism go hand-in-hand.

CHER she only supports gays when it’s convenient to her career. She treated her lesbian daughter like garbage when she found out she’s gay

R40, I saw the television show; bitch was harsh way before Chaz came out.

My sister and mother. My sister is getting worse at hiding it, my mother never really bothered to hide it.

R36 I’m glad to hear that your situation improved.

My mom is but that’s largely because she is a born-again Christian (and a Trump supporter) unfortunately. It doesn’t surprise me she’s this way. She’s very set in her ways and it’s hard. For example, in the past, whenever we’ve watched movies together, I would always get uncomfortable if the movie featured a gay or lesbian character. It wasn’t so much the sexual orientation of that character but knowing my mom’s general reaction. There are a few exceptions (such as “Pitch Perfect”) but mostly when they’re comic stereotypes and/or minor characters that don’t take up much of the movie.

My stepdad (my mom’s current husband), I think, is also secretly homophobic. Ironically, he’s anti-Trump and he even voted for Biden (to my surprise) but I get the feeling that he’s still uncomfortable over the idea of two men or two women together. It’s the same thing with the movie thing for my stepdad as for my mom. If I know a movie they’re watching has a gay or lesbian character in it, generally I have to either look away or leave the room.

R36, not surprising at all that not lawyer took up your case. At the end of the day, a gay guy will never receive the magnitude of support, legally, financially, or whatsoever, that heteros will. We're always going to be on our own.

Hence my incredulity to all this woke shit from corporations cropping up. No company will ever be fully and sincerely supportive of gays. They will just go where the money is, and the money happens to be with us and the culture of sanctimoniousness being fostered by these 'activists.'

What do you plan to do though once all this passes? Will you move to a differrnt company? And just out of curiosity, which industry are you in?

R32 and R39 in theory perhaps. There are are plenty of racists statements bandied about on DL on a daily basis. So by your logic then all these folks are homophobic?

Former fag hags from my 20s and 30s who've turned conservative as they've aged. Some of them have married openly homophobic men. Most are now silent or neutral on gay-rights issues, when they used to be strong and vocal allies. I don't care, just be up front about it.

R44 One lawyer I consulted with told me that unless I could prove that my boss' comments were based solely on my sexual orientation and no other factors were involved ( e.g., job expectations and performance), I had a very slim chance of legal success. He said big corporations are very good at defending themselves against these types of accusations.

When I went to the head of HR at my company, I got the standard, "We're so sorry this happened to you," but no actual remedies for the situation. I'm the one who insisted on reporting to a different manager.

My plan is to announce my retirement when lockdown ends so I won't have to return to the office and work with her again.

R8 This patently false. Statistics, lived experience and reality prove otherwise.

Probably about 95% of heterosexuals or more.

Liberals and leftists hate gay men just as much as right wingers. I live in the woke-est of woke towns and almost never see two men holding hands let alone kissing. A gay man has his leg broken by anti-gay street preachers recently. After a brief respite between the years 2000-2015 the world is openly homophobic led by the far left.

Vancouver BC, R50?

I remember the incident about the gay guy there getting his leg broken. The DL thread about it received very few replies. The guy wasn't hot by DL's lofty standards, so DLers didn't give a shit.

Yes, Vancouver. Lots of leftists said the white gay man deserved it for daring to confront the black preachers. It's all trans and BLM here, even though the black population is less than 3 per cent due to getting priced out by the Chinese money laundering through real estate. It's a fucked up town.

I've learned the hard way not to trust large groups of straight women who come into gay bars together. Certainly there are those who come in that are true allies, but there are also those who come in like tourists at the zoo, will get drunk and fawn over the cute guys. You'll then find their pictures and sobered up revelations on social media simply by searching for the establishment or reading a Yelp review.

When a woman is a genuine gay ally, they are there with a few other men and they are not acting like these creepy crawly hen parties. You'll see them over the years with the same friends. Some may eventually drop their gay friends when they get married or even change their point of view on gay issues, but others remain very loyal and sincere.

The one off hen parties get no attention from me. that's one thing I'm concerned about when we go back to normal is that there will be more of these intrusions. The social distancing has pretty much kept them away in the spot I go to regularly.

My dad's wife. She acts cool with us privately but will only introduce us as friends to anyone she knows.

[quote]Straight guys, esp. the gym freak ones. Sure they have the pride flag at their gyms in June, but as the poster above said, the minute the gay guy walks out, he becomes regarded as either the disgusting faggot or the freakish clown. All the while, ironically, these bro-dudes vaunt each other with, "your form's aesthetic, bro" -- which, I've never seen, pass the lips of a gay guy.

What kind of gym are you going to??!!

[quote]Some people are fine with gay people as long as it's not their child or their very close family member. It's okay if someone else's child is gay or someone else's brother is gay, but not "MY" child or "MY" sibling.

And this pretty much sums it up. The majority of the people who say they are pro-LGBT are only pro-LGBT as long as it’s not in their family. Even Cher has admitted that she thought she was fine with LGBT’s until she was actually faced with it personally with Chaz.

I have a "friend" - you could call her a fag hag - who goes out of her way to talk about how much she doesn't understand homophobia and how she teaches her kids to never judge people. Yet, she votes for anti-gay politicians. She believes both sides are bad. Her big issue is abortion and she's against it but says she doesn't want to take away the rights of another woman. I want to grab her, shake her, and say that's not how it works. You can't support these people and vote for politicians like this.

Bette Midler hates us!

Self-described liberals usually.

Doesn't take much to scratch the surface and find out what homophobes they are.

Marriage is between a man and a woman.

R60 But Julia Gillard was not a secret homophobe. She was out and proud of her disdain for gays.

Most of the women I work with are.

Lots of "I'm okay with it as long as you don't hit on me." As if anyone would.

Yes. The married OPP cop down the street who's on Grindr.

^Is he hot?

No R65. Typical bald fat Canadian guy with a goatee. Struts around the neighbourhood with his wife and kids with chest puffed out and posts pics of his hole looking for "masc tops ONLY!"

I've found that most suburbanites are backwards bourgeois assholes deep down. This holds true for the blue states as well.

R67 Gotta wonder, why are so many suburbanites like this?