Homophobia Quotations

Homophobia, anti-gay fear or hatred

"Homophobic violence...and homophobia in general might also be ways of adjudicating the anxiety aroused in heterosexual men by their own penetrability. If a potential for passive anal pleasure is denied, its denial can be acted out as violence against or contempt for, those who are interpreted as wishing to either experience such pleasure themselves, or to 'impose' it on another. In this sense the repression or elision of anal eroticism in heterosexual men can be seen to work not only along the lines of the masculine/feminine divide, but also along the homosexual/heterosexual divide."
- Catherine Waldby . "Destruction: Boundary Erotics and the Refiguration of the Heterosexual Male Body", Sexy Bodies, p.272-73. Eds. Grosz and Probyn.

"Victory [over homophobia] may require five or maybe 20 years. Yet I have no doubt that “don’t ask, don’t tell” and same-sex adoption bans will be as unspeakable and inexplicable to my grandchildren as counting a slave as three-fifths of a human being."
- Jacob Appel, social activist and lawyer, Reparations for Gay Americans (2009).

"While the financial losses suffered by gay and lesbian Americans as a result of state-sanctioned discrimination may prove challenging to quantify, they are real....If you cannot serve in the military because of your sexual orientation, you also cannot qualify for the educational and economic benefits that such service guarantees. If you cannot marry your partner, you cannot take advantage of the numerous tax benefits that matrimony affords. Calculating the lost wages and benefits of workers terminated solely because of their sexual orientation may prove impossible, but countless men and women have suffered this fate without recourse. Placing a price tag on this hardship will be no easy feat. That is no excuse for not attempting to do so."
- Jacob Appel, Reparations for Gay Americans (2009).

"None of my friends are homophobic. I’ve never had a negative response from Will & Grace... and I’ve never hesitated about anything artistic. This is 2008, you know? Things are different now... or, at least they should be. We’re all God’s children. Enough already with homophobic people... they just don’t get it."
- Harry Connick, Jr. (December 17, 2008, Bay Windows http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=arts&sc=music&sc2=news&sc3=&id=84797)