Why homophobia is harmful to societal development

In this article, we will evaluate homophobia not only and not so much from a moral point of view, but also from a purely rational one, that is, we will ask the question — is it in any way beneficial for heterosexuals? Or is it simply a tool for populists who seek to gain an audience that worships power or the outward appearance of power? For example, Russian State Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov called for the closure of all gay clubs and claimed that the sterilization of gay people and keeping them in special shelters is “a way to combat the spread of homosexuality in society”¹. Member of the California Senate, Republican Roy Ashburn was known for his harshly critical statements against defenders of gay and lesbian rights, but eventually admitted that he himself is gay². József Szájer, an opponent of gay marriage and a Hungarian MEP, was caught participating in a gay sex party in 2020³. Does it turn out that the fight against gay people is merely populism?

Terminology

First of all, let us understand the terms. What is homophobia? As defined by Britannica, it is a culturally conditioned fear of or prejudice against homosexuals that sometimes manifests in legal restrictions or, in extreme cases, in bullying or even violence against homosexuals⁴. Other sources — such as the Merriam-Webster dictionary — state less specifically that it is a fear of or discrimination against homosexuals⁵. The term “homophobia” first appeared in 1972 in the book “Society and the Healthy Homosexual” by American psychiatrist George Weinberg⁶. With this word, he described the fear of contact with homosexuals or their self-rejection. Later, the term was clarified in a 2006 European Parliament resolution “On homophobia in Europe”: “An irrational fear of and aversion to homosexuality and LGBTI people based on prejudice, similar to racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism”⁷.

And what is homosexuality? According to the same Britannica, it is sexual interest in and attraction to members of one’s own sex⁸. That is, the group “homosexuals” includes both gay men and lesbians. However, in practice, the term “homophobia” means prejudice not only against homosexuals, but also against bisexuals (that is, people who experience sexual interest in and attraction to members of both their own and the opposite sex⁹), transgender people, and other representatives of LGBTQ+¹⁰. Put simply, homophobia is dislike, fear, or prejudice against people who experience sexual interest in and attraction to members of their own sex. Therefore, strictly speaking, when someone says: “I don’t have any homophobia, I’m not afraid of them, they just annoy me” — that is homophobia, as such statements completely fit the definitions of homophobia. Of course, with regard to bisexuals, it would be more correct to speak of biphobia, but here we are delving into details, the need to use which we rarely encounter in practice.

Where homophobia comes from

There are two main channels for the origin of homophobia: fear of the unknown and prejudice. The first is that many people are in principle afraid of something unknown or incomprehensible to them, which leads to the formation of conservative views in them. In our article about conservatism we described this process:

Initially, an uneducated person is cautious toward everything new, everything unfamiliar and unusual. Sometimes — afraid, sometimes — hating, depending on what reaction he most often sees in the people around him. He is too lazy to study the new (because it takes time and effort), to learn, to admit his mistakes and the falsity of his own empirical conclusions, so he invents excuses not to do so. This is especially common among individuals with low intelligence — after all, if a person is of small mind, he fears that, for example, he will read something incorrect and believe it, being unable to comprehend it critically, or that it will turn out to be true and he will have to abandon his past beliefs. An example of such behavior is when a believer is afraid to read and try to comprehend an atheistic text, although, it would seem, if his position is really correct, then what is he afraid of, since he can justify to himself what is written incorrectly in the text, and why exactly? However, this believer fears that the truth will be written there, and he will agree with it, being unable to argue, and then will look stupid having abandoned his beliefs (not understanding that he looks stupid precisely when he defends false values).

Therefore, a person can become homophobic upon seeing gay people kissing on the street: since he has different preferences, he feels that these are different people, and due to ignorance of this phenomenon, it seems to him that it may pose a danger to him.

Homophobia is also formed from prejudices, stereotypes. For example, in a family, parents may say that they do not like gay people, and if a child wants to be like the parents, he will most likely adopt these views. Or if a person draws inspiration not from normal human values, but from prison concepts. Many of the prejudices stem from a patriarchal culture¹², in which a woman is expected to have traits such as weakness, submission, passivity, and a man — power, aggression, activity. This is a heteronormative model of relationships regulating behavior, including sexual: rejection of these rules is considered “abnormal” and shameful.

It should be noted that gay people are an ideal target for instilling public paranoia: they are among us, they seemingly do not differ in any way, and yet they are different, which means they are enemies. Therefore, for right-wing populists, they serve as the perfect target for creating an image of the enemy (previously, this target was Jewish people, but after the actions of the NSDAP in the 20th century, using them as a target became too shameful). Thus, a threat is invented from which right-wing populists are supposedly meant to save society, allowing them to gain votes among those who turned out to be naive enough to believe in the existence of a threat to themselves.

Most Russian men are homophobic because metastases of the criminal code of honor are very strong in the Russian mind. Any serious man, no matter what he does, subconsciously measures himself against prison bunks and tries to ensure that there are no noticeable violations of prison taboos on his record, for which he would have to pay with his rear end. Therefore, the life of a Russian macho is like a permanent seance: while the body wallows in luxury, the soul is serving time in a prison colony.

At the same time, in some cases, homophobia stems from a desire to disguise one’s own bisexual or homosexual preferences. In an experiment conducted at the University of Georgia, two groups of men — with tolerant and homophobic attitudes — were shown hetero-, lesbian-, and gay-porn, while an erection level was measured using a plethysmograph (a device that measures volume fluctuations in body parts). As a result, it turned out that both groups responded roughly equally to heterosexual and lesbian stimuli. However, only members of the homophobic group showed distinct arousal to male homoerotica¹³. This could explain why homophobic politicians so frequently get caught up in sex scandals involving homosexuality.

A variant of the norm or the result of propaganda?

Let us further examine whether attraction to members of one’s own sex is one of the natural sexual orientations or acquired as a result of persuasion, the so-called “gay propaganda” (though it would be more correct to speak of “queer propaganda”, since the concept of “gay” includes only men, but we will use the pejorative used by the authorities). After all, if this attraction has a natural origin, then fighting this phenomenon would mean violence against people who are different by nature, and therefore its goals cannot be achievable, serving merely as a readiness to infringe upon people’s rights simply because of different preferences.

A classic argument in favor of the natural origin of homosexuality is the vast number of examples of homosexual behavior in animals. Indeed, it is obvious that animals cannot become homosexual as a result of “gay propaganda” — in the animal world, such a phenomenon simply does not exist. Meanwhile, homosexual behavior has been observed and documented in more than 450 species of animals¹⁴¹⁵ (including insects¹⁶). For example, during the winter mating season, in order to win the favor of females, male Japanese macaques have to compete not only with other males, but with females as well¹⁷. In one population of Laysan albatrosses on Oahu island, 31% of pairs consist of two unrelated females¹⁸. Moreover, they raise chicks fathered by males who already have a permanent partner but are not faithful to her. A significant number of examples were provided back in Bruce Bagemihl’s book “Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity”, and have since been repeatedly confirmed. Consequently, homosexual behavior is observed among animals, meaning it is not the result of propaganda by some evil forces, but a variant of natural attraction.

Right-wing propagandists push a brief talking point stating that there is no single gay gene as proof that homosexuality is not an innate trait; however, this is a manipulation — as David Curtis, honorary professor at the UCL Genetics Institute, emphasizes, “even if homosexuality is not genetically hardwired, as this study shows, it does not mean that it is not in some way an integral part of a person’s identity”¹⁹. Fah Sathirapongsasuti, a senior scientist at the biotechnology company 23andMe, joins this opinion: “These are natural and normal variations that exist in our species, and this [study] confirms that we shouldn’t try to ‘cure’ homosexuality”²⁰. Ultimately, researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded that between 8% and 25% of homosexual behavior in human society is determined by genetic factors — but not by any single gene. Other biological factors can also play a role — for instance, one study showed that in homosexual men and heterosexual women, the right and left hemispheres of the brain are roughly equal in size, whereas in lesbians and heterosexual men, the right hemisphere was larger than the left; differences were also observed in the number of nerve connections in the amygdala of the left and right hemispheres²¹. So the absence of a specific gene proves nothing — homosexuality can be the result of various combinations of gene variants. Right-wing populists cherry-pick from the entire study only the phrase convenient to them, engaging in manipulation to lie to their audience.

Research shows that it is incorrect to divide people into heterosexuals and homosexuals — it is correct to speak of the degree of hetero- or homosexuality²² (which explains the existence of bisexual people). Simply put, many people have a certain degree of homosexuality, including those who consider themselves heterosexual. Its level can be higher or lower. In addition, a study of four thousand twin pairs from Sweden showed that the hereditary component can explain more than a third of the trait variation in men and about 20 percent of the variation in women²³ — that is, the level of sexual preference is inherited about as strongly as left-handedness²⁴.

All of the above indicates that if we can speak of the effect of “gay propaganda” at all, it can only work in relation to those who already have an inherent degree of homosexuality within them. Why force them to hide their natural characteristics? For the sake of having people with the most common tastes and preferences not see the display of other tastes and preferences? This is possible only in a totalitarian society, which means that advocating for such a thing implies support for totalitarianism. Furthermore, research shows that children raised by same-sex parents are no more likely to be homosexual than children from different-sex couples²⁵. Even though, it would seem, they see “propaganda of non-traditional relationships” every day. However, as we can see, it does not work on those who are naturally aroused only by members of the opposite sex.

I don’t know what people are afraid of. Maybe they think that it’s going to affect their kids. And I have to say, I was raised by two heterosexuals… I was surrounded by heterosexuals. And they didn’t affect me… People are going to be who they are. And we need to learn to love them for who they are and allow them to love who they want to love.

The very assumptions that homosexuality can be imposed on someone who does not experience a natural need for it are offensive to the heterosexual community. After all, this implies that heterosexuality is non-competitive, and that merely being exposed to propaganda is enough to give up the pleasure of sex with the opposite sex. The author of this article, as a representative of heterosexual orientation, considers this a spit in the face of the entire heterosexual community. And all claims that showing me naked men would supposedly be enough to make me stop being aroused by a beautiful female body are claims of an offensive nature. This would mean that I am so stupid that I cannot understand on my own what I like. For such an insult to the intellectual capabilities of an interlocutor, right-wing populists could quite deservedly get punched in the jaw. It is extremely strange that many heterosexuals are not only passive toward such humiliations, but even support them, which raises questions about their true level of heterosexuality, as well as the level of their self-respect and respect for their choice.

If someone believes that “gay propaganda” is possible, it means they admit that it is possible to indoctrinate them so that they are aroused by members of their own sex. Such a person would be best off coming out and admitting their bisexuality or homosexuality, rather than fighting their nature and being hypocritical. They themselves will become happier and will not oppress others based on sexual preferences. There is nothing shameful about being gay. It is shameful to pry into the bed of adults who engage in consensual sex that causes them no harm — regardless of the sex of their partner.

In 1990, the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality and bisexuality from the list of mental disorders²⁶. That is, they were officially recognized as variants of the norm, and all attempts to contest this ceased to be the norm.

Is a ban on homosexuality possible

Attempts to ban homosexuality were made in many totalitarian and authoritarian societies — for example, in Nazi Germany, Stalinist and post-Stalinist USSR, and in Iran and Saudi Arabia the death penalty for homosexuality remains in effect to this day²⁷. However, this did not eradicate homosexual behavior in any of these societies. Even in the Third Reich, where homosexual relations were punished by imprisonment and deprivation of civil rights (Paragraph 175²⁸), they persisted — thus, from 1933 to 1944, the number of people convicted under Paragraph 175 ranged from 50 to 63 thousand, about 4 thousand of whom were minors²⁹. Between 5 and 15 thousand people died in concentration camps. At the same time, this does not include those homosexuals who had connections in the Nazi Party and remained free — for instance, we can recall one of the leaders of the NSDAP, Ernst Röhm, who, before falling out of favor with Hitler, was one of the most influential figures in Nazi Germany.

In 1934, in Stalinist USSR, a punishment of imprisonment for a term of three to five years was established for “sodomy”³⁰. The article in the criminal code was repealed only in 1993. Many homosexuals were tried under the article for “counter-revolutionary activity” (Nikolai Artamonov, Nikolai Klyuev, and others), which at the time covered a great deal of what the communists disliked. The head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov, was also convicted of “sodomy”. Bans did not work here either — every year in the USSR, between 800 and 1,400 people were convicted under the “sodomy law”, and over the 59 years of its existence, the total number of victims of the law is estimated at over 60,000 people³¹. Prominent figures became victims — for example, director Sergei Parajanov, writer Gennady Trifonov, and so on.

Homosexuality was also widespread in the Islamic world, and since ancient times³². In present-day Chechnya, top officials claim there are no gay people in the republic³³, but this is a falsification — severe repression (including the use of torture³⁴) is completely incapable of eradicating their presence. For example, in 2022, Chechen law enforcement fabricated a case against brothers Salekh Magamadov and Ismail Isayev³⁵. Isayev was first detained back in August 2019 in Grozny — a police officer demanded to see his phone and saw a rainbow flag among the pictures. He was released a week and a half later when his mother brought a “ransom” of 300,000 rubles. Numerous other examples of persecution exist — for instance, singer Zelimkhan Bakaev, educator Arbi Altemirov, and so on.

Despite homosexual relations being banned and punishable by death in Iran, they are present there as well. For example, in September 2022, a court in Iran sentenced two LGBT activists to death³⁶. In May 2021, a gay blogger was threatened with death by his own relatives³⁷. According to human rights organization estimates, more than 4,000 men have been hanged in Iran on charges of homosexual relations since the Islamic Revolution in 1979³⁸.

Attempts to “cure” homosexuality invariably fail as well. In Nazi Germany, various brutal experiments were undertaken. For instance, a capsule with a “male hormone” was sewn into the groin area of some men, which was supposed to turn them into heterosexuals³⁹. None of these measures were effective. Throughout the 20th century, attempts were made to “cure” homosexuals using medication, electroshock, or psychotherapy. Medical studies showed that all these methods do not work⁴⁰, meaning they are quackery. Attempts to ban homosexuality yield no results except one — mass cases of ill-treatment of people.

What is the harm of homophobia

First, as various studies show, homophobia negatively affects economic development. It is associated with financial losses, including: deaths and treatment costs due to substance abuse, deaths due to suicide, deaths and treatment costs from mental illness, deaths due to HIV and costs of combating HIV, loss of specialists due to discrimination in education and employment, brain drain of LGBT people from the country, reduced tourism among LGBT people, and so on. For example, a study by the University of Saskatchewan showed that even Canada, which is relatively tolerant of the phenomenon, loses billions of Canadian dollars annually due to homophobia⁴¹. South Africa’s economy, according to a Williams Institute study, loses up to nearly 20 billion dollars every year due to homophobia⁴². The state of Georgia in the US could save 192-256 million dollars a year simply by reducing the gap in depression and smoking between LGBT and heterosexual individuals⁴³. The legalization of same-sex marriage brought 3.8 billion dollars to the US over 5 years from wedding expenditures and 244 million dollars from tax revenue⁴⁴. Bullying in educational institutions based on hatred toward LGBT leads to absenteeism, and society ultimately gets lower-quality workforce.

Secondly, the most developed countries in the world are tolerant of homosexuality. Beyond the fact that there is a clear correlation between a country’s level of development and its tolerance of this phenomenon, one must take into account that homophobia complicates cooperation with developed countries, whereas a tolerant attitude toward homosexuality simplifies it. A homophobic Russia will cooperate with backward homophobic states like Iran or Afghanistan; a progressive Russia — with developed democracies. Obviously, in the second scenario, Russian citizens will derive far more benefits from cooperation. Homophobia shames the country. For example, former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking to students and faculty at Columbia University in September 2007, declared that there was no such phenomenon as homosexuality in his country, which drew laughter from the audience⁴⁵. The civilized world views this as barbarism. This complicates interaction.

Thirdly, homophobia leads to homophobic violence. Homosexual people are subjected to violence and bullying, which raises the overall level of violence in society, normalizes violence and oppression of people based on their non-conformity to a certain “norm” defined not by the scientific community, but by people with a superficial understanding of the issue. There are a huge number of victims of homophobic violence — for example, the murder of 22-year-old Vladislav Tornovoy “because he said he was a fag”, as one of the killers put it⁴⁶. The young man was beaten, ridiculed, brutally tortured, and killed simply out of homophobia. Furthermore, it was never even established that he was gay, as no evidence of this was found. And cases of homophobic violence are by no means isolated incidents. Even in tolerant Great Britain, in 2020, hate crimes based on sexual orientation ranked second in frequency among all hate crimes (nearly 16,000 cases)⁴⁷. This raises crime rates, violates human rights, and cannot be pleasant to people capable of empathy. Normal people look at the oppression of gay people (as well as other social groups) with disgust, which also lowers their own level of personal happiness. In a society with healthy values, it is customary to wish well upon other people, and such mindsets generally improve social life, encouraging actions that increase fellow citizens’ happiness. In a society with perverted values and a cult of violence, it is customary to oppress some social group, which brings no benefit — it brings only harm, fueling the spread of malice and hatred in society. By granting homophobia the right to exist, we reinforce and spread a mindset rooted in hatred and rejection of the essence of other people. Hatred breeds reciprocal hatred.

Fourthly, homophobia negatively impacts psychological well-being of a vast number of people. For example, in the US, 68.5% of surveyed people who experienced discrimination based on sexual orientation admit that stigmatization negatively affected their psychological well-being, while 44% of respondents link discrimination to a decline in their physical well-being⁴⁸. This impairs people’s productivity and their capacity for creativity, thereby negatively affecting society’s overall level of well-being.

Fifthly, homophobia enables government intrusion into sexual life. By supporting homophobia, you let the nomenklatura into your bedroom as well, permitting it to establish its own rules. If it achieves a ban on homosexual relations — that is merely the first barrier. The next frontiers for it are bans on pornography, oral and anal sex, masturbation, sex outside marriage, kissing in public, and so on. One need only look at the authoritarian regimes of the Middle East to understand what such prudery can lead to. The Russian nomenklatura already shows a clear craving to establish as much control as possible over the sexual lives of its citizens. Homosexuality is merely a trial run to set a precedent for state regulation of sex life. By supporting homophobia, we allow an official with a title to dictate to us who we should have sex with and how. This could end with that official deciding who the state will “give” your daughter to, or even ordering your son to spend the night with him (after all, if gay people are outlawed, they will gravitate toward power, which in that case will be one of the few sources to satisfy taboo sexual needs). Therefore, allowing the state to intrude into our sex life is extremely dangerous.

Sixthly, it creates problems for talented gay people. Perhaps the most famous example is the fate of the famous mathematician Alan Turing, who played a huge role in breaking the German Enigma cipher machine and developing the world’s first stored-program computer. In 1952, Alan Turing was found guilty of charges of “gross indecency” under the “Labouchere Amendment”, under which homosexual men were prosecuted. Turing was given a choice between forced hormonal therapy designed to suppress libido, or imprisonment. The scientist chose the former. Alan Turing died in 1954 from cyanide poisoning. An inquest established that Turing committed suicide. Thus Great Britain, out of homophobic stupidity, lost a unique scientist who could have made many more discoveries beneficial to society. Germany, due to Nazi homophobia, lost for years the winner of many tennis tournaments, Gottfried von Cramm, who had to go through concentration camps, while the homophobic policy of the USSR became one of the factors behind the departure of famous ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev. The world was fortunate that Leonardo da Vinci was acquitted at the age of 24 after being accused of “sodomy”, otherwise we would have been deprived of a vast number of discoveries and works by this great creator.

Seventhly, homophobia creates closeted homosexuals. As we examined above, homosexuals will exist regardless, prohibition or not. The only question is whether they will be open, or closeted and sexually unfulfilled. In a society where gay people have full rights, they can easily lead a sexual life. In a society where their orientation is banned and condemned in every way, it is harder for them to find partners and they are forced to vent their sexual energy through other means. And in that case, those means can become violence, coercion into same-sex sex through blackmail, and so on. For heterosexuals, it would be much better if homosexuals could freely seek partners of their orientation, if one could know for certain who belongs to which sexual orientation. And this is possible only if there is no social persecution for homosexuality. Not to mention that, being forced to hide their feelings, homosexuals who are part of society will feel unhappy, which lowers the overall level of happiness in society.

Eighthly, heterosexuals also fall victim to homophobic persecution. In addition to the aforementioned Vladislav Tornovoy, whose orientation was never actually established, there is, for example, the famous “Fritsch Affair” in Nazi Germany. Werner von Fritsch was the commander-in-chief of the Wehrmacht ground forces from 1934 to 1938, but was accused of homosexual sex and forced to resign. The accusation was false. Following this affair and the restructuring of the Wehrmacht command structure, Hitler gained complete freedom of action in implementing his plans aimed at expansion. Thus, homophobia not only led to the persecution of a non-homosexual individual, but also indirectly contributed to the outbreak of World War II. Isn’t it simpler not to punish anyone on this basis than for everyone to suffer for nothing?

Homophobic stereotypes

In order not to admit their wrongness and wishing to continue harboring hatred based on sexual orientation, homophobes invent various arguments in favor of homophobia. There is a standard set of canned phrases that are often preinstalled in the mind of a homophobia believer, some of which we will examine.

The first of these canned brief assertions of homophobes sounds roughly like this: “if we allow homosexual relationships, then we will have to allow bestiality, pedophilia”, and so on. This is a demagogic chain of reasoning, since neither bestiality, nor pedophilia, nor any other phenomenon usually cited as part of such reasoning involves sexual contact between two consenting adults responsible for their actions. For example, an animal cannot defend its rights in court and declare that sexual contact took place without its consent. A child, until reaching the age of consent, also cannot be viewed as a sexual object due to an insufficiently formed life position. In homosexual sexual relations, however, we have two adults who have the right to choose, can justify their choice, and make it voluntarily. The homophobic stereotype under consideration is derived through the “slippery slope” logical fallacy. A demagogue using this technique can make statements like: if we allow sex, soon everyone will be having sex with animals, or if we allow drinking water, soon everyone will be drinking poison, and so on. However, one by no means follows from the other.

The second stereotype: “what about the children seeing it”. From the perspective of homophobes, if children see a pride parade, where in the “worst” case there will be kissing men with exposed body parts, this will somehow change them for the worse. However, children encounter demonstrations of exposed body parts of both sexes very often — at the beach, in the pool, and so on. This does not yet make them interested in sex — interest manifests during puberty. Research shows that even the behavior of peers does not affect the orientation of minors⁴⁹, to say nothing of the behavior of strangers. Children see exposed male bodies in movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jean-Claude Van Damme, but as a rule, this motivates them to play sports rather than have sex with men. Pride parades will interest only those who would be interested in the male body even without pride parades being held. Therefore, there is nothing terrifying about children seeing naked women or seeing naked men. Otherwise, in that case, men who can be classified as attractive or athletic should be banned, because they might contribute to someone becoming gay. Pride parades cannot convert anyone into being gay; it is simply a method of political struggle.

The third stereotype: “well, animals eat shit in nature”. Some homophobes, hearing the argument that homosexuality occurs in nature and is a variant of the norm, begin to say that phenomena unacceptable for a developed society — such as killing one’s own kind — also occur in nature. Here we are dealing with a logical fallacy, because no one claims that homosexuality should be permitted solely on the basis that it is observed in the wild. There are a substantial number of other factors taken into account, many of which were listed above where we discussed the harms of homophobia. Therefore, homosexuality should be permitted not only because it is observed in nature — that alone is not enough. But the other arguments we have provided are precisely what make its permission necessary.

The fourth stereotype: “soon white heterosexual men will be oppressed”. According to this stereotype of homophobic propaganda, giving rights to homosexuals means that heterosexuals will soon be oppressed. How one leads to the other is completely incomprehensible. Here we are dealing with the exact same “slippery slope” logical fallacy. This assertion is incorrect, as in homophobic countries the level of human rights provision for heterosexuals and other citizens is even lower than in countries with tolerant policies regarding homosexuals. This becomes obvious when comparing the map of countries with criminal liability for homosexual acts with the map of the Rule of Law Index. Fighting oppression does not imply oppressing the oppressors.

These are far from all homophobic stereotypes, but we will continue to supplement this list.

Why is permission for same-sex marriage necessary?

Sometimes people ask why exactly same-sex marriages are needed. If we are talking, for example, about modern Russia, same-sex couples here are invisible to the Family Code and are deprived of the rights and opportunities it grants to heterosexual people. Homosexual couples can protect some rights through special contracts, but not all. Simply put, same-sex partners are not considered family members — and, for instance, will not have the right to inheritance (if there is no will), the right not to testify against a spouse, or to receive information about a partner’s health if they end up in the hospital. A separate issue is children: under Russian law, parental rights and duties in a same-sex couple can belong only to the biological or adoptive parent of the child. All of this creates a multitude of situations where homosexual people have far fewer opportunities than heterosexual ones⁵⁰.

Why one should stop being homophobic

First, one should stop being homophobic because, as we have shown above, it harms social development. Second, homophobia brings no benefit to society. Unlike computers, technology, and grammar, all that homophobia provides is hatred and trauma. And far from only to homosexuals. “Why so handsome, are you a fag or something?”, “Short hair means she’s a lesbo” — how many heterosexuals hear this, and how many are afraid to hear it? Therefore, even soft options like “I’m not against gay people, but let them sit quietly and not stick out” in reality mean pushing personality out of society, isolating and stigmatizing its most important feelings and emotions⁵¹. The consequences are internalized homophobia, self-contempt, neuroses, and anxiety disorders. Third, homophobia simply gets in the way of personal life. If you are talking to a client or a person with whom you need to conduct business or work, and you display homophobia, and they turn out to be homosexual, it will harm the matter. In addition, as sexologist and co-founder of the Mental Health Center Amina Nazaralieva notes, “it is becoming shameful to be a homophobe or transphobe in the professional community”⁵². In educated circles familiar with the arguments we present in this article, homophobia is perceived as a lack of education and inadequacy, so it can harm the person who holds it.

If by homophobia we mean a kind of personal squeamishness toward homosexual practices or even a gay image, then that is a personal bug in a person’s head. I might feel squeamishness toward people with shaggy mats of body hair, overweight people, or unplucked eyebrows. But if I make it a guide to action when hiring, building business relationships, or use it as a motive for bullying, then it is no longer my personal bug, but a social evil and discrimination. That is precisely where the demand “not to advertise it” is appropriate.

Conclusion

Homophobia creates barriers on the path to achieving a prosperous and successful society, harms economic development, is immoral, brings no benefit, and only spreads hatred and prejudice in society. Homophobes, as a rule, are poorly educated people incapable of fact-checking, or incapable of compassion toward people unlike themselves. Social democrats advocate for the eradication of homophobia and for equal rights for representatives of all sexual orientations and genders. Rather thoroughly and based on a large number of sources, issues of homophobia are also examined in articles by the “AntiMyth” community⁵³.

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18. Ibid.
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20. Ibid.
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