Homophobia

"Sec. 4. Defunding Chemical and Surgical Mutilation. The head of each executive department or agency (agency) that provides research or education grants to medical institutions, including medical schools and hospitals, shall, consistent with applicable law and in coordination with the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, immediately take appropriate steps to ensure that institutions receiving Federal research or education grants end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children."

"Sec. 6. TRICARE. The Department of Defense provides health insurance, through TRICARE, to nearly 2 million individuals under the age of 18. As appropriate and consistent with applicable law, the Secretary of Defense shall commence a rulemaking or sub-regulatory action to exclude chemical and surgical mutilation of children from TRICARE coverage and amend the TRICARE provider handbook to exclude chemical and surgical mutilation of children."

"Imprinting anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our Nation’s children not only violates longstanding anti-discrimination civil rights law in many cases, but usurps basic parental authority. For example, steering students toward surgical and chemical mutilation without parental consent or involvement or allowing males access to private spaces designated for females may contravene Federal laws that protect parental rights, including the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA), and sex-based equality and opportunity, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (Title IX). Similarly, demanding acquiescence to “White Privilege” or “unconscious bias,” actually promotes racial discrimination and undermines national unity."

"Within 90 days of the date of this order, to advise the President in formulating future policy, the Secretary of Education, the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, in consultation with the Attorney General, shall provide an Ending Indoctrination Strategy to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, containing recommendations and a plan for: (i) eliminating Federal funding or support for illegal and discriminatory treatment and indoctrination in K-12 schools, including based on gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology (ii) protecting parental rights, pursuant to FERPA, 20 U.S.C. 1232g, and the PPRA, 20 U.S.C. 1232h, with respect to any K-12 policies or conduct implicated by the purpose and policy of this order. (b) The Ending Indoctrination Strategy submitted under subsection (a) of this section shall contain a summary and analysis of the following: (i) All Federal funding sources and streams, including grants or contracts, that directly or indirectly support or subsidize the instruction, advancement, or promotion of gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology: (A) in K-12 curriculum, instruction, programs, or activities; or (B) in K-12 teacher education, certification, licensing, employment, or training; (ii) Each agency’s process to prevent or rescind Federal funds, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, from being used by an ESA, SEA, LEA, elementary school, or secondary school to directly or indirectly support or subsidize the instruction, advancement, or promotion of gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology in: (A) K-12 curriculum, instruction, programs, or activities; or (B) K-12 teacher certification, licensing, employment, or training; (iii) Each agency’s process to prevent or rescind Federal funds, to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law, from being used by an ESA, SEA, LEA, elementary school, or secondary school to directly or indirectly support or subsidize the social transition of a minor student, including through school staff or teachers or through deliberately concealing the minor’s social transition from the minor’s parents."

"By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to protect opportunities for women and girls to compete in safe and fair sports, it is hereby ordered: Section 1. Policy and Purpose. In recent years, many educational institutions and athletic associations have allowed men to compete in women’s sports. This is demeaning, unfair, and dangerous to women and girls, and denies women and girls the equal opportunity to participate and excel in competitive sports. Therefore, it is the policy of the United States to rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls and deprives them of privacy. It shall also be the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports more broadly, as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth."

"The Secretary of State, including through the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ Sports Diplomacy Division and the Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, shall: (i) rescind support for and participation in people-to-people sports exchanges or other sports programs within which the relevant female sports category is based on identity and not sex"

"Merry Christmas to all, including the Radical Left Scum that is doing everything possible to destroy our Country, but are failing badly. We no longer have Open Borders, Men in Women’s Sports, Transgender for Everyone, or Weak Law Enforcement. What we do have is a Record Stock Market and 401K’s, Lowest Crime numbers in decades, No Inflation, and yesterday, a 4.3 GDP, two points better than expected. Tariffs have given us Trillions of Dollars in Growth and Prosperity, and the strongest National Security we have ever had. We are respected again, perhaps like never before. God Bless America!!! President DJT"

"The Left has taken away all of the neutral cultural ground. This is why brands like Bud Light and Nike are giving endorsement deals to a dude in a dress... They can be baptized into wokeism and openly worship at the LGBT altar, or they can by default align themselves with conservatives... Here's what we should do: Pick a victim, gang up on it, and make an example of it. We can't boycott every woke company or even most of them. But we can pick one, it hardly matters which, and target it with a ruthless boycott campaign. Claim one scalp then move onto the next."

"The U.S. Department of Education urged the NCAA and the NFHS on Tuesday to restore female athletes' records and awards that were "wrongfully erased" by biological males, who "unfairly competed" in women's sports. The letter, sent to the National Collegiate Athletic Association and the National Federation of State High School Associations, comes one week after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to ban transgender women from competing in women's sports "as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity and truth." The NCAA updated its policies Thursday to comply with the order and limit "competition in women's sports to student-athletes assigned female at birth only." The Education Department called restoring female athletes' records the "next necessary step." "The next necessary step is to restore athletic records to women who have for years been devalued, ignored and forced to watch men steal their accolades," said Candice Jackson, deputy general counsel. "The Trump Education Department will do everything in our power to right this wrong and champion the hard-earned accomplishments of past, current and future female collegiate athletes.""

"You don’t get progress without backlash. So it’s not a coincidence that we’re seeing these anti-trans bills in the states at the same time as we’re seeing growing support. They can feel like contradictory trends, but really they are two sides of the exact same coin."

"Voting rights are being gutted. Women’s rights are being dismantled, books are being banned, history is being rewritten. The Supreme Court is being corrupted… the LGBT+ community is under attack."

"I hope the next time there's an invocation, when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands."

"I'm looking at society today and it's like I'm watching an X-Men movie… it's like we have mutants living among us on planet Earth. Some people don’t like that, but that’s a fact. This is the planet Earth, where God created men, male and women, female. I’m a proud Christian, conservative Republican. I’m not on the fence… I'm not afraid to address the dysphoria or the dysfunction. The Lord rebuke you, Satan, and all of your demons and all of your imps will come and parade before us. That's right – I called you demons and imps who come and parade before us and pretend that you are part of this world."

"So, what have Republican legislators done? Let me count the ways. They introduced nearly 500 anti-LGBTQ+ bills. They’re also banning books, which we know. And teachers in states like Florida are barred from even talking about being gay or transgender in the classroom."

"A New York Times bestseller that chronicles the true story of a nonbinary teenager set on fire by another teen while riding a bus in Oakland, California. A collection of stories and poems by a New York Times bestselling author about the feelings and experiences of teenagers in love. An NPR “best book of the year” award winner featuring authors and illustrators sharing personal stories about their conversations with their kids about race in America today. This is a small sampling of the kinds of books that have been marked for “quarantine” in school libraries run by the Defense Department’s Education Activity, or DoDEA. For months, officials atop this agency have been quietly flagging and banning dozens of books in response to President Donald Trump’s executiveorders requiring federal agencies to eliminate programs or materials related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The effect is that tens of thousands of kids in U.S. military families living on military bases worldwide no longer have access at their school libraries to celebrated and highly recommended books that happen to talk about LGBTQ+ people and people of color."

"HuffPost obtained an internal list of 80-something books that have been banned, or are in the process of being banned, at schools across the DoDEA system, which provides K-12 education to more than 67,000 kids in 11 countries, seven states, Guam and Puerto Rico. HuffPost isn’t providing the full list at the request of the DoDEA employee who shared it; they feared they could lose their job. But the clear theme to these books is that in one way or another, they talk about gender identity, sexuality and race."

"Still, senior DoDEA officials’ focus on rooting out books that talk about transgender people stands out the most, said this DoDEA employee. “They are really trying to deny transgender people exist,” said the employee. “It makes me physically ill.” A second DoDEA employee told HuffPost it’s clear that, in their scramble to comply with Trump’s executive orders, the agency’s leadership has had “a tendency to err far on the side of caution.” DoDEA students last month sued the agency over its book bans, arguing that it is violating their First Amendment rights. The American Civil Liberties Union filed the suit on behalf of 12 students from six families, ranging in age from pre-K to 11th grade. All are children of active-duty U.S. service members stationed in Virginia, Kentucky, Italy or Japan."

"HuffPost previously talked to an active-duty military officer overseas with kids attending a DoDEA school. He described Trump’s anti-DEI policies as a constant source of stress and fear for people around him, including at home: His spouse is a DoDEA teacher and he has LGBTQ+ children. Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ+ kids and transgender service members “hits home in so many ways,” said the officer. “It’s dehumanizing.” Members of Congress previously wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, urging him to stop to the “Orwellian book purges” within DoDEA schools. “We write to express our grave concern about the escalating censorship taking place in schools run by the Department of Defense,” reads a March letter to Hegseth from more than two dozen lawmakers, led by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. “You are plainly violating the constitutional rights of DoD families,” they wrote. A Defense Department spokesperson on Thursday declined comment on the lawmakers’ letter, saying only, “As with all congressional correspondence, we will respond directly to its authors.”"

"It’s actually those bills and those demagogues that choose to advocate against us, that make us fight more. I will not give up until we have full equality for our people."

"For years, we've been hearing from anti trans pundits and politicians that this is about protecting the children. But I think what this Oklahoma law reveals is that it's never been about the children. It's always been about scapegoating trans people, stigmatizing us and criminalizing our existence, making us not exist."

"We never did this through all of human history until like, what, two weeks ago? Now this is something? They’re having third graders declare pronouns? We’re not doing the pronoun Olympics in Florida."

"The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) today sent a letter to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) urging them to restore to female athletes the records, titles, awards, and recognitions misappropriated by biological males competing in female categories. The Department has called on the NCAA and NFHS to continue the progress made in recent days and strip the records, titles, awards, and recognitions wrongfully credited to the biological males who unfairly competed against girls and women in athletics. Correcting the record is entirely consistent with the NCAA’s new policy intended to preclude males from competing in women’s sports. “Because of President Trump’s bold leadership, men will no longer be allowed to compete in women’s sports regardless of how they identify, and the NCAA has correctly changed its tune on its discriminatory practices against female athletes,” said Candice Jackson, Deputy General Counsel. “The next necessary step is to restore athletic records to women who have for years been devalued, ignored, and forced to watch men steal their accolades. The Trump Education Department will do everything in our power to right this wrong and champion the hard-earned accomplishments of past, current, and future female collegiate athletes.”"

"The Department’s letter follows the NCAA’s policy change to “align NCAA policy” with President Trump’s Executive Order Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports. That Order set forth "the policy of the United States to oppose male competitive participation in women’s sports...as a matter of safety, fairness, dignity, and truth.” Last week, the Department also launched investigations into two educational institutions and an athletic association where violations of Title IX have been reported. Title IX of the 1972 Education Amendments provides that no student “shall on the basis of sex be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under” any federally funded education program or activity. As such, K-12 school districts, colleges, and athletics associations are strongly encouraged to keep factually accurate athletics records and to make corrections where male athletes were allowed to erase female records during the Biden administration."

"A part of a US national suicide prevention hotline that caters for LGBTQ young people says it will soon close, after the Trump administration cut its funding. The administration has accused the service of "radical gender ideology". It says it will still fund the wider 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline - of which the LGBTQ youth option is one part - and that all callers will receive "compassion and help". The Trevor Project, an organisation that helped to run the LGBTQ option, said the decision would have a harmful impact on vulnerable young people. "Suicide prevention is about people, not politics," said Jaymes Black, the organisation's CEO. He said his service had been told to close within 30 days. "The administration's decision to remove a bipartisan, evidence-based service that has effectively supported a high-risk group of young people through their darkest moments is incomprehensible," Mr Black added. The decision comes during international Pride Month, which celebrates LGBTQ culture and history."

"The news also arrived ahead of a US Supreme Court decision on Tuesday that upheld the state of Tennessee's ban on transition-related healthcare for minors who identify as transgender. The general 988 Lifeline offers free mental health support via call, text, or chat. It is funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), a subsidiary of the US Health and Human Services Agency (HHS). Currently, LGBTQ young people can select option 3 from a call menu in order to connect with counsellors. After the changes, the remaining 988 Lifeline services would "focus on serving all help seekers", including those who previously chose to access LGBTQ youth services, SAMHSA said. But the hotline would "no longer silo LGB+ youth services", SAMHSA wrote in a statement, omitting the "T" and "Q" that refers to transgender and queer people in the LGBTQ acronym."

"Officials at HHS proposed cutting the 988 Lifeline's LGBTQ youth services last week. In a statement to NBC News at the time, an HHS spokesperson described the option as a "chat service where children are encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by 'counselors' without consent or knowledge of their parents". Legislation passed in 2020 by the US Congress required the 988 Lifeline to provide services and staff specifically for LGBTQ people as well as other at-risk groups like rural and Native Americans. The legislation noted that LGBTQ youth were "more than 4 times more likely to contemplate suicide than their peers, with 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth and more than 1 in 3 transgender youth reporting attempting suicide". The law received bipartisan support - including from Donald Trump, who was then serving his first presidential term, and signed the bill into law. According to the 988 Lifeline website, LGBTQ communities are "disproportionately at risk for suicide and other mental health struggles due to historic and ongoing structural violence." The Trevor Project began providing its services through the 988 Lifeline in 2022. In 2024, it served more than 231,000 crisis contacts, the organisation said in a statement. It says it will continue to provide its own independent services."

"The decision to eliminate the 988 Lifeline's designated LGBTQ youth option comes amid Trump's push to curtail services, support, and access for transgender people across the federal government. He has pushed to end diversity, equity, and inclusion policies (DEI) within the federal government, arguing that such programmes are themselves discriminatory. The president has also ordered the removal of transgender servicemembers from the US military and issued an executive order that the US would only recognise two sexes – male and female. The US Department of State also announced it would no longer allow applicants to choose "X" as their gender on US passports. Instead, transgender individuals must choose "male" or "female" corresponding to their sex assigned at birth."

"Hey Dad. Thanks for setting aside time to meet with me, it means a lot to me. There are a lot of important issues passing through the legislature right now. For my own sake I’ve chosen to focus primarily on transgender rights, as that would significantly directly affect a number of my friends… I would like to make the argument that these bills are immoral, unjust, and frankly a violation of human rights."

"It’s not our fault that the truth hurts them, it’s their fault that the truth hurts them, because they have turned their back on the truth and they’ve turned their back on God... [Democrats] passed a bill to make it a federal law to protect gay marriage. Marriage is between a man and a woman, and that’s between God and a man and a woman."

"Trump administration health officials announced Thursday that the federal government will block transgender care to children by targeting hospitals and doctors that provide it. New proposed rules would prohibit hospitals from participating in Medicare and Medicaid if they provide care such as puberty blockers and surgeries for transgender minors, and would prevent federal coverage of such treatments. “These procedures fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, calling many types of transgender care “malpractice.” “Medical professionals or entities providing sex-rejecting procedures to children are out of compliance with these standards of health care.” Medical groups denounced the announcements, saying they intrude on physician-patient relationships and jeopardize care for everyone. “Allowing the government to determine which patient groups deserve care sets a dangerous precedent, and children and families will bear the consequences,” said Dr. Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics."

"“Patients, their families, and their physicians – not politicians or government officials – should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them. The government’s actions today make that task harder, if not impossible, for families of gender-diverse and transgender youth.” It’s the latest in a string of actions by President Donald Trump’s administration that target transgender people, including eliminating mention of trans people on federal websites, halting data collection on health issues, removing trans people from the military and suing states that allow trans athletes to play on high school sports teams. Also Thursdsay, US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the agency is sending warning letters to 12 makers and sellers of breast binders who marketed or sold the devices for treatment of gender dysphoria in children. National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya also said the research agency will end support for research into gender transition, saying, “it was junk science to begin with.”"

"HHS leaders on Thursday cited their own review of evidence and reports from other countries, many of which have faced sharp criticism for drawing sweeping conclusions with little or poor evidence. Health officials said they expect to emphasize psychosocial assessment and support for transgender youth, including “compassionate, developmentally appropriate counseling.” But they acknowledged that there are a limited number of mental health care providers available. Gender identity care, which is sometimes called gender-affirming care, is a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from their assigned gender – the one a clinician assigned them at birth, based mostly on anatomic characteristics – to the gender by which they identify. It can include mental health care or age-appropriate medical care such as hormone treatments, puberty blockers, gynecologic and urologic care and reproductive treatments. Major mainstream medical associations – including the American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Endocrine Society, the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – have supported such care and agree that it’s the gold standard of clinically appropriate care that can provide lifesaving treatment for children and adults. Professional medical organizations do not recommend surgery for children as a part of care, and research shows that it’s rare among transgender or gender-diverse teens."

"The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that it will challenge the administration’s rules in court. “These gratuitous proposals are cruel and unconstitutional attacks on the rights of transgender youth and their families,” Chase Strangio, co-director of the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Rights Project, said in a statement. Kennedy said Thursday that the administration is confident it’s approach will pass court challenges. “If people sue us, they’re welcome to,” he said. The HHS announcement came just after the House passed a bill that could imprison health care providers for providing trans care for minors. The bill, sponsored by Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, could imprison doctors who provide care such as surgeries or puberty blockers for up to 10 years. It’s unclear whether the GOP-led Senate will take up the measure, though it is unlikely it would get enough Democratic support to pass out of that chamber."

"How are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker rooms? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year."

"I'll tell you my priority. Protect religious liberty. Protect people of faith. And protect Americans who believe in the true meaning of marriage. I hope and pray that my colleagues will find the courage to join me in opposing this misguided and this dangerous bill."

"Some Democratic lawmakers have spoken out against retiring 988’s specialized services for LGBTQ+ youth, including Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin. She said in a statement Wednesday that the Trump administration’s plan to cut the specialized services comes at a time when it is estimated that nearly 40% of LGBTQ+ young people have reported seriously considering attempting suicide in the past year. In 2019, Baldwin, along with Senators Cory Gardner (R-CO), Jerry Moran (R-KS) and Jack Reed (D-RI), introduced the legislation to designate a three-digit phone number for a national suicide prevention and mental health crisis hotline. “I worked hard to stand up a special line for LGBTQ+ youth because we are losing too many of our kids to suicide, and it’s well past time we did something about it. Children facing dark times and even contemplating taking their life often have nowhere else to turn besides this 988 Lifeline, and the Trump Administration is cruelly and needlessly taking that away,” Baldwin said in the statement. “During Pride Month, a time to celebrate the progress we’ve made, the Trump Administration is taking us a step back and telling LGBTQ+ kids that they don’t matter and don’t deserve help when they are in crisis,” Baldwin said. “This is not the final chapter of this story, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to protect these children.”"

"“On July 17, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline will no longer silo LGB+ youth services, also known as the ‘Press 3 option,’ to focus on serving all help seekers, including those previously served through the Press 3 option,” SAMHSA’s statement said Tuesday. “The Press 3 option was established as a pilot program in Fiscal Year 2022 under a government agreement with a third party. The Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus included a Congressional directive for $29.7 million to fund the specialized services. Federal funding in FY24 for the Press 3 services increased to $33 million,” the statement said. “As of June 2025, more than $33 million in funds have been spent to support the subnetworks, fully expending the monies allocated for 988 Lifeline LGB+ subnetwork services.” In October 2020, President Donald Trump signed a bipartisan bill making 988 the universal telephone number to reach the national suicide prevention hotline."

"This month, the Trump administration officially proposed to eliminate the 988 Lifeline’s LGBTQ+ youth services in budget plans for fiscal year 2026. While some supporters of the move may view it as an efficient way to save spending, critics have called it “deeply upsetting.” “It is deeply upsetting to see the administration reverse course on an evidence-backed, bipartisan program that has successfully provided life-saving crisis care to 1.3 million LGBTQ+ young people, and counting,” Jaymes Black, CEO of the nonprofit The Trevor Project, said in a news release last week when the proposed budget was posted. The Trevor Project, a suicide prevention organization for LGBTQ+ youth, has been a subcontractor to the specialized service since 2022, serving as one of seven call centers. “We are grateful to the many people who continue to urge this administration and Congress to protect access to these life-saving services alongside us. In a nation where our children’s tears fall without distinction of how they identify, we must rise with one voice – across every faith, every belief, and every political line – now is the time for the full volume of our conviction,” Black said in part. “Now is the time to act.”"

"We have officially declared a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States for the first time following an unprecedented and dangerous spike in anti-LGBTQ+ legislative assaults sweeping state houses this year. More than 75 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been signed into law this year alone, more than doubling last year’s number, which was previously the worst year on record. Our community is in danger, but we won't stop fighting back — not now, not ever."

"I want to tell your audience there is no transgender. There is male and there is female. And transgender would be a mental health issue. So those people that say I'm bigoted, I will say you're insane and you're doing the people wrong by doing that."

"I'm with the President on this! If passed, this bill will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy."

"Knowing that your governor and the top officials in your state literally don't want you to exist – That's a different kind of stress. It felt very genocidal [in Texas]."

"Let's not forget what we're seeing across the country from statehouses: more than 600 pieces of legislation, anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. A few hundred of those are against transgender youth. And so we have not seen that type of 'anti' sentiment, anti — against this community in decades. We also need to make sure that we let the community know that the President has their back and we're going to continue to fight for them."

"The results of this study indicate that individuals who score in the homophobic range and admit negative affect toward homosexuality demonstrate significant sexual arousal to male homosexual erotic stimuli. These individuals were selected on the basis of their report of having only heterosexual arousal and experiences. Furthermore, their ratings of erection and arousal to homosexual stimuli were low and not significantly different from nonhomophobic men who demonstrated no significant in- crease in penile response to homosexual stimuli. These data are consistent with response discordance where verbal judgments are not consistent with physiological reactivity, as in the case of homophobic individuals viewing homosexual stimuli. Lang (1994) has noted that the most dramatic response discordance occurs with reports of feeling and physiologic responses. An- other possible explanation is found in various psychoanalytic theories, which have generally explained homophobia as a threat to an individual's own homosexual impulses causing repression, denial, or reaction formation (or all three; West, 1977). Generally, these varied explanations conceive of homo- phobia as one type of latent homosexuality where persons either are unaware of or deny their homosexual urges. These data are consistent with these notions. Another explanation of these data is found in Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck's (1983) theory of the role of anxiety and attention in sexual responding. It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homo- phobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se. Whereas difficulties of objectively evaluating psychoanalytic hypotheses are well-documented, these approaches would predict that sexual arousal is an intrinsic response to homosexual stimuli, whereas Barlow's (1986) theory would predict that sexual arousal to homosexual stimuli by homophobic individuals is a function of anxiety. These competing notions can and should be evaluated by future research."

"So if a man and a woman do the same thing, the man is much more likely to be labeled a homosexual. The double standard was especially pronounced among the male students, and everyone knows how freaky guys get about male homosexuality. But you could find it in the thinking of both sexes. Why does the double standard exist? I suspect it's because people consider male homosexuality so much worse than female-female love making. The greater social taboo implies that if a guy does something seriously "homo," it says more about what he must be, about impulses he can't control, than it would say about a woman doing the same thing, because it's not condemned for women. It's a pernicious attribution, to be sure, but double standards are not known for their fairness. Neither, for that matter, is homophobia."

"Between June 2022 and April 2023, ADL and GLAAD documented at least 356 anti-LGBTQ+ extremist and non-extremist incidents motivated by hate across the United States. From demonstrations aiming to intimidate organizers and attendees at drag shows, to bomb threats against hospitals that offer health care for LGBTQ+ people to a mass shooting that took the lives of five people in Colorado, incidents of anti-LGBTQ+ hate and extremism are an important part of a larger story about the heightened threats facing the LGBTQ+ community in the United States today."

"Homophobia is gay."

"ON THE FRONT PAGE OF THE MARCH 31, 2005 edition of the New York Times, the editors ran an extraordinary photograph well above the fold and directly below the masthead. It showed a group of religious leaders meeting in Jerusalem the previous day: three Islamic muftis, a Sufi shiek, a Roman Catholic prelate, a Greek Orthodox and an Armenian patriarch, the Ashenazi chief rabbi, and the Sephardic chief rabbi. The purpose of their meeting? A long-overdue interfaith condemnation of religious violence in the Mideast? A call for the Israeli government to forswear the destruction of Palestinian homes in exchange for a pledge to discourage suicide bombers? A resolution against religious bigotry or an entreaty to end the maddening cycle of violence? Perhaps a summit to discuss the war in Iraq? Or the racially, religiously, and politically divisive effects of a huge wall that the Israeli government had been constructing to separate Jews from Palestinians? No. The religious leaders had gathered in Jerusalem to issue a joint statement of condemnation for a planned gay-pride festival in Jerusalem."

"Although it still exerts its ugly power, homophobia is old. All over the world, people are beginning to see that hatred and fear of people who are different from themselves are destructive to us all and instead are learning to welcome and celebrate our rich diversity. If this news has not yet reached your school, church, or town, it will. There's a whole new mentality being born. Society has controlled us by teaching us to hate ourselves. The voices of homophobia can demoralize us so effectively that we don't need anything beyond their constant judgement to make us feel ashamed. But you don't have to buy it. Through heroic acts of defiance, both in the delicate interior of the private mind and in the public world, gay and lesbian youth are casting off shame and the acceptance of second-class status and proclaiming their worth, their power, and their rightful place in the world."

"This is about a lot more than abortion. What happens if you have states change the law saying that children who are LGBTQ can’t be in classrooms with other children? Is that legit, under the way the decision is written? What are the next things that are going to be attacked?"