When someone (in this case, a man) is virulently homophobic and then is caught with his pants down (so to speak), with a man in his and his wife's bed, the hypocrisy is enormous, to say the least. What makes this story so important is not merely the hypocrisy that is evidenced, but the source of a great deal of the animus that lies behind homophobia itself.
Alabama's Republican Attorney General, Troy King, has stated, "Homosexuality is the downfall of society." Now, we read:
"King, considered a potential frontrunner for Alabama Governor in 2010, has been vocal in his condemnation of homosexuality and abortion. He has worked to outlaw sex toys and is a staunch supporter of the death penalty. King previously served as Assistant Attorney General and was appointed to Attorney General by Alabama Governor Bob Riley in 2004.
"As a law student at the University of Alabama, King wrote frequent editorials for The Crimson White in condemnation of gays, affirmative action and abortion. In his editorials for the student newspaper, King called homosexuality the ‘downfall of society’ and said AIDS could be cleansed from America if 'this nation’s current purveyors of perversion would refrain from committing sodomy.'”
[See the full article here.]
As I wrote in my April 16, 2008 post entitled, "Stereotyping, Human Diversity and Discrimination":
"'Reaction formation' is evidenced when someone who feels some level of homosexual desire unconsciously represses that desire by turning it into a hatred for all homosexuals; he/she often makes that hatred publicly obvious so as to 'fool' oneself and others into thinking and believing that he/she is not like 'those people,' when, in fact, he/she at some level knows that he/she is like 'those people.'"
"It's no accident that we have seen so many 'moral crusaders' shown up for their hypocrisy, after it is found out that the behavior (and people) they have been so vociferously condemning is manifest in their own lives."
Not all homophobes are Gay! Indeed, Troy King may not be Gay!
Being Gay is a sensibility, an affective (and consequently sexual) response to selected people of the same-sex exactly akin to the intensity and affective response to selected people of the opposite sex for Straight people.
One cannot separate the emotional from the sexual when talking of "sexual orientation," and it is the myth of the homophobes, and even many non-homophobes, that merely who one seeks an orgasm with is necessarily telling anyone what his/her sexual orientation is.
It may well be that Troy King, like so many other seemingly Gay homophobes, may actually believe that he is not really Gay and, in his mind, and even in fact, he might actually not be lying. The point is, however, not whether King is Gay or not, or not whether he is lying or not.
What is germane here is the fact that King shares with all homophobes (and White Supremacists, and all sorts of exclusionary haters) a very confused psyche that needs to exclude a group of "others" from full equality and conferring of dignity that one enjoys him/herself! People who hate or exclude others from full participation in civil and "religious" society show themselves to not be people of good will (which is an essential characteristic of a Christian, and any person who deserves the label of "decent" in civil society), and to have tortured, if not twisted, psyches, as we have all too often seen in the past, and when the hypocrisy of a Troy King comes to light.
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