Homophobia is the new racism

Homophobes get offended when I compare their anti-LGBTQ bigotry to racism.

Good.

The analogy holds: both homophobia and racism are basically taking one harmless quality of a person (be it skin colour or sexual orientation) and using it to divide the population into the privileged and the discriminated group.

There’s only two differences:

One: people can hide their sexual orientation and gender identity in order to partially avoid the discrimination – people of colour generally don’t have such option.

And second: while racism is almost universally considered evil and shameful, homophobia is sometimes regarded just an “opinion”.

So, when you call out their anti-LGBTQ bigotry as being not that different from racism, they understand how insulting a racist label is, yet they cannot find any explanation to why they are any different from one.

They aren’t. And maybe this comparison will make them understand.

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About the author

Hi! I'm Andrea (they/them). I tell computers what to do, both for a living and for fun, I'm also into blogging, writing and photography. I'm trying to make the world just a little bit better: more inclusive, more rational and more just.