Ten years ago, the Daily Beast published an article headlined Are Homophobes Mentally Ill? Science Says ‘Maybe’:
According to findings recently published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, if you harbor homophobic views it’s likely you may also endorse some of the following dysfunctions: misogynism, psychoticism, uber-religiosity, immature coping mechanisms, [discomfort] with close relationships, and above-average levels of anger, aggression, hostility, and hyper-masculinity.
Of the nine claimed associations, seven are false. In fact, five of the listed variables do not exist in the study. Here are the study results:
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Look at the significance column on the right. Psychoticism and immature coping style were the only true effects. At least in the desired direction – as you can see, neurotic coping style and depression were negatively correlated with “homophobia”, meaning that the higher people were in “homophobia” the less depressed and neurotic they were. Daily Beast withheld these two findings.
Discomfort with close relationships (see RQ – Relationship Quality) and hostility exist in the study, but they were not associated with “homophobia”. The author fabricated these effects.
Misogynism, “uber-religiosity”, anger, aggression, and “hyper-masculinity” do not exist in this study. The author fabricated these variables outright, and their association with “homophobia”.
I emailed the Daily Beast twice shortly after this article was published and explained the false claims, that most of the variables didn’t exist in the study, etc. They never responded or corrected. I contacted author Zachary Siegel on Twitter – he didn’t respond.
Ten years later, the article is still up, uncorrected. Not only that, they slapped “Diseased” in the title bar, explicitly trying to evoke a disgust and dehumanization response toward these purported “homophobes”.
The study is also false
The study didn’t find any “homophobia”. It’s not just that “homophobia” doesn’t exist — it’s an Orwellian leftist smear word that implies an irrational or clinical fear of homosexuals that is not evident in the population.
No, I’m saying even if we take the researchers’ measure seriously, they didn’t find any homophobia.
This was a 2015 Italian study of a few hundred Italian college students. They used the Homophobia Scale published by Wright, Adams, and Bernat in 1999. It has 25 items using a 1-5 scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.
The researchers said they summed the scores on the 25 items. Higher scores mean more “homophobia”. Here’s their table of basic stats:
See the problem? The mean score for women is impossible, because the minimum possible score is 25 — that’s if you answered 1 to every item. This is an error of some kind, which potentially invalidates the study.
And the men are still near the floor. The possible score range is 25 - 125, so a 35 means answering 1 to most items.
Let’s pause and clarify what the responses mean. The options are:
1. Strongly agree
2. Agree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Disagree
5. Strongly disagree
An example item is “Homosexuality is immoral.” (This would be reverse-scored when computing the total score — a 1 becomes a 5 and so on so that higher scores denote more “homophobia”.)
That’s a philosophical, moral, possibly religious position. It does not describe any sort of fear of homosexuals.
But note also that you could answer Disagree (which would be converted from a 4 to a 2) and this would count as an increment of “homophobia” — simply because you didn’t choose Strongly disagree.
And if you answered “Neither agree nor disagree”, you’d be hit even harder.
Consider another item: “I enjoy the company of gay people.”
If you don’t answer Strongly agree, you’ll jack up your “homophobia” score. I’d probably answer “Neither agree nor disagree”, netting me two “homophobia” points.
Now reconsider the men’s mean score of 35.39. Can you see how easy it would be to score 35 even while never endorsing a single “homophobic” belief? Just being someone who tends to avoid the extremes, who chooses normal agreement/disagreement instead of the poles of “strongly” will get you at least a 50.
A tendency to endorse “homophobic” views would get you up around 100 out of the 125 max. The men averaged 35 — there was no “homophobia” here.
I emailed the lead author and asked for the data.
He replied with one word: “Why?”
I replied “So I can analyze it.”
No response. He never sent the data.
That’s common in academic “science”. Social psychology in particular is full of fraud, false claims, and secret data.
The trick
The researchers used a trick — arguably a form of fraud — common in academic psychology research.
They used linear correlation to link X and Y even though there was no X (“homophobia”) and there might not have been any Y (all the variables in the table, for which they didn’t provide the means).
They were able to do this, to link “homophobia” with these other things, because correlation only requires variance, not substantive standing. So you can have scores clustered at the bottom, as in this study, but the variance from 25 to 45 on a 25 - 125 scale is enough to get you some significant correlations if you try lots of variables, as they did.
Just create a response scale with “strongly agree” and “agree” and voila!, you now have variance, even though it’s the same substantive position. Same with “strongly disagree” and “disagree”.
And a midpoint like “neither agree nor disagree” allows you to treat confusion or no opinion as a chunky increment of whatever you’re claiming this is — in this case “homophobia”.
Academic social psychologists love to defame and harm conservatives and non-leftists. This is a key trick they use to that end. For example, they often falsely link bizarre caricature scales like Social Dominance Orientation and Right-Wing Authoritarianism to conservatives.
Critically, conservatives don’t tend to endorse those items. Imagine the same spread of agreement options that we saw here, maybe seven points instead of five. Conservatives cluster at or just below the midpoint on those items — that’s not endorsement. But since leftists cluster at the floor, there’s enough variance to drive correlations.
Biased social psychologists can call these scales and constructs whatever they want, so they choose names like Social Dominance Orientation to defame and pathologize conservatives and associate them with views that are alien to them.
The upside down
It’s disturbing that Daily Beast slapped “Diseased” in the title bar, and it highlights the malevolence of so much of leftist media culture. These are extraordinarily bad people, and remember, the effects were not only false, but Daily Beast fabricated most of them!
Something very dark has been happening specifically in efforts to make normal people feel like something is wrong with them. A key element of “woke” is to invert the normal and abnormal, beauty and ugliness, health and disease. This subversion is what it means to “queer” something in leftist parlance.
I’m particularly worried about boys and young men who are inundated with psychologically invasive propaganda about homosexuality.
They’re told there’s something wrong with being disgusted by homosexuality. There’s nothing wrong with it — the large majority of men are repulsed by the idea of being with a man, and humans are naturally disgusted by feces and therefore anal sex.
They’re told that natural feelings of disgust or expressing “homophobic” views are signs of suppressed homosexuality. False.
In the ten years since the Daily Beast article, gender ideology has swept our institutions, and we’ve seen efforts to gaslight straight men into thinking they should be willing to have sex with other men if those men “identify as” women (and to pressure lesbians into performing oral sex on men who “identify as” lesbians, as The Australian reports). For example, see the ABC drama Big Sky, the most Orwellian thing I’ve seen on TV. A straight US Marshal in Montana faces a romantic dilemma — should he be with this beautiful woman or… a man.
The hitch is that the Marshal perceives this trans-asserting man to be a woman. Everyone on the show does. Note that the Marshal wants a serious relationship, potentially marriage, and he’s acting like he doesn’t know the man is a man, like he’s got a nail stuck in his head. It’s a complete mind wipe, like an episode of The Twilight Zone. He’s looking at this man and seeing a woman. What would happen in the bedroom? Would he see the other man’s penis, or just redefine “woman” to include the penised? Who knows?
To really rub it in, the writers made the man a truck stop prostitute… The Marshal met him in the course of an investigation. It’s a perfect “queering” of the norms of civilization, Christians, baseline humans, and of straight US Marshals in Montana. The frauds at Daily Beast want you to think you’re mentally ill if you see that man as a man and if you’re aghast at the idea of the Marshal settling down with this man and former prostitute who he’s made himself think is both a woman and marriage material.
I’m concerned about boys and young men being brainwashed and tormented by this sort of propaganda. Parents — this is another reason to keep your kids away from screens, social media, and public schools (and some private schools). Let your boys grow up healthy and in peace.
It’s disturbing that Daily Beast slapped “Diseased” in the title bar, and it highlights the malevolence of so much of leftist media culture. These are extraordinarily bad people, and remember, the effects were not only false, but Daily Beast fabricated most of them!
Something very dark has been happening specifically in efforts to make normal people feel like something is wrong with them. A key element of “woke” is to invert the normal and abnormal, beauty and ugliness, health and disease. This subversion is what it means to “queer” something in leftist parlance.
I’m particularly worried about boys and young men who are inundated with psychologically invasive propaganda about homosexuality.
They’re told there’s something wrong with being disgusted by homosexuality. There’s nothing wrong with it — the large majority of men are repulsed by the idea of being with a man, and humans are naturally disgusted by feces and therefore anal sex.
They’re told that natural feelings of disgust or expressing “homophobic” views are signs of suppressed homosexuality. False.
In the ten years since the Daily Beast article, gender ideology has swept our institutions, and we’ve seen efforts to gaslight straight men into thinking they should be willing to have sex with other men if those men “identify as” women (and to pressure lesbians into performing oral sex on men who “identify as” lesbians, as The Australian reports). For example, see the ABC drama Big Sky, the most Orwellian thing I’ve seen on TV. A straight US Marshal in Montana faces a romantic dilemma — should he be with this beautiful woman or… a man.
The hitch is that the Marshal perceives this trans-asserting man to be a woman. Everyone on the show does. Note that the Marshal wants a serious relationship, potentially marriage, and he’s acting like he doesn’t know the man is a man, like he’s got a nail stuck in his head. It’s a complete mind wipe, like an episode of The Twilight Zone. He’s looking at this man and seeing a woman. What would happen in the bedroom? Would he see the other man’s penis, or just redefine “woman” to include the penised? Who knows?
To really rub it in, the writers made the man a truck stop prostitute… The Marshal met him in the course of an investigation. It’s a perfect “queering” of the norms of civilization, Christians, baseline humans, and of straight US Marshals in Montana. The frauds at Daily Beast want you to think you’re mentally ill if you see that man as a man and if you’re aghast at the idea of the Marshal settling down with this man and former prostitute who he’s made himself think is both a woman and marriage material.
I’m concerned about boys and young men being brainwashed and tormented by this sort of propaganda. Parents — this is another reason to keep your kids away from screens, social media, and public schools (and some private schools). Let your boys grow up healthy and in peace.
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