How Does A Republican Know If He's Gay Or Not?

Let's take the best known Republican closet cases in Congress-- your Lindsey Grahams and Aaron Schocks-- out of the equation for a moment and look at the Ryan and Ryan Op-Ed in Last Sunday's NY Times, Homophobic? Maybe You're Gay without that crutch. Ryan and Ryan start with a simple question millions of Americans have asked themselves for years: "Why are political and religious figures who campaign against gay rights so often implicated in sexual encounters with same-sex partners?" This is something that haunts the hate-filled far right of American politics for decades. The louder and more strident an anti-gay politician or activist, the more likely that they're obsession is a sign of an internal struggle with homosexuality. Literally hundreds of anti-gay right-wing fanatics have been caught with, as the Dead Boys used to sing, with the meat in their mouth. Homosexuality doesn't ruin anyone's life; closets and bigotry do though.

One theory is that homosexual urges, when repressed out of shame or fear, can be expressed as homophobia. Freud famously called this process a “reaction formation”-- the angry battle against the outward symbol of feelings that are inwardly being stifled. Even Mr. Haggard seemed to endorse this idea when, apologizing after his scandal for his anti-gay rhetoric, he said, “I think I was partially so vehement because of my own war.”

It’s a compelling theory-- and now there is scientific reason to believe it. In this month’s issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, we and our fellow researchers provide empirical evidence that homophobia can result, at least in part, from the suppression of same-sex desire.

Our paper describes six studies conducted in the United States and Germany involving 784 university students. Participants rated their sexual orientation on a 10-point scale, ranging from gay to straight. Then they took a computer-administered test designed to measure their implicit sexual orientation. In the test, the participants were shown images and words indicative of hetero- and homosexuality (pictures of same-sex and straight couples, words like “homosexual” and “gay”) and were asked to sort them into the appropriate category, gay or straight, as quickly as possible. The computer measured their reaction times.

The twist was that before each word and image appeared, the word “me” or “other” was flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds-- long enough for participants to subliminally process the word but short enough that they could not consciously see it. The theory here, known as semantic association, is that when “me” precedes words or images that reflect your sexual orientation (for example, heterosexual images for a straight person), you will sort these images into the correct category faster than when “me” precedes words or images that are incongruent with your sexual orientation (for example, homosexual images for a straight person). This technique, adapted from similar tests used to assess attitudes like subconscious racial bias, reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.

Using this methodology we identified a subgroup of participants who, despite self-identifying as highly straight, indicated some level of same-sex attraction (that is, they associated “me” with gay-related words and pictures faster than they associated “me” with straight-related words and pictures). Over 20 percent of self-described highly straight individuals showed this discrepancy.

Notably, these “discrepant” individuals were also significantly more likely than other participants to favor anti-gay policies; to be willing to assign significantly harsher punishments to perpetrators of petty crimes if they were presumed to be homosexual; and to express greater implicit hostility toward gay subjects (also measured with the help of subliminal priming). Thus our research suggests that some who oppose homosexuality do tacitly harbor same-sex attraction.

What leads to this repression? We found that participants who reported having supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation and less susceptible to homophobia. Individuals whose sexual identity was at odds with their implicit sexual attraction were much more frequently raised by parents perceived to be controlling, less accepting and more prejudiced against homosexuals.

It’s important to stress the obvious: Not all those who campaign against gay men and lesbians secretly feel same-sex attractions. But at least some who oppose homosexuality are likely to be individuals struggling against parts of themselves, having themselves been victims of oppression and lack of acceptance. The costs are great, not only for the targets of anti-gay efforts but also often for the perpetrators. We would do well to remember that all involved deserve our compassion.

It's just over 3 years now that California's leading anti-gay conservative politician, state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield), was arrested, drunk, with a young male prostitute in his car. Thinking back as to why Ashburn chose the hell-on-earth so many gay conservatives do-- a sick life in a dark, morbid closet-- he points to a childhood experience. "When I was in sixth grade, the police had a raid in the sand dunes [near San Luis Obispo] and a bunch of gay men were arrested, probably charged with indecent activity. That sticks in my mind-- the publicity and the shame around it. One of my teachers was one of the people. The talk among the kids, the talk among the adults, the talk in the community, the press-- at that time the choice was pretty clear: If you were gay and open, it was a life of shame, ridicule, innuendo about molesting and perversion. It was a dark life. Given that choice of whether you come out or whether you're in secret, I mean, there really wasn't a choice."

So Ashburn got married, had children... and lived a double life, filled with fear and (self) loathing. How did this impact his career, a career marked with any-gay hysteria? And here he sounds exactly like any closeted GOP anti-gay bigot in Congress, like Patrick McHenry (R-NC), like Miss McConnell (R-KY), like Trent Franks (R-AZ), like Dave Camp (R-MI), all of whom live double lives with poor deceived women they've married for the sake of political careers. Ashburn:

The best I can do is to say that I was hiding. I was so in terror I could not allow any attention to come my way. So any measure that had to do with the subject of sexual orientation was an automatic "no" vote. I was paralyzed by this fear, and so I voted without even looking at the content. The purpose of government is to protect the rights of people under the law, regardless of our skin color, national origin, our height, our weight, our sexual orientation. This is a nation predicated on the belief that there is no discrimination on those characteristics, and so my vote denied people equal treatment, and I'm truly sorry for that.

"It is unfortunate he helped spread the bigotry that forced him to stay in the closet," said Geoff Kors, executive director of Equality California, a group supporting gay marriage. "We hope he now takes this opportunity to educate people in his district and throughout the state that his sexual orientation is irrelevant."