What sparks the hate behind homophobia?

People attend a memorial service on June 19, 2016 in Orlando, Fla. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Just when the hatred behind the recent mass shootings in Orlando seemed hard enough to grasp, even more of it appeared when anti-gay protesters showed up a funeral for one of the victims. (They were quietly blocked by attendees in angel costumes.)

As horrifying details have emerged from the worst mass shooting in American history, it has been established that the gunman himself frequented gay nightclubs, while his ex-wife has said she believed he was gay.

Fear or denial of one’s own homosexuality may well be one trigger of the hate behind homophobia.

“If a person grows up in a highly controlling atmosphere, especially one where parents are themselves prejudice against LGBT people, he or she may experience same-sex attraction as unacceptable and as a part of him or herself that cannot be allowed expression,” explains Richard M. Ryan, professor at the Institute for Positive Psychology and Education in New South Wales and research professor in psychology at New York’s University of Rochester. “If the person then has same-sex attractions, he or she must defend against those feelings or risk feeling unlovable or shamed. He or she may experience self-loathing when feeling same-sex attractions and thus find LGBT people, who express or stimulate these forbidden impulses, very threatening.

“The person then feels toward them how they would feel toward their own impulses—hostile,” Ryan says. “So one route to homophobia appears to stem from this kind of internal conflict—a person at war with part of themselves. It is not the only route, but it is one dynamic behind some LGBT hate crimes.”

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Ryan was a co-author of a ground-breaking study into the nuances of prejudices like homophobia. Published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2012, it looked at the discrepancies between what participants—college students from the U.S. and Germany—said about their sexual orientation and their implicit sexual orientation based on a reaction-time test.

Those who reported being heterosexual despite having hidden same-sex desires were the most likely to show hostility toward gay individuals, including self-reported anti-gay attitudes, endorsement of anti-gay policies, and discrimination such as supporting harsher punishments for homosexuals.

Participants who said they had supportive and accepting parents were more in touch with their implicit sexual orientation, while those who indicated they came from authoritarian homes showed the biggest discrepancy between the two measures of sexual orientation.

“A person can be anti-gay by internalizing prejudices and negative beliefs or anti-gay ideologies directly,” Ryan says. “There is evidence that parents’ prejudices, especially those of fathers, do influence their children’s likelihood of stigmatizing LGBT people.

“In some cultures being gay is even dangerous, so expressing anti-gay attitudes may be a defence,” he says. “The [Omar] Mateen case may well fit the pattern of reaction formation we researched, but that will only be known as the as more facts unfold.”

While the research may help people understand the underpinnings of hate crimes, hidden homosexuality isn’t the only potential contributing factor to anti-gay sentiments.

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“Toxic masculinity” may be another driver. The term is making headlines now with two characters on “The Bachelorette” being described as textbook examples of it.

“Toxic masculinity promotes and perpetuates stereotypical, harmful beliefs about how men should act,” Liam Mathews notes in TV Guide. “It writes a script for what a ‘real man’ is, and a ‘real man’ is unemotional, insensitive, hypersexual and violent….Toxic masculinity is misogynistic and homophobic. It’s also physically dangerous, because it compels men to solve problems through violence.”

Salon writer Amanda Marcotte describes toxic masculinity as a specific model of manhood, geared towards dominance and control, “that views women and LGBT people as inferior, sees sex as an act not of affection but domination, and which valorizes violence as the way to prove one’s self to the world.”

Gay victims of violence typically describe attackers as young men in groups who possess tremendous rage and hatred, according to forensic psychologist Karen Franklin. She says that other motives for anti-gay violence include a combination of social factors such as male bonding, proving heterosexuality, economic and social disempowerment, and even thrill-seeking.

To get to the roots of anti-gay hate crimes, Franklin interviewed three perpetrators of anti-gay violence in the United States.

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“In a nation that glorifies violence and abhors sexual diversity, a minority perceived to violate gender norms functions as an ideal dramatic prop for young men to use in demonstrating their masculinity, garnering social approval, and alleviating boredom,” Franklin writes in the book Stigma and Sexual Orientation: Understanding Prejudice Against Lesbians, Gay Men, and Bisexuals.

Franklin says that the three cases she looked at illustrate how anti-gay violence can be seen as an “extreme manifestation of pervasive cultural norms” rather than a manifestation of individual hatred.

“This distinction explains why assailants typically express little remorse despite the fact that their expressions of cultural hostility are experienced by gay men and lesbians as vicious terrorism,” Franklin writes. “This distinction is also critical if we hope to reach assailants and potential assailants at the clinical and educational levels, because people who have assaulted homosexuals typically do not recognize themselves in the stereotyped image of the hate-filled extremist.”