Talk politics.

Until quite recently, the word "homophobia" seemed like an oxymoron to me. I had no sense of how deep the fear actually runs. In fact, I considered it to be a self-referential fear such as the fear of being discovered. People who attack homosexuals are themselves latent homosexuals who fear that others will find them out. Although there may be some truth in this interpretation of the term, it misses a whole body of fear that I knew nothing about until recently.

The Icarus phenomenon of Jason Russell's meltdown prompted me to look more deeply into the involvement of Christian bigots in Uganda. The campaign of Invisible Children to pressure the Obama administration into retaining military advisers in that country reminded me of recent news of American fundamentalist ties to attempts to legitimatize de facto violence against homosexuals in that beleaguered land. I was reminded of how homosexuals in Africa fear being subjected to the vicious treatment of "necklacing" with a burning tire.

My quest for information took me to the work of Jeff Sharlet who became famous for his work exposing the fundamentalist mafia in Washington. Sharlet interviewed Ugandan homophobes to determine the depth of their ties to the Washington mob and to get a handle on the nature of their bigotry. What he found in the former case is that the Washington group has very strong ties to Ugandan homophobes. In the latter case, he found an intellectual basis for bigotry in a thin tome entitled The Pink Swastika by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. It is an eye-opening view into the minds of people who fear homosexuality more than homosexuals fear fundamentalism. Until I read the book, I did not think that was possible.

The authors use evidence of sadistic homosexuals at the highest levels of the German national socialist movement to imply that national socialism is a product of homosexuality. They go so far as to imply that the liberal attitude toward homosexuality within the Weimar Republic gave rise to national socialism. They add two and two together to come up with the number three: freedom for homosexuals leads to death camps for Jews.

The most remarkable aspect of their work is that they provide sufficient evidence for a counter argument, but fail to pay any attention to that evidence. They show that the sadists who perpetrated atrocities were merely a fraction of the homosexual population and what these sadists shared with the authors: a contempt for other homosexuals. They also showed that some homosexuals react violently when they are abused, yet they would have their audience abuse homosexuals. Lively and Abrams make Jonah Goldberg appear downright liberal.

Do you fear homosexuals or homosexuality itself? Why or why not?

( Video under the cut. )