internalized homophobia

Internalized homophobia is a syndrome whereby a homosexual, confronted with overwhelming apparent evidence that society is in and of itself inherently homophobic, develops a fear of his or her own homosexuality.

It's also a term that, in my experience has been used to excess within the so-called "gay community" itself, used to disparage someone who doesn't toe the line of what a homosexual is supposed to believe (as if we're all the same person, y'know what I'm sayin'?). I'm gay. I'm a Republican. In many gay social circles, this makes me persona non grata the minute I voice my disagreement with a stated opinion of a political nature. I often feel as if I'm being asked to "pass" as a liberal amongst fellow homosexuals just as homosexuals often feel forced to pass as heterosexuals.

This seemingly illogical treatment at the hands of my fellow homos has often made me question whether or not I am, indeed, an internalized homophobe. I just don't buy it ... not on the sole basis of my political party affiliation. Yet, time and time again, I am called a homosexual homophobe by other homosexuals, and shunned when I tell them I'm a member of the GOP. To me, this behavior makes them homophobic (or, to be more precise, prejudicial). Needless to say, this set of circumstances has made it very difficult to socialize within my own "community". Don't worry, gentle reader, I get by.

In order to create this node, I went out to try to find some information about internalized homophobia to present it here. Good old Google gave me the following proclamation written by a man who proudly states his websites are "zones of internalized homophobia". I found his statements so much to my liking that I have reproduced them here:

You know what they say about homophobes.

When they say it, however, they don't explain something important: where did the internalized homophobia come from in the first place?

What they say (in case you don't know) is this: latent homosexuals have repressed their homosexual urges because of homophobia; they then try to prove their sincerity -- as heterosexuals -- by being homophobic. This in turn causes the next generation of homosexuals to repress their urges, and you stop and you turn and you go for a ride.

Put another way, homophobes are people trying to hide their true feelings because of an environment of homophobia created by people trying to hide their true feelings.

So there must have been someone, at some point, who genuinely didn't like homosexuality. An actual straight person who simply had a dislike, and caused this chain reaction of repression and persecution.

An alternate hypothesis may be that latent homosexuals resent patent homosexualss for tempting them to do this horrible, evil thing. The write-up still holds.

Thank you, dem bones, for your advice.

Since Everything is not a BBS, this is not a response to the previous write-up, much of which I in fact agree with, or at least approve of.