Homophobia

Homophobia is a contemporary social scientific term coined in the field of psychology to describe negative attitudes toward nonheterosexuals and nonheterosexuality. It has been characterized in a multitude of ways including aversion, disgust, fear, or hatred of homosexuals (gay men and lesbians) and homosexuality, which may be accompanied by anti-homosexual hostility. The term homophobia provided language for a phenomenon that reversed the dominant approach to homosexuality as psychopathological. Research turned from treating homosexual people in therapy to interrogating homophobia as a construct. Homophobia is understood to operate at multiple levels in society, from individuals to institutions. Although the social and cultural significance of the construct of homophobia is important, recent scholarship has called for a reexamination of the term and construct.