Homophobia

Although the term was first published by George Weinberg in an early 1970 article for the U.S. magazine Gay, the term was introduced formally in his 1972 book, Society and the Healthy Homosexual, to describe a fear heterosexual people experienced when in contact with homosexual people; namely, the fear of contagion, of corrupting traditional values, and of being labeled homosexual. The term gained legitimacy around the same time as the American Psychological Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in 1973, declaring that possessing a same-sex sexual orientation was not inherently associated with psychopathology. Although the term is widely used today to reflect the widespread prejudice and discrimination gay, lesbian, and bisexual people experience, scholars have questioned ...