Exposure Therapy

We’re disgusted by them, these divisive and destructive forces called homophobia and transphobia. We don’t want them to exist any more than we want war to exist. We hope our politicians and courts and schools work assiduously to eliminate both. But what's the real silver bullet that will guarantee eradication?

I believe it's what mental health professionals call exposure therapy. Granted, that's a frustratingly slow bullet, but it's an effective one. Enough of these bullets will eventually whittle homophobia and transphobia down to a religious anachronism, a prejudice to which only the most fervent fundamentalists will cling.

So how do we allies implement this strategy? By integrating the GLBTQ people we know into our everyday activities and conversations, thus exposing our relatives, friends, neighbors, and coworkers to the nonthreatening nature of a group they might be wary of. We do it by demonstrating, without either apology or fanfare, how our lives have been enriched by these associations.

Consider the powerful movie American History X. In it, Edward Norton's character, a vicious white supremacist, is shorn of his hatred by the simple act of working with a black man in a prison laundry. Sure, the film is fiction . . . yet it isn't.  

Exposure therapy works. In terms of reorienting attitudes, it works better than classroom instruction and Constitutional amendments. How has any minority ultimately achieved genuine acceptance and respect? Primarily through this, the quiet and relentless stripping away of misconceptions born of ignorance; through believers in equality leading by example rather than strident exhortation.

So maybe, just maybe, if we think of the homophobic people in our lives the same way we think of other phobics -- those with irrational fears of airplanes or insects, water or heights -- and we try to “cure” them through exposure to what they fear, we can make significant inroads.

Even if it’s one person at a time.

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If you feel like commenting on or tweeting this post (and I get ten or more responses), I'll gladly enter you into a drawing for a download of one of my m/m romance titles -- your choice. You can find them all HERE. The deadline is May 27.

Be sure to check out at least some of the other participants in the Hop Against Homophobia. Man, it's a big one!

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International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia