Thank you.
Wouldn't you say that these terms fall under one basic part of natural human psychology, fear?
Now, I'm not trying to let people off for being sexist, racist, or homophobic, but it seems to me that all of these attributes stem from fear. It makes a lot more sense to me to generalize it that way because I really don't believe people consider sexism or racism on an individual basis.
This would actually explain why people who are racist, are usually also sexist and homophobic. It simply means that these people are more fearful to change than the rest of us. They don't really think homosexualism is wrong, they are merely scared because it's different. Anyway, that's how I like to think of it.
Absolutely, it's my conviction that fear plays a huge part in our day to day mental life. For some reason there is this stigma about fear that drives people to make ludicrous denials of their fears, but it's the most common thing in the world. And most of the time fear is good for you. When I'm crossing the street and I pay attention to traffic, it's not because I'm trying to be a good person. It's because I'm scared that I might get hit by car. Everyone is afraid all the time, and this fear is what keeps us alive.
But there is also the other kind of fear: irrational fear. Fear which is not grounded in a reasonable assessment of reality. And everyone has this kind of fear too. Some people fear being in closed spaces. Some people fear people from foreign countries. This is the bad kind of fear, fear that hurts us because we can't do what we otherwise would do with no harm to ourselves. (Or worse yet when it drives us to intrude into other people's lives needlessly.)
And when people say things like "we can't allow gay marriage, that's inevitably going to increase pedophilia and sex with animals and other sexual perversions", this is completely ludicrous. There is no logic to that at all. And yet I have heard statements like this from many different people. So why does it catch on? Well, to be the amateur psychiatrist again, I think it's because people are scared of homosexuality (I don't know what their fears comprise in). And when you're afraid, the first thing you do is try to find an excuse you can use so that you don't have to face your fear. Because that's terrifying.
So they're grabbing onto these excuses as a cover. So that they can appear (to themselves above all) to be just and fair towards the gays. "Hey, I have gay friends, I would never do anything against gay people. It's just that there is this unstoppable 'chain of events' that I have grasped onto that I cannot expel from my mind."
So where does that leave us? Should we castigate people for being afraid? No. However, we
should demand that when it's a matter between one person's fear and another person's well being, the latter is more important. In other words, you cannot use your irrational fear as an excuse to put people down. It's the "if we allow gay marriage, how am I going to explain it to my kids" argument.
It would also advance civilization *a lot* if we weren't so scared of fear and didn't stigmatize people for being afraid. We live in this culture where the first thing that pops into some person's ahead is "why don't you come here and say that to my face". How sad that is. The person is so afraid of being afraid that the most important thing he can do for the sake of his own sanity is to deny being afraid.