Homophobia Never Left, It Just Took a Back Seat

Reactionary politics’ affair with homophobia

4 min read

Just now

There can be no doubt that in the last several decades, we have made considerable ground in combating homophobia. Homosexuality is no longer classified as a mental illness by mainstream psychiatry and hasn’t been for decades. Not only this, but homosexuality itself is no longer criminally punished in Western countries, with gay marriage also being legalised in many countries across the West in the last decade or more.

You might be forgiven then in thinking that homophobia has somehow been eradicated or at least that it has suffered some major setbacks. This may be true in the sense that there are no longer the same anti-gay laws in place; however, in countries such as the US, there is still an undeniable homophobic factor among Republicans and others on the right. Furthermore, this homophobia hasn’t changed a bit from the homophobia we saw in the past.

Joel Webbon is a prime example of this. Joel, for those who don’t know, is a Christian nationalist pastor who runs Right Response Ministries. On various podcasts, including his own, he has made a number of inflammatory and frankly bigoted remarks towards non-white people, trans people, and gay people. In a recent episode of his podcast, he made a number of very telling remarks about gay…