SPEAKER: HOMOPHOBIA HURTS EVERYONE; ACTIVIST SAYS HOMOPHOBIA FORM OF OPPRESSION, NOT SIMPLY FEAR

Between the ages of 5 and 12, Warren Blumenfeld saw a psychiatrist regularly. The problem: His parents had decided he was effeminate.

The shrink told his parents not to let their son wash dishes. "Which was great," says the man who grew up to found the Gay Student Center in Washington, D.C.

About 40 people attended Blumenfeld's lecture, "Homophobia Hurts Everyone," Thursday night in the University Center Ballroom at Southeast Missouri State University.

The lecture was sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Organization as part of the Awareness Week on campus.

Blumenfeld is a gay activist who edited the book "Homophobia: How We All Pay the Price." He defines homophobia as the fear and hatred of those who love and sexually desire those of the same sex.

That's what the recent rancorous national debate over allowing homosexuals in the military has been all about, Blumenfeld said.

"It has nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with homophobia."

He said males in the military who oppose allowing open gays in perceive them as a threat. "They're afraid of having done to them what they do to women."

One woman in the audience offered a solution to one of the concerns about allowing gays in the military: shower curtains.

Blumenfeld said homophobia certainly hurts homosexuals directly, and as an example played some of the messages left on his home answering machine: "AIDS is a great disease" and "I kill fags" were two of the most printable.

One of his assumptions is that homophobia is a form of oppression, not simply a fear. Thus the terms pansy, sissy, tomboy and butch are used to make people conform to their gender roles, he said.

Homophobia's twin is heterosexism, Blumenfeld said, a system which bestows advantages on heterosexuals and deprives homosexuals of images of themselves in the popular culture.

In a 12-point treatise, he also contends that homophobia hurts heterosexuals as well, preventing them from forming close relationships with members of their own sex and compromising their integrity with pressure to treat others badly.

At one point in the program, Blumenfeld invited six volunteers from the audience to play various roles at a family holiday dinner where a daughter, in this case, came out of the closet.

"Some people say homosexuality divides the family," Blumenfeld said. "I don't believe that. I think homophobia divides the family."

He left the audience with a suggested list of "homowork" intended to raise their consciousness about the discrimination homosexuals contend with daily. The work included holding hands with a member of the same sex in public or keeping their heterosexuality in the closet for a week.

Homosexuals often are accused of throwing their sexual orientation in other people's faces, Blumenfeld said. Heterosexuals unconsciously do the same, he contends, by talking about their wife or husband, by placing a picture of a member of the opposite sex on their desk or by wearing a gold band.

Blumenfeld's has another assumption: "Individuals and organizations can and do change."