Do you ever read the comments after a newspaper article? It's a great way to find out what people really think. Because they can post their opinions there anonymously, I think they tend to tell the truth. I don't have any illusions that commenters on blog or article posts represent the mainstream of opinion, but I do think it exposes deeply and commonly held beliefs.
I tend to always look through the comments on mainstream sites (non-gay media sites) where the article has been about a gay-related issue. Recently, I came across this one from a newspaper with an update on the Lawrence King murder (this is the 15 year old student who was murdered by a classmate in a CA high school. King was bullied by McInerney, and his response was to turn it on his bully and so he pretended to flirt with him.). The tone of the comments is pretty civil compared to some I've seen, yet still exposes a bias towards LGBT people that I think the commenters don't even perceive as a bias. For example:
The King child was wrong by sexually harassing McInerney. He did not deserve to be killed, but sometimes people get pushed over the line. This is the schools responsibility to keep bully's from distracting students. The school was extremely lenient on King, allowing him to dress like a drag queen, allowing him to make sexual advances towards other students. I am so tired of Gays getting away with conduct that others would not get away with, because the authority is afraid of discrimination whiplash. The Gay community has used King as there political trophy child, maybe this is why he was guided by his Gay peers to be self expressive, which ultimately lead to his death.
This is one of the more blunt versions of this comment, but it appears throughout the comment section. Even people who seem to have a genuine 'tolerance' for gay people often have that tolerance disappear if gay people make their sexuality known. This is especially true if a gay man exhibits any kind of unwanted attention towards a straight man. Then the gloves are off, often literally. In these cases, most straight people seem to think that abusive retaliation is justified, or at least the situation is a mitigating factor that should be taken into account when determining a punishment. In fact, this line of reasoning has been upheld in many court cases. It's called the 'gay panic defense', and it argues that it's natural for men receiving unwanted gay advances to react violently. In fact, this type of defense has been used in many cases similar to the King case, quite successfully. Read the wikipedia entry for examples.
While I would agree that homophobia is becoming less acceptable in the US, I'm not sure how deeply held those beliefs are. This comes to the surface in a case like the King case. Did he somehow 'ask for it,' or did he 'bring it on himself'? Was McInerney's crime less so because King might have made him uncomfortalbe or through his actions questioned his manhood? Unfortunately, I think a majority of Americans would see credence in thes arguments. For me, it just shows how far we have to go still.
I really encourage you to read through all the comments on teh referenced article. You really start to get a sense of what Americans really think of LGBT people, in a way that (especially if you are gay or very gay supportive) you never hear in some of the gay-supportive envirionments many of us live in.
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