by Simon Richelieu

Created on: May 30, 2010   Last Updated: May 31, 2010

Amanda Fox has wandered into a blind alley or cul de sac in her discussion of homophobia and has argued her case on a linguistic and etymological inaccuracy. She is right in saying that “homo” as in homosexual and homophobia is derived from the Greek word for “the same”.

Trust me: I failed my Greek “O level” more than fifty years ago. Where Amanda strays into a one-way street with no return is by saying that “homophobia” can be described as a fear of being the same.

Homosexuality is a sexual love of someone who is the same sex as yourself, and please don't get me wrong, some of my dearest friends are and have been homosexuals even though I personally “dance at the other end of the ballroom”.

Interestingly Nuttall's Standard English Dictionary defines homosexual as “attracted sexually to one of one's own sex” whilst Henry Cecil Wyld gives an almost identical definition with the additional adverb that gives a clue to the origins of homophobia: “morbidly”.

Neither of these great dictionary authors defines homophobia, however from Henry Cecil Wyld's implied condemnation of the trait we can deduce that homophobia is a distaste for, rather than a fear of, homosexuality.

Amanda is more than welcome to her own sexual leanings, and I would not for a moment make any comment - still less judgement, however from her appearance she is young enough not to have lived at the time less than seventy years ago when homosexuality was illegal in Britain, and there was a general climate, even amongst educated people, of dislike and even fear.

Fortunately all that has changed, and people of a gay disposition are treated in the United Kingdom in much the same way as people who are “straight”.

I do however consider that both adjectives have been misleadingly hi-jacked: many homosexuals are almost terminally miserable, and I could point to countless heterosexuals whom I wouldn't trust with my granddaughter's pocket money.

Ambivalence regarding homosexuality unfortunately endures, and in English political life at this very moment we are witnessing the fall of a very senior Treasury official and politician who is gay and has resigned, not because he is gay, but because he made dubious expense claims. It is interesting that here we can see both sides of the coin: David Lord is suggesting that his “private life” has been invaded, and is implying that his sexuality has somehow entered into the equation.

I have to admit, as a heterosexual, that I do wonder whether he would have been “outed” and pilloried in quite the same way if the partner he had been providing for out of expenses had been a woman. However you define it, homophobia is sadly still with us.

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