Thanks to Tedd for providing an abstract.
The study that Tedd cites indicates that when college students in
an undergraduate sex education course were given a unit on
homosexuality that involves role playing and debunking myths,
those students who scored higher than the median on a homophobia
questionnaire scored significantly lower after the course.
But what exactly does such a study mean? Might it not simply
mean that students have the ability to learn to put down what they
are taught as the "right answers" on a test form? Isn't this a rather
crude way of measuring homophobia?
More importantly, however, is that such a study is simply too weak
to support any general claim about education eliminating homophobia.
It was apparently about one class in one school. It can't be said
to be representative of all college students, let alone, all people.
And where are the follow-ups? Do these scores still remain low
after 6 months? 2 years? 10 years? It looks to me like the
peer-review process at the J. Homosexuality is quite relaxed
and uncritical.
But let's get down to something more interesting. The study
mentions only a 'significant' drop in the homophobic scores.
This is not the same as eliminating homophobia. I doubt
that you can put all homophobics in the same category just
as you can't put all homosexuals in the same category.
Among homosexuals, there are those who have a very
strong sexual orientation for the same sex, there are those
who have had children in marriages with women,
and then there are the bisexuals who can go either way.
Thus, the inherent sexual urges differ in intensity such that
homosexuals are a heterogenous group. The same may hold
true for homophobics. At one extreme, we may find people
who so dislike homosexuality that they are motivated towards
physical violence. At the other end of the spectrum are those
who simply dislike homosexuality, but have no problem tolerating
it. Speaking about all homophobics as if they would do
violence against a homosexual is like speaking about all
homosexuals as if they have hundreds of sexual partners.
Now, until we being to explore homophobia without the
filters of preconceived political agendas, we have no way
of knowing if such education would be universally effective.
It may be effective against the least dangerous of homophobics
and have no effect on the hard-core homophobics. My feeling
is that education would be effective only to a certain extent
(as is the case with all education and human behavior).
Let's bring this all back to the topic of this board. You mentioned
I was engaged in parody, and bascically, you are right. But it's not
pure parody. A Darwinian explanation for homophobia makes
about as much sense as any other Darwinian explanation for human
behavior. In fact, homophobia seems to make more sense in light
of natural selection than homosexuality. Now that some darwinists
have broken through to explore the biological basis for rape,
perhaps soon homophobia will be explored. Then, maybe that
education will have to include some science and teach young
boys that many of them were born to be homophobes. But the
notion that education is going to erase millions of years
of programming by natural selection is stretching it. Or, on the
other hand, it assumes there is something quite special about
the human mind.
Mike
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