The American Heritage Dictionary defines homophobia as the "fear of or contempt for lesbians and gay men" and "[b]ehavior based on such feelings." The dictionary also defines bigotry as an "obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them." Homophobia, therefore, is a form of bigotry because a homophobe is fearful and contemptuous of homosexuals based on an attachment to intolerant beliefs about them. This paper argues that the current push for bans on gay marriage is based on a form of bigotry known as homophobia, which will be defined as an intolerant and unreasoned view of homosexuals as persons with a contagious disease that will infect "normal" heterosexual society.
There has been much news coverage lately of the issues of gay marriage in the United States. This coverage began first with reports about the United States Supreme Court's decision in the case of Lawrence v. Texas, where the Court held that Texas' law making sodomy illegal was unconstitutional ("Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law," CNN). Constitutional scholars hailed the Court's decision as a strengthening of the right to privacy in the U.S. Gay rights activists agreed with those constitutional scholars, claiming that the opinion affirmed their right to their private sexual conduct. However, not everyone was happy with the law, including Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
In a dissent to the decision, Scalia wrote that, with its majority decision, the Court had "taken sides in the culture war" ("Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law," CNN). Beyond that, however, Scalia û joined by Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas û also wrote that the Court had "largely signed on to the so-called homosexual agenda" ("Supreme Court Strikes Down Texas Sodomy Law," CNN). For Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas, therefore, the issue of private sexual co...