Shades of Homophobia: A Framework for Analyzing Negative Attitudes towards Homosexuality

The term homophobia is widely used to describe negative attitudes towards homosexuality. As with some concepts in the social sciences, different researchers apply the term to widely different forms of discrimination against gay men and lesbians. Existing research provides some general classifications of different spheres in which homophobia operate, but these typologies are too broad to serve as frameworks for in-depth analyses of discourses and manifestations of homophobia. This article reviews different conceptualizations associated with the term homophobia in academic literature, and synthesizes these diverse positions into a comprehensive framework - a taxonomy of homophobia - that can facilitate analysis of homophobia in a given context and enhance comparisons between contexts. The proposed homophobia framework postulates that negative attitudes towards gay men and lesbians can manifest in seven distinct, yet interrelated shades, namely radical, prohibitionist, denialist, avoidance, morbidity, tepid, and veiled.