I had trouble watching this movie, finding it shocking, too; so I read the play and viewed clips of the movie. I also struggled with the first page of the readings on homophobia. When reading the article on homophobia and it spoke of an organization associated with the Catholic Church as being homophobic, I had to stop and ponder this word. In the Oxford College Dictionary homophobic is defined as an extreme and irrational aversion to homosexuality and homosexual people. One must be careful in the use of this word and be cognizant of it’s use in text. It could be one of those words used to incite anger and prejudice. Not everyone that disapproves of homosexuality is irrational, there is a rational reason for its disapproval. However, the dignity of the person should remain whether homosexual or not. One can oppose homosexuality and still like homosexual people. The word implies a dislike of both; so one must be sensitive to its use. The class’ text mostly seems to refer to irrational aversion in context to the extreme reactions of the Nazis in the criminalization and killing of homosexuals. My concern is that language can be used to mislead such as when “evacuation” was used to mean “elimination” by the Germans. Homophobia is a word that needs to be used with extreme caution-not just as a mechanism to incite hatred and division.
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