Hate is a powerful thing. It molds minds and defines actions, giving people causes and excuses. Is there a source to it all, some type of ground zero origin to generations of hatred and prejudice that beat into the very fabric of society? Or is it multiple trickle-down ideologies, cross multiplied together to create the next generation? The cold, hard fact is that it exists, no matter what the cause, and it continually redefines itself into new mediums as society changes.

In many communities, people that are racist have become social pariahs, in a new politically correct millennium, their thoughts and actions give disgust to the remainder of the citizens in their global village. That doesn’t mean that racists don’t exist any more, but rather they aren’t as blatant as they once were or as socially acceptable to more mainstream society. Of course there are those communities still where it is perfectly acceptable, but as a whole the racism that once existed has been moved from plain sight to closed rooms and quieted tongues.

With this silence of the blatant racist, a new form of prejudice rose out of its dominance, homophobia. Unlike racism, homophobia is perfectly acceptable in many communities and societies. It’s fine to hate gays and lesbians, because gays and lesbians are not a race. Many believe that it’s their choice to pursue a way of life that differs from their own, or they find it icky or gross and therefore not acceptable for decent folk. One of the roots to this is the mindset some people have that whenever they hear the term gay or homosexual, they can not help but briefly imagine themselves in a relationship with another man and that do to their own disgust, their hatred of gays endears.

This is how it differs from racists, because racists don’t imagine themselves as a member of another race, but just purely hate based off of what is different. There are all kinds of reasons that people are homophobic, relying on the same old arguments and excuses on why they think it is wrong and not moral. Their reasons get ingrained into their ideology, and it gets spread to others who just need a reason and a group to hate, to transpose all their problems on and to blame for all of society’s ills.

The results of homophobia are very real, and can bee seen all the time in the world around us. Outside of violence and physical abuse, there are terms and phrases used by everyone to give their displeasure to something. Calling something “gay” is the most blatant, using the term to show how wrong or stupid something is. The saying has become so ingrained into people’s vocabularies that it can be overheard, every day in every single place imaginable, and for many it is perfectly acceptable to let it be said, or to say it themselves.

Now it would be easy to too just lay blame at the homophobes, saying they are the only source of prejudice in the gay community, but they would just be another scapegoat. It is another cold, hard truth that the gay community itself has its own prejudices, and that they are no less to blame for the problems that we face as a society. Some of it is retaliation towards homophobes and heterosexuals alike, calling them breeders in an attempt to have something to scream back at them when they are verbally insulted. However the word doesn’t have the same connotation or hateful malice behind it as we would like to think and has been embraced by many as a badge of honor showing pride in the fact that they do indeed breed.

This however is not greatest form of prejudice within the gay community, although it is the most obvious. The gay community is continually and constant prejudice among itself, creating countless cliques and subgroups that laugh, make fun of and mock others on the sole basis of appearance and preconceived notions of certain groups within. It’s sad that entire ideologies of members of the gay community exist, helped along by actions that have never detracted from the consensus’ views. We give way too many reasons to hate, both to our own members and then through our actions to the world at large, and never trying to dissuade or change those beliefs and continually allowing them to perpetuate and exist.

We are judgmental of others, giving glances over and then making assumptions on others based off of that first appearance. We put them into categories; have our own class, genus, species subset rules for gay subgroups. We can not get past this sort of labeling, something that was so ingrained into our psyche since high school that we need to function in that clique mentality, if not for the soul reason of giving our own lives definition.

That’s what it’s all about, justification for who we are as a person and as a community. It is our identity that we question after a lifetime of being told or taught that gays are wrong, or immoral we need to feel secure in a group and at the same time channel our frustration and fears onto something else. We turn on our own. We break ourselves apart, dividing and self segregating until all we are is splintered factions who fight and bicker with each other, and only find unification when some sort of tragedy befalls our community. It’s sad to think that we are only united in that instance, that small time and place and then we go back to our separate lives, groups and communities and go back to the same old routine.

This is why nothing ever comes of a movement, or a cause. We are so divided with so much infighting, so much distrust and so much separation that we can not overcome. We ostracize those who are different and don’t fit in to our cultural norms. Those we can’t classify become shunned and live on the outskirts of our community finding no peace in gay or straight society. Alienation of our own, it’s a form of prejudice that runs deep within our core and will continue to exist until we ourselves put a stop to it. It’s not a call to be kind and nice and to love all you meet, to think and believe that every gay person is wonderful and fabulous. Rather it’s for us to find a central unification, to not be so judgmental at appearance and to find the common threads that we all experience. Through this commonality, this formation of a true community of support and a shared voice, that progress can and will occur.