When Plagues End  Published: November 10, 1996 (Page 6 of 16)
The hostility to homosexuals, after all, has far more in common
with anti-Semitism than it does with racism. Homosexuals, like
Jews, are not, in the psychology of group hatred, despised
because they are deemed to be weak or inferior, but precisely
because they are neither. Jews and homosexuals appear in the
hater's mind as small, cliquish and very powerful groups,
antipathetic to majority values, harboring secret contempt for
the rest of society and sustaining a ghetto code of furtiveness
and disguise. Even the details resonate. The old libel against
Jews -- that they would drink the blood of Christian children --
has an echo today in the bigot's insistence that he has nothing
against homosexuals per se, but doesn't want them allowed near
his kids. The loathing for each group is closely linked to fear
-- and the fear is fanned, in many ways, by the distortion of a
particular strain in Christian theology.  But that fear was
abated, in both cases, b