Equal Right to Kiss? Why You May Be Disgusted by Gay Behavior without Knowing It

"Gay-friendly" people unconsciously feel that two men kissing in public is morally wrong.

With the exception perhaps of just a handful of places in the world gay couples are not free to participate in this most basic, mindless and normal exhibition of romantic behavior.

Compared to the issue of gay marriage, gaining equality in the “right” to display such innocent feelings of affection for one’s same-sex partner is an even greater hurdle for gay rights advocates—and, in many ways, it’s an even more important one. This is because recent findings indicate that changing negative attitudes toward gays begins not with education, per se, but instead with exposing people more regularly to same-sex romantic behavior.

More simply, what makes the situation complicated is the fact that, although many people hold the explicit belief that it’s okay for gay people to be affectionate with one another in public (that is to say, if you were to ask them whether it’s okay for gay people to kiss in public, they’d say of course it is), the same people nevertheless hold implicit negative attitudes on the subject. That’s what Harvard University psychologist Yoel Inbar and his colleagues reported in a recent study in the journal Emotion.

Jesse Bering

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=unconscious-disgust-gay-behavior