A pair in an English class have a research paper that has the same thing as my partner's and I--homosexuality--but in a different point of view--a view to which I do not comprehend. In their paper, they have stated that homosexuality is a psychological disorder: "a cause of obsessive-compulsiveness, neurosis and a phenomenon of heterophobia."

    First off, let us all define these three terms. Obsessive compulsiveness is a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an unreasonable idea or feeling. Neurosis is a disorder that is characterized by symptoms like anxiety, insecurity, depression and unreasonable fears with the person's life and relations with others. Heterophobia, on the other hand, is the fear of heterosexuals (straight men and/or women).

    Homosexuality is still not wholly accepted by the society, even if it seems that the secular kind of life is already dominant in families around the world nowadays. One reason for this is still the misleading conceptions regarding homosexuality and its definition.

    Homosexuality as some could put it, could be the unnatural sexual preference of a person with the same gender. Or some could put it as a tendency of a person to act oppositely as expected in nature, and tend to act like the opposite gender. But still, psychologists still have no established definition for it.

    The paper's generalization of the definition of homosexuality as some sort of disease caused by heterophobia and neurosis shows signs of homophobia for the part of the writers of the paper. Although, after reading the term paper, we could consider that it might be a mere compilation of different sources gathered up and compiled to form a viable thesis statement. Still, these statements on the definition of homosexuality could still be refuted, unless, of course, backed by good scientific evidence. The verifiability of the paper is still dependent on studies that will have to be worked on by established psychologists and psychoanalysts.

    Although, when I think about it--the work is supposed to be a term paper--a research project on a particular topic, and not a thesis which aims to prove something. So, the connections the researchers made on the words 'neurosis', 'obsessive-compulsive disorder' and 'heterophobia' to the word 'homosexuality' still cannot be considered reliable, or even accurate, since perhaps, even the researchers themselves do not truly understand the meanings of these words entirely because they are not of people with specialty in this field of study.

    So the resolution to the dilemma could be this, since this is simply a research paper, I would not generalize that this is a direct attack to homosexuals everywhere--which could prove disastrous and damaging to even the writers themselves. But I could conclude that this might've been an error on their part because they chose to relate very specialized terms in the field of psychology to define a sensitive topic such as homosexuality. Still, it worries me so, that perhaps, the people who wrote this paper, could've done this in purpose--not merely as an accomplishment to a requirement for a research--but are already dropping their clues of their abhorrence and bitterness towards homosexuals, which can't be good.

    Hatred towards homosexuals is obviously not constructive. Hatred of people--for simply being who they are--makes homophobia even worse.

    From ignorance comes fear; and from fear comes discrimination.