Just the other day, Brent Bozell of the far-right Media Research Center was very, very angry about Dan Savage’s new MTV show, Savage U. If that column had to be shortened, it would be something like this:

  • YOU COLLEGE KIDS, GET OFF MY LAWN, DON’T EVER ENJOY SEX, AND IF YOU DO, YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG.

Well, he’s back today with another column, and guess what? He is very, very angry about something different now, namely the study that came out recently which suggests a strong correlation between extremely homophobic beliefs and latent homosexuality. This reinforces other studies done on the subject, and it elicits sort of a “duh” from the gay community, but nonetheless, Brent Bozell is very, very angry, so let’s taunt him.

The news is stuffed with “studies” in which “experts”

Haha, “Brent” feels intimidated by “science.”

tell us how we should behave. One recently found that conservatives have lost their trust in science over the last 40 years.

Yes, did. They’ve been trained to hate it, because it conflicts with their deeply held, incorrect beliefs about everything.

That’s probably because the very political academics of science are routinely summoned to prove the right-wingers are not only wrong but dangerously wrong and not just dangerously wrong but evil, too.

That, or conservatives just tend to be misinformed about lots of things, like the age of the earth, global warming and evolution, without which we would not have modern medical science.

These studies are laughable.

“Ha ha ha,” laughed Brent, very, very angrily, at the studies.

First, there was the study purporting to prove that conservatism appeals to low-intelligence racists “who have trouble grasping the complexity of the world.”

Yeah, I’m sure that one upset Brent a bit.

Then there was the scientific study that parents should be allowed to kill their newborn babies because they were “morally irrelevant.”

Yeah, that one was a bit strange, but wasn’t really a mainstream study in the sense of what we’re talking about. It was published in a journal of ethics and it was making an academic argument, and the editor freely offered that he would publish a piece rebutting it from the other side. Citing that is convenient for Brent’s argument, because the average Reader of Brent doesn’t Google things. Refer to the study mentioned just above…

The latest doozy tries to spread science on the notion that “homophobia” is just the conservative’s resistance to his own repressed latent homosexuality. The gay site Lez Get Real announced, “Sometimes it takes a study to prove exactly what everyone already knows.” This came under the headline “Self-Loathing Closet Cases Often Virulent Homophobes.”

[…]

USA Today reported with delight that, “Acceptance of gays and lesbians has never been higher, but anti-gay bias still exists. A new study suggests intense hostility toward homosexuals may be linked to a repressed same-sex attraction, combined with an authoritarian upbringing.”

Yep. This is why no one is surprised, every couple months or so, when some virulently homophobic public figure is caught with his pants down surrounded by guys. But it makes Brent very, very angry.

This isn’t science. It’s psychobabble mumbo-jumbo, where somehow our potty training or our breast-feeding or our spankings have shaped our most deeply held adult beliefs.

Haha, so Brent doesn’t believe in psychology either. I guess we just emerge into adulthood and become whoever we are and it has absolutely no ties to our childhoods!

The same liberals who complained it was utterly unscientific for Sen. Bill Frist to diagnose Terri Schiavo’s medical condition from the Senate floor think it’s scientific to guess about the “unconscious” things that conservatives have hidden from themselves inside their own brains.

A. Bill Frist diagnosing Terri Schiavo [incorrectly] via satellite was one of social conservatism’s most embarrassing moments in the last decade. That a wingnut would bring it up at all is sad.

B. They’re not exactly “guessing” about anything “unconscious” in conservative’s brains. They are using the scientific method and doing studies to find out if there’s a link between all-out, no-holds-barred homophobia and repressed homosexuality. Apparently, there is. Duh. It’s a manifestation of shame and guilt, our responses to which tend to go back to things that happened during childhood. Dude, Brent, read a book sometime. It might help.

In a video issued by his college, Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester explained that “authoritarian” parents are creating hatred of the “other” and destroying the natural harmony of the world. “If you’re a parent who really strongly believes your child should be a heterosexual, and then you use whatever means you can to convince them that they’re only good and worthy if they are, this would be very controlling. This creates a lot of conflict in the child, and what we see in this study is one way that gets resolved is by them being discriminating or hateful towards gay and lesbian others.”

Let me tell you a story, Brent. My parents weren’t really virulently homophobic, but as a young, closeted teen, I attended a church where certain members who unfortunately had influence over the youth of the church were extremely, unreasonably homophobic. When that church hired a gay music minister, all hell broke loose and the bigots caused the church to split in half. Because I hadn’t handled the truth of my sexuality and was indeed, afraid of it, I grabbed a pitchfork. Why? Because of the reasons reported in that study. Now, I was lucky, in that once I got free of all of that, my real self pulled the car over and said, “what the hell are you doing?” I came out. But many, many people with things like that in their pasts don’t come out. They let it fester, outwardly inflicting gangrenous hatred toward gay people, as a manifestation of their true hatred, which is for themselves.

Glad we’ve had this chat, Brent. I know, you’re still very, very angry.

What if you’re a religious parent who feels that the homosexual lifestyle is sinful, at odds with what God intended for humanity? These academics don’t like to discuss religion, except by implying that religious parents are “controlling” and “authoritarian” and prompt “hateful” attitudes.

Sometimes they do! Some of those parents have simply drunk the Kool-Aid, but the most virulently hateful among them? Just might be  in the closet. This study is not entirely new information!

Secular leftists hate it when conservatives bring religion into politics, arguing it’s unfair to say God favors the Republican agenda. But then they turn around and bring science into politics, insisting that science favors the liberal agenda, that “reality has a liberal bias.”

What kind of god would favor the Republican agenda? Not a benevolent one. That said, science does tend to reflect reality, and reality has a well-documented liberal bias. Sorry, Brent.

Those who actually think this study is science should really check out some of the methods these scientists applied to uncover the unconscious homosexuality of conservatives. Science Daily explained some tactics:

Yeah, check this out, you guys! Brent’s about to show the scientific method who’s boss.

1. In one experiment, college students were shown words and pictures on a computer screen and asked to put these in “gay” or “straight” categories. Before each of the 50 trials, participants were subliminally primed with either the word “me” or “others” flashed on the screen for 35 milliseconds. They were then shown the words “gay,” “straight,” “homosexual,” and “heterosexual,” as well as pictures of straight and gay couples, and the computer tracked precisely their response times. “A faster association of ‘me’ with ‘gay’ and a slower association of ‘me’ with ‘straight’ indicated an implicit gay orientation.” What?

Brent is very confused and angry about this particular scientific thing! Instead of researching it or like, reading a book or something, Brent will lead the wingnuts in a resounding chorus of “OH I’M SOOOOOOOO SURE.”

2. “A second experiment, in which subjects were free to browse same-sex or opposite-sex photos, provided an additional measure of implicit sexual attraction.” Uh-huh.

Uh-huh. Second movement of the chorus.

3. Through a series of questionnaires, participants also reported on the type of parenting they experienced growing up, “democratic” or “authoritarian.” For gauging the level of homophobia in a household, subjects responded to sentences like: “It would be upsetting for my mom to find out she was alone with a lesbian,” or “My dad avoids gay men whenever possible.”

What a wheelbarrow full of nonsense this is!

I mean, why would they ask them questions like that?! It’s almost like they’re doing a “study!”

What’s dressed up here as science is really just intellectual intimidation and political bullying. Tell the homophobe he’s secretly gay. That will drive ’em crazy. This study proves nothing except the agenda of the alleged scientists and the journalists pushing it.

Oh, boo hoo. The people who participated in the study did so freely, and the study confirmed earlier studies correlating extremely weird, festering homophobia with being in the closet. For Brent, it might “prove an agenda,” but for reality, it’s just adding to the mountains of data that already exist.

Meanwhile, we’ll just kick back and wait for the next Religious Right bigot to get caught with a rentboy, and that will make Brent very, very angry.