Gay men's strategies for dealing with homophobia range from passive denial to extreme confrontation, according to research just completed at the University of Queensland.
However, Dr Stephen Cox found the overall preference was for education as the most effective way of countering negative attitudes towards the gay community.
For his PhD in the School of Psychology, Dr Cox spent five years looking at the reasons for homophobia, how gay men respond and how in turn heterosexuals view the effectiveness of those responses.
At one end of the spectrum were the strongest, most positive gays who advocated confrontation through such actions as public displays of affection, kiss-ins and street demonstrations.
Slightly less direct action, for example political lobbying for law changes, was favoured by others while for many just "coming out" (openly acknowledging their homosexuality) was regarded as an extremely positive response.
Similarly, being prepared to speak out in support of gays and to correct bigoted comments or opinions was seen as a sound middle-of-the-road response.
At the more passive end of the spectrum Dr Cox found gay men trying to avoid or mitigate homophobia by denying their homosexuality, pretending they were "straight" and perhaps even marrying to disguise their true sexuality.
But the prevailing belief was that homophobia was caused by ignorance and so the solution lay in education and attempts to de-stigmatise being gay through such proven means as media advertising campaigns.
Dr Cox said he personally did not agree. "While education might be the answer for some people, its success depends on the basis for the homophobia: if it's deep-seated in some values system then no amount of education is going to help," he said.
However, his research showed that most heterosexuals agreed with gays that the key to better understanding and acceptance lay through education.
They rejected the extreme approach of confrontation but were also uneasy about television and other media being used for education, preferring the information to be made available to those who sought it.
Predictably, said Dr Cox, the more homophobic a person was, the more they supported gays whose coping strategy was to deny their sexuality and pretend to be "straight".
"These findings suggest that if gays want to change attitudes their best tactic may be to adopt a softly-softly approach," Dr Cox said.
"However, my own belief would be that sometimes, to create social change, things may need a bit more of a shake-up."
Looking at why people are homophobic and become upset with gays, Dr Cox found that beliefs, tradition, gender roles, religion and heterosexual identification all played a part, with men being much more negative than women.
He also found that homophobia was very much a group-based phenomenon and that group norms and strength of identification with them played a pivotal role.
"Homophobia is learned from groups and one of the key groups is heterosexuality. The research showed that the stronger the group norms for heterosexuality and gender roles, the more negative members would be towards gays," Dr Cox said.
He said throughout history, prejudice had been endemic. But whether based on race, sex, religion or other grounds, it was seldom just an individual attitude: intolerance and bigotry tended to be learned responses and strongly group-based.
Dr Cox said attitudes towards gays were similar in Australia to those in Britain and the United States whereas some European countries were much more accepting. However, the signs were that people here were becoming more tolerant.
For further information, contact Dr Stephen Cox (telephone 3875 7356).
