Not too long ago American Senator Larry Craig was caught by police soliciting gay sex in a public toilet. Of course he denied it, but the evidence was pretty cut and dried. It got me thinking – why does Senator Craig allegedly have sex with guys and then campaign against gay rights? This unbelievable display of hypocrisy doesn’t make any logical sense! Here’s a supposedly intelligent individual who goes out of their way to feed the very attitudes and ignorance that is stacked against them.

It’s sad but true – he’s not the first and definitely won’t be the last. So rather than spending heaps of our emotional energy on this tragic figure, it is perhaps better to work out why people do these crazy things happen, so something can be done about it.

One doesn’t have to look too far for some insights – in fact my own struggles with being gay when I was young are pretty telling. When I was 14, I told the hottest guy in the school to fuck off when he said hi to me when in fact I really wanted to have a commitment ceremony with him right there on the spot. Was I stupid? Well, in this instance – absolutely! But on a deeper level, it was the only way I could respond at the time, because I felt such deep shame and fear about knowing I was in fact gay. I was in denial.

Why the hell are people in denial about something as fabulous as being gay? The answer is that there is a complex struggle inside many of us when growing up, between what we’re being taught and what we actually are. Society has developed a belief system about being gay through the craziness of fundamentalist Christianity. As a result, most of us have had deeply anti-homosexual beliefs pushed deeply into our minds while we’re still learning who and what we are all about.

As a child more than my fair share of ridiculous anti-gay crap infiltrated my head and heart. On many Sunday mornings the Pastor at our Church spoke about homosexuality as being perhaps the worst and disgusting sin. In the school yard I heard that being a poof was the most degrading thing to be told in the world. Characters on TV made being gay look pathetic. In those days public gay characters were portrayed as weak, stupid, dependent, vulnerable, and at some level predatory. This deep shame about being gay led to me denying who I really was. I lived this way for so long that it took until my mid twenties to finally see the gay light.

So this is the problem! Combine the homophobic untruths that infiltrate young, impressionable minds with lashings of denial and you have a very confused, fragmented, troubled person – someone who is split between what’s being portrayed to the outside world and what’s actually happening at a deeper level inside the self. Sometimes the denial can be so strong that the real feelings and drivers of a person can be totally blocked, so that a gay person for example doesn’t even realise that they’re even attracted to members of the same sex.

You would be amazed at how many married men and women I have worked with over the years who have been in a very deep state of denial for most of their lives, and it wasn’t until something happened, like falling in love with a person of the same sex, that the denial couldn’t exist any longer.

Homophobia is a deep dark force that most of us will encounter for most of our lives, whether it comes from others or from within. We can’t change these beliefs in others simply through education, although that it is a really important part of the plan. We also need to work on their hearts. We all make decisions based on an emotional impulses and then come up with the logical reasons why afterwards. Unless people are deeply influenced by fundamentalist Christianity, it is almost impossible for a straight person to remain homophobic if they have an emotional attachment to someone who is gay or lesbian. So go forth and connect to our straight brothers and sisters, go demonstrate that through being who we are, we really are fabulous.

Paul Martin is Principal Psychologist for Brisbane’s Centre for Human Potential, which is a gay and lesbian psychological wellbeing centre that helps people achieve their potential through counselling and coaching.

To read more about denial and for advice on how to stop being stressed and feeling down, visit www.overcomestressandfeelingdown.com