We hear the accusations all the time. This one is Homophobic, that one is Islamophobic, etcetera etcetera. The latest headlines was about the forced resignation of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich because of his insensitivity towards homosexuals as donating to the efforts to pass California Proposition 8 referendum which, according to the dating website OkCupid which initiated and led the witch hunt against, as they accused, the unacceptable presence of this Homophobic CEO. Then there was the cancelled honoring by Brandeis University of Ayaan Hirsi Ali with an honorary degree and her giving the commencement speech after CAIR accused Ayaan Hirsi Ali of being an Islamophobic. She is a leading advocate for the human rights for women and girls within Islamic society who suffer many of the same horrors such as female genital mutilation, arranged marriage and other horrific incidents which she had experienced before escaping to the Netherlands while supposedly traveling to Canada to be married to an older man whom her family had sold her into marriage. These events have become sufficiently common that perhaps a little look into the aspersions cast and the actual ones who suffer from some phobia.
For the sake of convenience, we will use the Eich resignation as the example which will likely serve to make me also a victim and sufferer of Homophobia, but what is life without taking small risks. The accusation against Mr. Eich was that he was obviously Homophobic due to the evidence that he had contributed to the efforts to pass Proposition 8 in California which would have made the legal definition of marriage to be between one man and one woman. This automatically made Mr. Eich guilty of hating same sex relations and the people who were in same sex relationships. It could not have been about retaining a traditional definition of the institution of marriage which has been one of the underpinning definitions of Judeo-Christian society. But according to website OkCupid and others this meant that obviously Mr. Eich hated all homosexuals and was an evil and terrible person who obviously was incapable of being a CEO and running a software company. Never mind that the homosexuals employed by Mozilla who were interviewed had never had any problem and there existed no examples of Mr. Eich mistreating anyone over their sexual orientations. Actually, Mr. Eich was generally lauded as being fair and without any noticeable preferential treatment or any disparaging treatment when it came to his interactions in all his years working in various positions, including supervisory positions, from the very founding of Mozilla. Still, he crossed the line of actually performing a political act expressing his First Amendment rights and he was made to pay by those who simply disagreed with his opinion. This, according to every article I have read, made Mr. Eich guilty of being a Homophobe. Somehow I do not think so.
The definition of a phobia, according to Dictionary.com, is: “a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.” Had Mr. Eich actually suffered a phobia towards homosexuals he would probably have had great difficulty functioning in any large size company or even being in any unscripted area as such a fear would likely have paralyzed him over the worry that someone near him might be a homosexual. Obviously Mr. Eich had no such problems operating in a normal situation where he probably was fully aware that there were people who were homosexuals present and according to some of those very homosexuals, he was fair and treated them with no malice or preference giving them exact and identical treatment as he did heterosexuals. If any group suffered from Homophobia, it was the board of Mozilla and OkCupid, both of which reacted in a panic when they were informed of Mr. Eich’s political contribution to California Proposition 8. It was initially OkCupid that went apoplectic over Mr. Eich’s contribution and subsequently the Board at Mozilla which by pressuring Mr. Eich to step down also displayed Homophobia. Both of these groups acted in a seemingly uncontrollable panic going to the extreme of destroying a well-qualified individual’s career and placed his future into the ash heap of history ending any possibility of Mr. Eich ever again holding a senior position in any other corporation.
This is because so many in society today suffer from numerous phobias. The fear of having some special interest group accuse you or your corporation or officer of your corporation of some form of phobia, be it Homophobia, Islamophobia, Ecophobia (also called anthropomorphic global warming denial) or fill in your own subject-phobia, then the panic sets in followed by contortions to supplicate the accusers on exactly what and who needs to be sacrificed in order to satisfy and serve as ample penitence for the great offense that had obviously been unfeelingly committed. This reaction is the real and actual phobic response and not the presumed sinner who was pointed out and became the subject of societal scorn. Those who agree with the removal by Mozilla of Mr. Eich or the retracting of the honorary degree by Brandeis University for Ayaan Hirsi Ali are the true people suffering from an acute case of Politicaphobia, defined as any politically correct reaction demanding the humiliation or shaming of any person in order to satisfy some special interest group which expresses usually imagined and manufactured indignance to some event or person because they crossed their accepted definition of what is necessary for society to be properly sensitive and advocating the politically correct attitudes demanded in our societies. We could even exchange the term Politicaphobia for all the multitude of the current phobias that exist today as having one term would make it that much easier for the excommunication of every insensitive person who transgressed thus causing the calls for some form of Politicaphobia to be satisfied and the offender properly chastised.
Beyond the Cusp 