Study Linking Homophobia to Mental Disease Angers Career Homophobe

A tenured conservative Christian associate professor in California, who was raised by lesbian mothers but has a long history of anti-gay behavior, is taking umbrage with a recent study that links homophobia with psychosis.

In an opinion piece published to anti-gay hate group American Family Association's news outlet One News Now, Dr. Robert Oscar Lopez takes aim at a recent study out of Italy that concluded that people with homophobic behavior have a high rate of mental disorder.

The paper "Psychoticism, Immature Defense Mechanisms and a Fearful Attachment Style are Associated with a Higher Homophobic," which was published in September 2015, involved 551 university students aged 18-30. It concluded:
"After discussing for centuries if homosexuality is to be considered a disease, for the first time we demonstrated that the real disease to be cured is homophobia, associated with potentially severe psychopathologies."

Lopez, whose academic field of expertise is in English, contends a dissenting voice must be heard on this psychological study.

"And I think the field of social psychology, but more broadly, almost all of the academic disciplines have so thoroughly excluded anybody who is conservative or religious - and particularly religious conservatives - that they can't really see their own flaws," Lopez writes.

Lopez, who contends the connection between homophobia and psychosis, has a history of making outrageous anti-gay statements including the assertion that the LGBT rights movement is "an engine of world-historical evil" and the claim that the "gay movement is an international war on black people." He has also called same-sex parenting "creepy gay child abuse masquerading as gay rights," compared gay parents to slaveowners and accused a lesbian couple fighting in court for marriage of "using their special needs children as propaganda to force gay marriage on a state."

But he's not psychotic.