Homosexuals were once branded as mentally disordered. Now homophobes are treated the same way

In the past, moralists and psychologists conspired to depict homosexuality as a mental disorder. Today, in a flip reversal so profound it could give you a headache, gay rights activists and their cheerleaders depict homophobia as a mental disorder. The sinned against have become the sinners; those who were once outrageously branded as mentally deranged now gleefully accuse their critics of being mad, repressed or disordered.

Consider the discussion about Cardinal Keith O'Brien. It's getting ugly. Not only because it is pretty clear that commentators of an anti-Catholic persuasion are exploiting Cardinal O'Brien's hypocritical misdeeds to have a pop at Catholic theology (hello, Observer), but also because there is an insinuation in the coverage that O'Brien, like all "homophobes", has a kind of brain sickness. His homophobia is driven by self-loathing, we're told, hatred for his inner gay self; it's a kind of"neurosis", commentators claim.

Increasingly these days, homophobia – or what I prefer to call anti-gay prejudice – is depicted as a sickness rather than simply a (wrongheaded) moral stance. Even the word homophobia itself, which I think is as daft and offensive as the word "Islamophobia", speaks to the idea that criticising gays or the their lifestyle or the notion that they should be granted access to the institution of marriage is a sign of mental malaise. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear, defined in psychiatry circles as an "abnormal" terror felt towards pretty mundane situations, objects or organisms.

Read more at Telegraph Blogs.