"Yewwww WITCH!"

During the summer and early fall of 1692 in Salem, Massachusetts, in a hysteria that came to be known as "the Salem Witch Trials," 20 people were accused of and executed for being "witches." Accusations were based on no solid evidence, science or black letter legal tests. Instead, what started out a child's fairy tale fed on irrational fears, hatred, political infighting and eventually became a rabid, phobic hysteria. All it took to have someone tossed in jail and the key tossed away or even killed during that terrifying time was to be accused of being a "witch" - whatever that was. The hysteria was so out of control that the legal test for establishing witchery was - for some - to be tossed in a pond of water and, if you saved yourself you were, indeed, a witch. To drown, however, would "conclusively" prove your mortalness and your innocence. What a wonderful system of justice. (Said, mind you, with all the intended dripping sarcasm possible.) An accusation from someone based on no credible fact or weighing of rational evidence was enough to convict and even execute. Oh, those silly, ridiculous, stupid ignorant pagans of Puritan America, you say?. Why, such idiocy would never happen today. Not with our oh-so-educated, intellectual and let's not forget tolerant - society with all its wonderful science, justice,enlightenment and arrogance, right? Wrong! Recently, I heard someone just absolutely chastised for being - allegedly - a "homophobe." All it took to get labeled such by their self-righteous (and grammatically ignorant) accuser was to say in passing they believed homosexuality to be wrong. Wrong as in immoral. Wrong as in contradiction with their Judeo-Christian belief system. You know the one, the one that says in numerous places in its holy book that "Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable."** It’s important to note that the accused did not say that they feared homosexuals would harm them. Or that they would somehow "catch it" from them. Nor did that person advocate that said morally-offensive individuals should be drug behind a car until dead or anything of the sort. They merely said they found homosexual behavior morally offensive and they believed it to be wrong. No more was their position calmly stated and out it came from the accuser. You could almost feel the Salemese hysteria as they leveled the politically-correct, viciously intolerant near-screeching, finger-pointing 21st-century equivalent accusation of "YEWWWW WITCH!" heaped upon them in the hatefully hissed out accusation of "homophobe." For God’s sake. If people going to go around leveling such vicious accusatory responses, at least get the vocabulary right! Dictionary.com defines a "-phobe" to be "comb. form meaning 'fearing,' from Fr. -phobe, from L. -phobus, from Gk. -phobos 'fearing,' from phobos 'fear, panic, flight,' phobein 'put to flight, frighten' (see phobia)."* So, apparently, according to the dictionary, a 'homophobe' is one who has an irrational fear, a panic, a phobia of homosexuals. That's odd. I know plenty of people who disagree with the lifestyle of homosexuality for moral reasons, but I would in no way say they have an irrational fear, a panic, about the existence or presence of homosexuals. Rather, they find it morally-offensive and do not want it rubbed in their face or forced to say or otherwise act as if they agree with it. But, to apply the same misguided but politically-correct logic of the accuser, is one a 'burglarphobe' because one thinks it is wrong to break, enter and steal? Are they burlarphobic because they choose not to associate with known or suspected burglars? I suppose one would fit that label if they had an irrational fear of burglars. Nobody likes burglars, but only the mentally ill worry themselves sick over them. Is one an 'incestophobe'because one thinks it wrong to have sex with one's mother or sister? Or what about someone who thinks it immoral to have sex with animals? Should they be screechingly labeled a "zoophiliaphobe?" (see the previous handful of verses in Leviticus for prohibitions of those behaviors.)? See how stupid the misuse of the suffix is and what is misuse says? Again, if one is going to level such accusations one should at least use the correct terminology. More importantly, do you see where this illogic is going? But if one chooses – on moral grounds - not to associate with known burglars or people who have sex with their siblings or animals, that’s still considered socially-acceptable and prudent. But if one chooses not to agree with or associate with known homosexuals who find such conduct morally repugnant, then all of a sudden such choice is evil, mean-spirited and unacceptable? But, even more concerning, is where exactly does this slippery slope of hysteria stop? I don't know. But the name-calling and attitude that comes from those wielding the term "homophobe" starts as soon as one objects to the (im)morality of homosexuality, And also very intriguing - nay, it's frightening. The foaming at the mouth intensity of this outcry is almost reminiscent of the irrational accusations shouted during the Salem Witch Trials. *Dictionary.com, Definition of -phobe. Taken from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/phobe, June 14, 2011 **Leviticus 18:22, taken from biblegateway New International Version (NIV), taken from http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2018&version=NIV, June 14, 2011.