To the editor:

I’m a bigot, according to Mr. Moore, because I don’t accept homosexual marriage, (Public Forum, March 3). A bigot is someone “intolerant of those who differ.” It’s ironic that this man, who is intolerant of my difference from him, calls me a bigot. Welcome to the same boat I’m in, Mr. Moore — it’s nice to have another bigot aboard. Together we can deflect those cannonballs they keep shooting at us intolerant folk! But first, please turn your cannon away from me.

More on the language of intolerance: I count among my friends practicing and former homosexuals. But because I believe homosexuality is wrong, others identify me as “homophobic” — a pseudoclinical term now frayed by rhetorical exhaustion. I doubt that I have a phobia, “an irrational fear” toward homosexuals, since I don’t break out in a cold sweat, scream or run away in panic when I’m near gays or lesbians.

But some people in Lawrence seem to like labeling others as having a phobia — in this case, “homophobia.” They do it with such gusto that a blue-ribbon panel of experts who specialize in the manufacture of pseudoclinical terms (in fact, they’re the same ones who invented “homophobic”) and have identified these people as “phobophiliacs.”

So, fellow bigots, the next time someone calls you “homophobic'” just shoot back: “Yeah, maybe, but at least I’m no phobophiliac!” If he denies his phobophilia (a denial obviously borne of irrational fear) then he’s really phobophiliaphobic! Poor fellow! And he says we’re the ones with a problem.

Robert Babcock,

Lawrence