Here's the deal, folks.
In your day to day life, if you encounter somebody who is black or female or Latino, you have a pretty good chance of recognizing they are black or female or Latino-- at least for those whose sentience level is something above a slime mold, anyway. As such, you have an opportunity to judge behavior across a wide spectrum of those black people, women or Latinos. With gay people,it's different,though, as there is nothing that SAYS they are gay in terms of expressed phenotypes or anything. For many people, it is only those gay people who are at the more extreme end of the spectrum that stand out as being gay -- the queens and the hard core dykes. As such, many people have a very distorted perception since they aren't able to see the entire spectrum. For the homophobes, that is ALL they see, and all they will continue to see until homosexuality becomes normalized enough within society that people are more upfront about their sexuality. Even then, people will not know if a stranger is gay or not, but at least they might know enough coworkers or casual acquaintances to form a picture that isn't so distorted.
