within our Church and society. With the increase of education about homosexuals and the rise of support groups for them, there was evidence of an attitudinal shift in the Catholic Church by the 1970’s (Blumenfeld 187-189).Despite the advance of information available about homosexuals, there will, unfortunately, always be controversy and discrimination. The general prejudice against homosexual people has come to be called homophobia. Homophobia literally translated means “fear of the same.” Studies have revealed that individuals who manifest homosexual prejudice also exhibit other attributes. Generally such people tend to be “more authoritarian, intolerant of ambiguity, status conscious, and cognitively rigid; more dogmatic; more sexually rigid and more guilty about their own sexual impulses” (Kirk 120-129).It seems that individuals who are afraid or intolerant of homosexuals seem to react the same way to other social situations as well. The personality characteristics of homophobic people can easily be identified in others that belong to another group of prejudiced people. From the personal perspective, homosexual prejudice can be a form of anxiety regarding one’s own sexual feelings. Ignorance often spurs such feelings as fear and anxiety, and this also can be attributed to these prejudices.There seem to be points in history where, because of discrimination going too far one, a new social movement was started bringing about new social changes. The incident credited with igniting the recent struggle for gay and lesbian liberation occurred at a small gay bar, the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street, in New York’s Greenwich Village, on June 27, 1969. On that Friday evening, Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine along with seven other officials from the Public Morals Section of the First Division of the New York City Police Department attempted to shut down a local bar frequented by gay street ...
