Confession, I Am A Homo-Phobe

Homo-phones. Homophones.

Can you believe that they exist? I mean, two same-sounding words? That shouldn’t happen. Bare and bear? It’s unnatural. We ought to rid the world of them before any real damage is done, before our children get confused.

“Daddy, why does Mr. and Mr. Stevenson’s DVD player spell it “Pause” instead of “Paws”?”

“Well you see, son, sometimes a word can sound the same as another word, but it can mean something else. Sometimes we might even spell it differently…”

Have fun explaining that to your kids.

And I hear people rally in their support? Why don’t they see where people like me are coming from? It’s “Adam and Eve”, not “Atom and Eave”! I’m okay with synonyms, but why do these damn homophones have to sound the same?

I’m sorry to vent, but I hate how society likes to label my honest disgust as “homophobic”. I’m entitled to my opinion; it’s not like I’m being sexist or racist. It’s not like homophones are people.

What?

You’re going to say that I’m wrong, that I’m not entitled to my opinion?

I am wrong? 

Homophobia is an irrational hatred toward homosexuals?

But that’s different; they are people.

And people (animals too) have been gay or done gay things to each other since they’ve been around. If it’s consensual, what’s wrong with looking for love, companionship or a one night stand in a different place?

“But the whole purpose of sex is to reproduce.”

Tell that to every condom and birth control company out there. It’s really just a matter of preference. It’s not like a straight couple dies every time a gay couple copulates.

Some folks are jerks, rude and annoying as hell, the kind of people whose presence you wish you could re-gift—and they can be straight as a ruler. Or that horrible person could happen to also be gay, or brown or white, or religious or not, or like anchovies on his pizza.

Shouldn’t the content of a conversation help us make up our minds about someone after rather than before we get to know them a little? Straight or gay shouldn’t be the basis of whether you dislike someone. That’s almost like deciding you don’t like someone because of the colour of their skin, and nobody ever does that. That would be ignorant.

Maybe we should soften our rigid prejudices toward what falls outside our normal. At the end of the day, isn’t “normal” just a perspective for predicting the world?

Now I’m thinking: should I still hate Homophones? What about other groups of words that behave differently too, like Rhymes?

Rhymes: “We’re told different things about what’s “right” and what’s “lies”; we’re probably all deviants in someone else’s eyes.

Maybe I ought to give Homophones a chance. Some of them sound cool, and others are pretty punny.

Homophones: “We like wordplay!”

Hey, homophones, me too.

And, when I think about it, there are worse words that aren’t even homophones. Normal words that I can’t stand. Like “pedantic”: nothing sounds like “pedantic,” but it does sound like a word that a real pedant would use.