A phobia is defined as an irrational or disproportionate fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that compels one to avoid it.
Since the early 20th century, Psychiatrists have documented a great variety of phobias, which have provided a rich source of material for the question setters of pub quizzes.
The classical phobias (agoraphobia, arachnophobia, astraphobia, claustrophobia, coulrophobia, pyrophobia etc.) are related to obsessive compulsion and neurosis. Sufferers have very little control or volition over their emotions, re-actions and behaviour.
Alongside these pathological fears, has grown up a lexicon of other words bearing the suffix "phobia", which also have fear at their root but which actually describe the opinions and attitudes that are chosen by those who "suffer" from them.
The trouble is that when a person has xenophobia, homophobia, islamophobia, judeophobia or negrophobia it is usually not them but other people who suffer.
Although all prejudices are rooted in fear (and most demonstrably false), holding a prejudice is so different from suffering from a phobia that few such "voluntary phobias" have made it into common parliance. For most people the terms chauvanism, anti-semitism, racism, bigotry and sectarianism are far more accurate descriptions of prejudice than the euphemisms listed above.
Homophobes are people who are prejudiced against homosexuals.
People who would seek to limit the rights of homosexuals to form long-standing monogamous relationships may be suffering from blindness but they are not suffering a debilitating phobia.
