Bigotry is the heaping of one man's insecurity on to another. Sexism, racism,
homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-immigrantism, really all come
from the same place--cowardice.
I hadn't previously thought of it this way, but it strikes me as being almost exactly correct. To some extent, as humans who evolved from other forms of life (yes, I do believe that), it strikes me as not ridiculous at all to say that the instinct to be frightened by something that looks different from you is something we evolved as an evolutionary response. Fine. But that would account for a bit of discomfort and mistrust among different races and groups, which could presumably be easily resolved with interchange and cultural exploration.
It doesn't, for example, account for the depth of hatred expressed during the Jim Crow era. Those guys treated it as though it was a matter of survival between blacks and whites, as though it were a zero-sum game in which only one race could survive. And it further doesn't take into account the vituperativeness with which gay marriage opponents press their case. Fear seems to be as good an explanation as anything--my favorite example is this Rod Dreher freakout, as observed by Andrew Sullivan, which is rather paranoid, to say the least. I'm actually sympathetic to folks like Dreher who feel like their ways are falling out of favor and their time is ending, insisting that this is a Christian Nation to anyone who will listen while secretly doubting it. I can understand being afraid of change. But fear never stops change. It can't stand up to hope.
