You remember the old "anti-gay pastor/politician turns out to be gay" thing? It seems it's a real thing

You know the way it goes, some pastor or "christian" politician goes on a big anti-gay thing - and then turns out to be gay.

We've seen seen so many it's not even funny.

Well, it looks like it's not just irony coming along a little too often. It seems it's a real thing. See this paper ("Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal?"). The abstract says:

The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who admitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homophobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosexual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also completed an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.

(Short answer: Yes. The guys that aren't turned on by gay porn aren't homophobes. Actual straight guys don't seem to be the biggest problem. It's the guys that secretly think you're hot in those cut-off shorts that you have to really watch out for.)

So the next time you see that pastor or right wing christian politician screaming about the gays ... and you're thinking "oh, I bet he's secretly gay", well, maybe that's not such a silly bet.

Edit: Yeah, it's an old paper - but I've never seen it before, nor even seen any academic support for the effect. One wonders why this doesn't give them pause before launching the polemics.

h/t Furious Purpose