Reply #46: This is the true origin of the word homophobia. [View All]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homophobia
The word homophobia was rarely used early in the twentieth century, and it meant "fear or hatred of the male sex or humankind." In this use, the word derived from the Latin root homo (Latin, "man" or "human") with the Greek ending -phobia ("fear").<10>
In its more recent usage, dating from 1969, "homophobia" derives from the -phobia ending applied, not to the Latin root "homo", but to a shortening of homosexual. (Here, homo comes not from the Latin for "man", but from the Greek for "same"; see homosexual.) The word first appeared in print in an article written for the American Time magazine, 31st October edition. <11> It was used by clinical psychologist George Weinberg, who claims to have first thought of it while speaking at a homophile group in 1965, and was popularized by his book Society and the Healthy Homosexual in 1971. When asked about the meaning of the word in a 2002 interview, he said:
"Homophobia is just that: a phobia. A morbid and irrational dread which prompts irrational behavior flight or the desire to destroy the stimulus for the phobia and anything reminiscent of it."<12>
A possible etymological precursor was homoerotophobia, coined by Wainwright Churchill in Homosexual Behavior Among Males in 1967.

I believe the term is a highly misused one. Most people who do not approve of homosexuality do not fear it. They find it unnatural and therefore condemn it.