Answered on Quora.
No. I believe most straight men find the thought of being gay to be frightening if not terrifying. A number of straight men told me that they would rather get shot in the head then have sex with a man. Fear of being gay is fairly normal for straight men. There is even a type of OCD called Gay OCD in which straight people fear that they are gay. 0% of these people are actually gay.
There has been an attempt by PC types to conflate fear of homosexuality with hatred of homosexuals, but they seem to be very different things. Yes, there are a few closeted gay or (usually somewhat bi) men who overcompensate and engage in reaction formation or projective self-hatred by hating gays, but that’s not common.
Most gay haters are not gay at all; in fact, they are quite the opposite. I have known many homophobes in my life. In fact, I know some at this very moment.
Generally it is associated with masculinity. The more masculine the man is, often the more homophobic he is. Most of the strong homophobes I have known were extremely masculine men, I mean some of the most masculine men I have ever known. They were also probably some of the least gay men I have ever known. All were aggressively heterosexual and some had had sex with many women.
I would say that homophobia or hatred of gays is associated with masculinity, particularly hypermasculinity, extreme masculinity or as they call it toxic masculinity more than anything else.
I doubt if most homophobes really fear homosexuality all that much. Instead they just hate gay people for some reason or another. Gay people need to wake up and figure out that the “homophobes are all closet cases” is a big fat lie. There are a lot of people out there who are just assholes and openly hate gay people simply because of what they are.
They really ought to come up with another word. Gayhaters pretty much sums it up.
