First of all, Barb, you know I hate to disagree with you.
In regards to Bill Maher and Jon Stewart I understand where you are coming from, but I don’t think they are homophobic. They are first and foremost comedians even though their show is more politically oriented. Mocking fun of people to demonstrate a point is what they do. Are all their jokes related to gay sensitive? No. That’s the nature of that business, pushing the envelope, being provocative, and being politically incorrect sometimes. Granted I didn’t watch all their shows to make an assessment, but general speaking regardless whatever the jokes they crack, I never get the feeling that the underlining message is homophobic. It’s mostly about attacking the hypocrisy and people’s stereotypes. Sometimes they make fun of certain elements of gay culture/behaviors (if there is even a word for that), but don’t they make tons of jokes about heterosexual culture/behaviors? We don’t call them heterophobia because they are straight. In the wave of the recent scandals involving some gay people in the public eyes, being a comedian it’s almost impossible to let that pass and not crack a few jokes. Their approach to the scandals is understandably different from more serious and analytical type of shows.
Is gay rights near and dear to their hearts? Maybe not. Are they homophobic because of that, or crack gay jokes? At least I don’t think so. As a matter of fact, I think both of them have been defending gay rights from religious right and engaged in various debates on the subject.
I find that the definition of homophobia is really subject to who use it. What a hard-line gay activist considers to be homophobia is quite different from what I understand to be the convention wisdom that defines homophobia. I remembered that we used to have a thread to discuss what made people not homophobic. FuzzyChanny posted saying her best friend (who is gay) accused her to be homophobic, which she understandably was very upset about. I would have a hard time to believe anyone who regularly posts here to be homophobic, but by her friend’s standard maybe we are. It all depends on who you ask.