It has long been a known psychological fact of humanity that people fear something more the less they know about it. So naturally, our defenses go up whenever we encounter a noise in the dark from an unidentifiable source: not knowing the sound was made by a friend trying to catch up leaves the possibility of it being made by a stranger with harmful intent.

Conversely, we fear less the more we know. As we found out that killer whales ate mostly small fish with hardly the appetite for a human, we started calling them orcas and were comfortable enough to hand-feed them at Sea World.

More recently, portions of humanity still fear homosexuality. We even have a term for that, “homophobia”. Because it is the cause of brutality throughout the world, it is a problem. If you knew a nauseating phobia you had could be remedied by simply learning more about it, what would keep you from doing so?

Thanks to organizations throughout the country such as PFLAG and numerous Gay and Lesbian Centers, the opportunity to learn more about the gay community is available. More locally, DU’s PRIDE organization works to build a relationship between students of different sexualities presenting the opportunity for students to learn that there is more to everyone than sexuality. But is the will to teach as effective if the will to learn is not also present?